Christopher Newman, a 'self-made' American millionaire in France, falls in love with the beautiful aristocratic Claire de Bellegarde. Her family, however, taken aback by his brash American manner, rejects his proposal of marriage. When Newman discovers a guilty secret in the Bellegardes' past, he confronts a moral dilemma: Should he expose them and thus gain his revenge? James's masterly early work is at once a social comedy, a melodramatic romance and a realistic novel of manners.

    For it is couched in such terms as to offer Benedict an instrument of destruction of his bitterest rival. 'Destroy Johnny' was the old man's implacable message to his son, and, obsessively jealous of his foster-brother, Benedict sets out in ruthless pursuit of this goal.In a desperate bid to support Johnny, Tracey acquires for him the concession in the diamond-rich seabed round the coral islands of Thunderbolt and Suicide off the savage South West African coast, and Johnny throws all his resources into the construction of a vessel that will recover the stones from the ocean floor and repair his fortune at last. But Benedict, already involved in illegal diamond-dealing as a sideline, seizes this chance to attack his rival and, with a network of accomplices and some ingenious electronic tampering, plots to syphon off the diamonds. Johnny will not only be ruined by his liabilities, he will also be a laughing stock.However, Benedict's obsessive jealousy is his undoing. He cannot resist stripping his rival of his beautiful but bitchy wife Ruby as well, and when he then discards her, she takes her revenge, precipitating a climax of murder and destruction that consumes Benedict at last.Narrated with Wilbur Smith's irresistible driving thrust, The Diamond Hunters is a tale of brotherly hatred, redeemed only by the deepening love between Johnny and Tracey. It is set in London, Cape Town, on the thunderous seas around the ocean diamond fields and ends in a final confrontation between Johnny and Benedict in the blistering hyena-infested desert.

    Though Caleb knows he belongs in the future, how can he leave the past, and Liberty, behind?Times ChangeCynical Jacob Hornblower has followed his brother, Caleb, back in time, hoping to convince him to return home. His mission is soon forgotten, however, when he finds himself captivated by Liberty's spitfire sister, Sunny. But can a man who is down on love truly understand the unbounded strength of the human heart?

    When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner's, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick's Cathedral and take the rest as it comes.

    Now, Karen Harper tells the tale of Consuelo Vanderbilt, her “The Wedding of the Century” to the Duke of Marlborough, and her quest to find meaning behind “the glitter and the gold.”On a cold November day in 1895, a carriage approaches St Thomas Episcopal Church on New York City’s Fifth Avenue. Massive crowds surge forward, awaiting their glimpse of heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt. Just 18, the beautiful bride has not only arrived late, but in tears, yet her marriage to the aloof Duke of Marlborough proceeds. Bullied into the wedding by her indomitable mother, Alva, Consuelo loves another. But a deal was made, trading some of the vast Vanderbilt wealth for a title and prestige, and Consuelo, bred to obey, realizes she must make the best of things.At Blenheim Palace, Consuelo is confronted with an overwhelming list of duties, including producing an “heir and a spare,” but her relationship with the duke quickly disintegrates. Consuelo finds an inner strength, charming everyone from debutantes to diplomats including Winston Churchill, as she fights for women’s suffrage. And when she takes a scandalous leap, can she hope to attain love at last…?From the dawning of the opulent Gilded Age, to the battles of the Second World War, American Duchess is a riveting tale of one woman’s quest to attain independence—at any price.

    Now, its gifted author delivers another sweeping historical novel. Davinsky Labor Camp, Siberia, 1933: Only two things in this wretched place keep Sofia from giving up hope: the prospect of freedom, and the stories told by her friend and fellow prisoner Anna, of a charmed childhood in Petrograd, and her fervent girlhood love for a passionate revolutionary named Vasily. After a perilous escape, Sofia endures months of desolation and hardship. But, clinging to a promise she made to Anna, she subsists on the belief that someday she will track down Vasily. In a remote village, she's nursed back to health by a Gypsy family, and there she finds more than refuge, she also finds Mikhail Pashin, who, her heart tells her, is Vasily in disguise. He's everything she has ever wanted but he belongs to Anna. After coming this far, Sofia is tantalizingly close to freedom, family?even a future. All that stands in her way is the secret past that could endanger everything she has come to hold dear.

    The Farrells--dedicated, brilliant.. and driven to the edge of destruction by a love no human force could suppress.

    Now Audra has but one dream--to bestow upon her brilliantly artistic daughter, every opportunity that she was denied…AT THE HEART OF AMBITION.Given the world, the stubborn Christina has forsaken the wishes of her noble mother to forge the career of her choice--that of a glittering Manhattan fashion empire she hopes to bequeath to her own daughter. But in young and beautiful Kyle stirs a spirit that is inherently headstrong, equally independent, and just as ironically resistant to the sacrifices made in the name of love.FOR THE SAKE OF A DREAM.From the picturesque Yorkshire Dales to the haute couture luxuries of Paris and London to the bittersweet respite of home and family, three women face stunning betrayals and astonishing reversals of fate as each brings her own intimate struggle to their need of personal success and to a triumphant and heartening understanding of devotion, duty, and destiny.

    With Europe on the brink of war, she shares her story with her granddaughter Solange Beaugiron, using her prized possessions to reveal her innermost secrets. Most striking of all are a beautiful string of pearls and a magnificent portrait of Marthe painted by the Italian artist Giovanni Boldini. As Marthe’s tale unfolds, like velvet itself, stitched with its own shadow and light, it helps to guide Solange on her own path. Inspired by the true account of an abandoned Parisian apartment, Alyson Richman brings to life Solange, the young woman forced to leave her fabled grandmother’s legacy behind to save all that she loved.

    A worldwide bestseller first published in 1980, this novel tells the story of Jennifer Parker, a successful lawyer who is loved by two men, one a politician, the other, a mafia don.

    Then Shannon Keefe arrives with her wild tale of murder and ghosts, and it is Maudie who unravels the past for her.Shocked and saddened by the mysterious death of her father, Shannon Keeffe traveled all the way from New York to Ardravarna, the once grand ancestral estate that lay cradled in the green hills of Connemara, Ireland. Had her father really committed … She was the incomparable Lily Molyneux, whose jet hair and sapphire eyes drove men to madness and revenge. Rich, reckless titles, her secrets would scar generations to come.... They could never have enough money or power to capture her elusive heart: three men who amassed fame and fortune in pursuit of the one woman they couldn't deny. And a fourth who dies for her sins....

    but before the police come to take them, Sarah locks her younger brother, Michel, in their favorite hiding place, a cupboard in the family's apartment. She keeps the key, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.Paris, May 2002: On Vel' d'Hiv's sixtieth anniversary, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist, is asked by her Paris-based American magazine to write an article about this black day in France's past. Julia has lived in Paris for nearly twenty-five years, married a Frenchman, and she is shocked both by her ignorance about the event and the silence that still surrounds it. In the course of her investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connects her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from the terrible days spent shut in at the Vel' d'Hiv' to the camps and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.Writing about the fate of her country with a pitiless clarity, Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and denial surrounding this painful episode in French history.(front flap)

    Legacy Of Lies by JoAnn Ross released on Dec 23, 1994 is available now for purchase.

    Early into the renovations, she discovers a tin box hidden away in the attic that reveals the emotional letters from a WWII paratrooper to a young woman who lived in the house more than a half-century earlier.The old letters—incredibly poetic and romantic—transcend time, and they arouse in Adrienne a curiosity that leads her to track down the writer of the letters. William “Pops” Bryant is now an old man living in a nearby town with his handsome but overprotective grandson, Will. As Adrienne begins to unravel the secrets of the letters (and the Bryants), she finds herself not yet willing to give up entirely on love.

    Her charismatic Newfoundlander husband Thomas is still missing in action. Until a letter arrives explaining Thomas is back at home on the other side of the Atlantic recovering from his injuries.Travelling to a distant country to live with a man she barely knows is the bravest thing Ellie has ever had to do. But nothing can prepare her for the harsh realities of her new home…September 11th 2001Sophie Parry is on a plane to New York on the most tragic day in the city’s history. While the world watches the news in horror, Sophie’s flight is rerouted to a tiny town in Newfoundland and she is forced to seek refuge with her estranged aunt Ellie. Determined to discover what it was that forced her family apart all those years ago, newfound secrets may change her life forever…