BooksRock.com - Kids Books At Amazing Low Prices!

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.

Nicole Poole is an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning audiobook narrator, commercial voice talent, veteran soundpainter, and owner of the O. Gail Poole Collection. She is also a staunch supporter of the arts and travels around the globe with a mobile recording studio.

Fiona Hardingham is a British-born actress, singer, voice-over artist, and AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. On stage, she appeared at the Edinburgh Festival in her comedic one-woman show The Dark Show. She has also starred in the dark-comedy short film The Ballerino. She earned a BA honors degree in performing arts from Middlesex University, London, and also studied at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

Deborah Lawrenson studied English at Cambridge University and worked as a journalist in London. She is married with a daughter, and lives in Kent, England. Deborah's previous novels include The Lantern and The Sea Garden.