Deborah Lawrenson

A modern gothic novel of love, secrets, and murder—set against the lush backdrop of Provence Meeting Dom was the most incredible thing that had ever happened to me. When Eve falls for the secretive, charming Dom in Switzerland, their whirlwind relationship leads them to Les GenÉvriers, an abandoned house set among the fragrant lavender fields of the South of France. Each enchanting day delivers happy discoveries: hidden chambers, secret vaults, a beautiful wrought-iron lantern. Deeply in love and surrounded by music, books, and the heady summer scents of the French countryside, Eve has never felt more alive. But with autumn’s arrival the days begin to cool, and so, too, does Dom. Though Eve knows he bears the emotional scars of a failed marriage—one he refuses to talk about—his silence arouses suspicion and uncertainty. The more reticent Dom is to explain, the more Eve becomes obsessed with finding answers—and with unraveling the mystery of his absent, beautiful ex-wife, Rachel. Like its owner, Les GenÉvriers is also changing. Bright, warm rooms have turned cold and uninviting; shadows now fall unexpectedly; and Eve senses a presence moving through the garden. Is it a ghost from the past or a manifestation of her current troubles with Dom? Can she trust Dom, or could her life be in danger? Eve does not know that Les GenÉvriers has been haunted before. BÉnÉdicte Lincel, the house’s former owner, thrived as a young girl within the rich elements of the landscape: the violets hidden in the woodland, the warm wind through the almond trees. She knew the bitter taste of heartbreak and tragedy—long-buried family secrets and evil deeds that, once unearthed, will hold shocking and unexpected consequences for Eve.

A Novel

The Lantern

Combining the atmosphere of Jess Walters’ Beautiful Ruins with the intriguing historical backstory of Christina Baker Kline’s The Orphan Train, Deborah Lawrenson’s mesmerizing novel transports readers to a sunny Portuguese town with a shadowy past—where two women, decades apart, are drawn into a dark game of truth and lies that still haunts the shifting sea marshes. Traveling to Faro, Portugal, journalist Joanna Millard hopes to escape an unsatisfying relationship and a stalled career. Faro is an enchanting town, and the seaside views are enhanced by the company of Nathan Emberlin, a charismatic younger man. But behind the crumbling facades of Moorish buildings, Joanna soon realizes, Faro has a seedy underbelly, its economy compromised by corruption and wartime spoils. And Nathan has an ulterior motive for seeking her company: he is determined to discover the truth involving a child’s kidnapping that may have taken place on this dramatic coastline over two decades ago. Joanna’s subsequent search leads her to Ian Rylands, an English expat who cryptically insists she will find answers in The Alliance, a novel written by American Esta Hartford. The book recounts an American couple’s experience in Portugal during World War II, and their entanglements both personal and professional with their German enemies. Only Rylands insists the book isn’t fiction, and as Joanna reads deeper into The Alliance, she begins to suspect that Esta Hartford’s story and Nathan Emberlin’s may indeed converge in Faro—where the past not only casts a long shadow but still exerts a very present danger.

300 Days of Sun

Three stories rich in drama and steeped in atmosphere are linked by a single mystery in this spellbinding novel of love and loss in the fog of war. The Sea Garden On the lush Mediterranean island of Porquerolles off the French coast, Ellie Brooke, an award-winning British landscape designer, has been hired to restore a memorial garden. Unsettled by its haunted air and the bitterness of the garden's owner, an elderly woman who seems intent on undermining her, Ellie finds that her only ally on the island is an elusive war historian. . . . The Lavender Field Near the end of World War II, Marthe Lincel, a young blind woman newly apprenticed at a perfume factory in Nazi-occupied Provence, finds herself at the center of a Resistance cell. When tragedy strikes, she faces the most difficult choice of her life and discovers a breathtaking courage she never expected. . . . A Shadow Life Iris Nightingale, a junior British intelligence officer in wartime London, falls for a French agent. But after a secret landing in Provence results in terrible Nazi reprisals, he vanishes. When France is liberated, Iris is determined to uncover the truth. Was he the man he claimed to be?

The Sea Garden

In 1944 Tom Wainwright, a British soldier, arrives in the small Italian town of Petriano. The war is nearly over, and in the lull before the Allied troops move further north to capture Florence Tom forges a friendship with the Parini family — and in particular with the eldest daughter, Giuliana. When the war ends he chooses to stay in Italy, planning to build a life with the woman with whom he has fallen deeply in love, but in the chaotic, tragic fallout of the end of the Second World War his hopes are dashed. Fifty years later Isabel Wainwright, Tom's daughter, sets off for Petriano herself, to attend a ceremony naming a piazza in the small town in her father's honour. But Isabel isn't so much going to represent her father as to find him — for she and her mother have heard nothing of him since, nearly twenty years earlier, he went out one day and never returned. She doesn't even know whether her father is dead or alive, but hopes that by discovering something of his past, she can build a picture of the man she hardly knew.

The Art of Falling

300 dias de sol

Set in the lush countryside of Provence, Deborah Lawrenson’s The Lantern is an atmospheric modern gothic tale of love, suspicion, and murder, in the tradition of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Drawn to a wealthy older man, Eve embarks on a whirlwind romance that soon offers a new life and a new home—Les Genévriers, a charming hamlet amid the fragrant lavender fields of Provence. But Eve finds it impossible to ignore the mysteries that haunt both her lover and the run-down old house. The more reluctant Dom is to tell her about his past, the more she is drawn to it—and to the mysterious disappearance of his beautiful ex-wife. An evocative tale of romantic and psychological suspense, The Lantern masterfully melds past and present, secrets and lies, appearances and disappearances—along with our age-old fear of the dark.

Eve wordt stapelverliefd op de charmante Dom. Hun stormachtige romance leidt tot de aankoop van een oud huis, Les Genévriers, in de Provence. Terwijl de prachtige zomer op zijn einde loopt, raakt Eve omringd door geheimen en leugens. Dom praat niet graag over zijn verleden en al helemaal niet over de raadselachtige verdwijning van zijn eerste vrouw Rachel. Terwijl Eve probeert de gebeurtenissen rondom Rachels laatste dagen te ontrafelen, stijgt de spanning in huis tot ondraaglijke hoogte. Het vervallen Les Genévriers lijkt zelf tot leven te komen.

De Lantaarn

300 Days of Sun LP

Un nuovo amore capace di ridare vita a un cuore infranto. Una casa abbandonata da anni che solo il vento conosce veramente. Un segreto inconfessabile nascosto nelle pieghe del passato.

Deborah Lawrenson

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