Barbara Taylor Bradford

Laura Valiant and Claire Benson are best friends from childhood and have remained exceptionally close through the turmoil of adult life. They have much to celebrate: Laura is a partner in a challenging and successful art dealership in New York, and her marriage to the handsome and always amiable Doug seems to come right from a storybook. Though divorced from her French husband, Philippe Lavillard, Claire delights in her precocious daughter, Natasha.

But the two friends’ lives do not follow the paths we imagine they will, and when Claire is confronted with sudden tragedy, she naturally turns to Laura for help. When the long-hidden history of the Lavillard family intersects with Laura’s investigation into artwork stolen by the Nazis during the war, Barbara Taylor Bradford’s gripping tale reaches a dramatic and unexpected crescendo.

Sebastian, the fifty-six-year-old patriarch of the Locke clan, is handsome, charismatic, a man of immense charm and intelligence. He heads up the philanthropic Locke Foundation, funded by the vast family fortune built by his forefathers. Committed to relieving the suffering of those in genuine need, Locke travels the globe, personally giving away millions a year to the poor, the sick, and the victims of natural disasters and wars. He is seen as a beacon of light in today’s darkly violent world. That is why the police are so baffled when Sebastian is found dead in mysterious circumstances. Has he been murdered, and if so who would want to kill the world’s greatest philanthropist? Could such an upstanding man have enemies? Vivienne Trent, an American journalist, met Locke as a child, married him, divorced him, but stayed close to him. Aware that there was another side to this engimatic man, she sets out to find the truth about his death and about Locke himself.