Sally Beauman – författare

Halley''s Comet night at Winterscombe in 1910 ends with a violent death which throws a giant shadow over three generations of the Cavendish dynasty.

At the centre of events is the beautiful and dangerous Constance, who casts a spell - which may be a curse - on all the sons of the family.

Following the destruction of two World Wars - and the passions, deceits and hatreds of the intervening peace - it is the coruscating power of Constance''s personality, and the sinister secret at the heart of her life, which will determine if Victoria, last of the Cavendishes, is to inherit happiness or misery.

On the twentieth anniversary of the death of Rebecca, the hauntingly beautiful first wife of Maxim de Winter, family friend Colonel Julyan receives an anonymous parcel. It contains a black notebook with two handwritten words on the title page -- Rebecca''s Tale -- and two pictures: a photograph of Rebecca as a young child and a postcard of Manderley. Rebecca once asked Julyan to ensure she was buried in the churchyard facing the sea: if she ended up in the de Winter crypt, she warned, she''d come back to haunt him. Now, it seems, she has finally kept her promise.Julyan''s conscience has never been clear over the official version of Rebecca''s death. Was Rebecca the manipulative, promiscuous femme fatale her husband claimed. Or the gothic heroine of tragic proportions that others had suggested. The official story, the ''truth'', has only had Maxim''s version of events to consider. But all that is about to change . . .

If I didn''t spy, I''d be in the dark eternally. I live in a maze of unknowing -- Maisie''s maze -- and I hate it. I need to be informed . . .''The summer of 1967, at a decaying house in the heart of Suffolk: an artist is painting a portrait of thirteen-year-old Maisie and her elder sisters, beautiful Julia and bookish Finn. Maisie embarks on a portrait of her own: she begins an account of her family and of her village friend Daniel Nunn, a young man she idolises, whom she watches over the chasm of a class divide. But is Maisie''s description of a summer idyll all it seems? This is the summer when the three sisters'' lives will irrevocably, and terribly, change. The winter of 1991, in London: the now-famous portrait of the three sisters features in a major retrospective. Daniel Nunn, haunted by the vanished England of his childhood, obsessed by the three sisters and newly determined to understand what happened that last summer, pursues the ghosts of his past.

One Evening in Paris, Edouard de Chavigny becomes a man obsessed. A wealthy, notorious womanizer, he is captivated by a mysterious young Englishwoman, Helene Craig, and knows that she is the woman he has been searching for all his life.But Helene is not what she seems. While Edouard offers her wealth, freedom and passion, she must weigh these attractions against the demands of her own secret life and her determination to exact revenge for the destruction of her childhood world.What neither Helene nor Edouard knows is that their lives are already linked, and that ahead of them lie years of public glamour and private pain.

It''s Death on the Nile meets Downton Abbey, as the action moves between Highclere Castle and Egypt''s Valley of the Kings . . . A gripping story touching on friendship, scholarship, love and family'' Daily MailBased on a true story of discovery, The Visitors is New York Times bestselling author Sally Beauman''s brilliant recreation of the hunt for Tutankhamun''s tomb in Egypt''s Valley of the Kings - a dazzling blend of fact and fiction that brings to life a lost world of exploration, adventure, and danger, and the audacious men willing to sacrifice everything to find a lost treasure.Sent abroad to Egypt in 1922 to recover from the typhoid that killed her mother, eleven-year-old Lucy is caught up in the intrigue and excitement that surrounds the obsessive hunt for Tutankhamun''s tomb. As she struggles to comprehend an adult world in which those closest to her are often cold and unpredictable, Lucy longs for a friend she can love. When she meets Frances, the daughter of an American archaeologist, her life is transformed. As the two girls spy on the grown-ups and try to understand the truth behind their evasions, a lifelong bond is formed.Haunted by the ghosts of her past, the mistakes she made and the secrets she kept, Lucy disinters her past, trying to make sense of what happened all those years ago in Cairo and the Valley of the Kings. And for the first time in her life, she comes to terms with what happened after Egypt, when Frances needed Lucy most.

In France, a young man''s heart misses a beat when the blue lights of a police car signal for him to pull his Mercedes off the autoroute. For inside the attache case on the passenger seat is a very special delivery bound for the Parisian headquarters of the world-renowned fashion house, Cazares, and for fashion doyenne Maria Cazares herself. And a similar, potentially lethal delivery, is about to disrupt the quiet of the English countryside.In London, journalist Gini Hunter, newly returned from the war zones of Bosnia, is haunted by what she has seen. Knowing that her lover, Pascal Lamartine, remains there, she exists on the brink of breakdown, supported by her close friend, fashion editor Lindsay Drummond. Until the disappearance of a schoolgirl and the intervention of a new editor at her paper, Rowland McGuire, force her to do what she does best...follow a story.The hunt for fifteen-year-old Mina Landis takes Gini from a Gloucestershire country house to Amsterdam, and then to Paris at the height of the fashion collections. There, she will encounter new and very different dangers, for she must deal with two men - one a potential killer, the other a potential lover.

Journalist Lindsay Drummond is about to re-make her life: she plans to move out of London, change her job, and above all, cure herself of her hopeless love for her unfairly handsome colleague, Rowland McGuire. Deadline day is Hallowe''en - but an encounter then with Rowland''s friend, Colin Lascelles, a man much less innocent than he seems, quickly teaches her that the best-laid plans can go delightfully awry...In New York, actress Natasha Lawrence is also trying to rebuild her life. Pursued by a stalker for the past five years, still bound to her ex-husband, the celebrated film director Tomas Court, she retreats with her son to the precincts of the exclusive - and haunted - Conrad apartment building. But will it provide her with the security she so desperately seeks, and will she and her husband be able to lay to rest the ghosts of their past?Lindsay''s and Natasha''s lives become inextricably entangled; when the cast of characters gathers for Thanksgiving at the sinister Conrad building, anything can happen, for romance and retribution, marriage and murder are in the air.

One frosty January morning, an exquisitely dressed, beautiful blonde woman sends four identical parcels to four different destinations: Paris, New York, Venice and London. But this is no innocent transaction and the woman is not the person she claims to be.Photographer Pascal Lamartine receives his package in Paris: it contains a woman''s black glove, scented and disturbing. In London, reporter Gini Hunter, opens her parcel to find even more threatening contents. And, within hours, Gini and Pascal are assigned to a story rich in potential scandal. They must investigate John Hawthorne, the charismatic US Ambassador to Great Britain, and the rumours now circulating about him. If true, then Hawthorne''s golden reputation conceals an even darker secret.Gini and Pascal find themselves trapped in a mirror-world where all evidence is suspect. But they cannot remain distanced, for this story touches their own lives, their brief passionate love affair, which ignited and ended in a war zone twelve years before. In investigating John Hawthorne, they must also examine their own loyalties, and the secrets of their hearts.