A Sudden Change of Heart - A Novel

Informationen zum Autor Barbara Taylor Bradford was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, and was a reporter for the Yorkshire Evening Post at sixteen. By the age of twenty she had graduated to London's Fleet Street as both editor and columnist. In 1979, she published her first novel, A Woman of Substance , and that enduring bestseller was followed by fourteen others, most recently Power of a Woman . Her novels have sold more than fifty-nine million copies worldwide in more than eighty-eight countries and thirty-eight languages. Barbara Taylor Bradford lives in New York City and Connecticut with her husband, film producer Robert Bradford. Klappentext From master storyteller Barbara Taylor Bradford comes a magnificent new novel, a powerful, moving story of two women, two families, and an extraordinary friendship challenged by tragedy and a devastating secret from the past.... Some secrets are too terrible to share--even with your best friend.... Nothing hurts like the truth. A truth that has haunted Claire Benson all her life. A truth that Claire has revealed to no one, not even to her best friend, International art dealer Laura Valiant. But the friendship that has sheltered both women throughout childhood, marriage and divorce is about to meet its greatest test. Suddenly old nightmares surface as Claire turns to her dearest friend for help. And as Laura's career leads her into the past, in an investigation of artwork stolen by the Nazis, she uncovers disturbing links to the present, to Claire, and a profoundly personal reason to follow a twisted trail to its surprising end.... Leseprobe Prologue Summer 1972 The girl was tall for seven, dark-haired, with vividly blue eyes in an alert, intelligent face. Thin, almost wiry, there was a tomboy look about her, perhaps because of her slimness, short hair, restless energy, and the clothes she wore. They were her favorite pieces of clothing; her uniform, her grandmother said, but she loved her blue jeans, white T-shirt, and white sneakers. The sneakers and T-shirt were her two vanities. They must always be pristine, whiter than white, and so they were constantly in the washing machine or being replaced. The seven-year-old's name was Laura Valiant, and she was dressed thus this morning as she slipped out of the white clapboard colonial house on the hill and raced across the lawns and down to the river flowing through her grandparents' property. This was a long, wide green valley surrounded by soaring hills near Kent, a small rural town in the northwestern corner of Connecticut. Her grandparents had come to America from Wales many years before, in the 1920s, and after they had bought this wonderful verdant valley they had given it the Welsh name of Rhondda Fach . . . the little Rhondda, it meant. Once she reached the river, Laura made for the drystone wall and the copse where giant oaks and maples grew in great abundance. Years before, when he was a boy, her father and his siblings had built a tree house in one of the giant oaks. It had remained intact, and it was Laura's favorite spot, just as it had been for other young Valiants before her. Laura was a strong girl for her age, athletic, agile, and full of boundless energy. Within seconds she had scrambled up the rope ladder that dropped down from the fork in the branches where the tree house was built. She crawled inside the little house, making herself comfortable in her leafy lair as she sat cross-legged, gazing out at the early morning sky. It was six o'clock on this bright and shining July day and no one else was up, at least not in the house, not her grandparents, nor her best friend, Claire, who often accompanied her on her visits to her grandparents' farm. She loved everything about Rhondda Fach, much preferred it to New York, where she lived with her parents and her brother, Dylan. Imperceptibly, Laura's youn...

Product details

• Authors: Barbara Taylor Bradford
• Publisher: Dell Publishing Inc.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 01.12.1999
• EAN: 9780440235149
• ISBN: 978-0-440-23514-9
• No. of pages: 400
• Dimensions: 108 mm x 173 mm x 22 mm
• Series: Random House Publishing Group
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature