Public Secrets

Zusatztext PRAISE FOR NORA ROBERTS   “[Nora] Roberts continues to find new and clever ways to flawlessly fuse thrilling suspense and sexy romance into captivating stories.”— Booklist   “Roberts is a superstar.”— The New York Times Informationen zum Autor Nora Roberts was the first writer to be inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. The New York Times bestselling author of such novels as Brazen Virtue and Hot Ice, she has become one of today’s most successful and best-loved writers. Nora Roberts lives with her family in Maryland. Klappentext New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts deftly blends romance and suspense in this compelling novel of a woman whose career, marriage, and very life are threatened by the truth about her own past. Emma McAvoy may have grown up in the limelight, but some secrets are hidden in a darkness no light can reach. Now on the verge of a successful career, and having fallen in love with the man of her dreams, Emma is looking to the future. Yet it's the past that is about to catch up with her. For Emma, her childhood had been almost like a rags-to-riches fairy tale-until the tragic night that changed her family forever. But what Emma thinks she knows about that terrible night and the man she's about to marry is only half the truth. The other half is locked away in the last place she'd ever think to look: her own memories. It's a mystery a handsome and relentlessly driven homicide detective needs to solve in a case that's haunted him for years-and a secret someone will kill to keep. Leseprobe The first time Emma met her father, she was nearly three years old.  She knew what he looked like because her mother kept pictures of him, meticulously cut from newspapers and glossy magazines, on every surface in their cramped three-room flat.  Jane Palmer had a habit of carrying her daughter, Emma, from picture to picture hanging on the water-stained walls and sitting on the dusty scarred furniture and telling her of the glorious love affair that had bloomed between herself and Brian McAvoy, lead singer for the hot rock group, Devastation.  The more Jane drank, the greater that love became. Emma understood only parts of what she was told.  She knew that the man in the pictures was important, that he and his band had played for the queen.  She had learned to recognize his voice when his songs came on the radio, or when her mother put one of the 45s she collected on the record player. Emma liked his voice, and what she would learn later was called its faint Irish lilt. Some of the neighbors tut-tutted about the poor little girl upstairs with a mother who had a fondness for the gin bottle and a vicious temper.  There were times they heard Jane's shrill curses and Emma's sobbing wails.  Their lips would firm and knowing looks would pass between the ladies as they shook out their rugs or hung up the weekly wash. In the early days of the summer of 1967, the summer of love, they shook their heads when they heard the little girl's cries through the open window of the Palmer flat.  Most agreed that young Jane Palmer didn't deserve such a sweet-faced child, but they murmured only among themselves.  No one in that part of London would dream of reporting such a matter to the authorities. Of course, Emma didn't understand terms like alcoholism or emotional illness, but even though she was only three she was an expert on gauging her mother's moods.  She knew the days her mother would laugh and cuddle, the days she would scold and slap.  When the atmosphere in the flat was particularly heavy, Emma would take her stuffed black dog, Charlie, crawl under the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink, and in the dark and damp, wait out her mother's temper On some days, she wasn't quick enough. "Hold still, do, Emma."  Jane dragged th...

Product details

• Authors: Nora Roberts
• Publisher: Bantam Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 28.07.2009
• EAN: 9780553386400
• ISBN: 978-0-553-38640-0
• No. of pages: 448
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 211 mm x 24 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature