Livres - Bibliographie

Saluée comme étant une « comédie joyeuse sans aucun temps mort », ce début éblouissant présente Éloïse Kelly, une étudiante au doctorat à Harvard qui, en quête de réponses à l'un des nombreux mystères de l'histoire, trouve quelque chose d'encore plus fascinant... Rien ne va plus pour Éloïse. Le jour où elle porte ses nouvelles bottes en daim, il pleut des cordes. Lorsque le métro tombe en panne, c'est toujours elle qui se retrouve sur les genoux d'un étranger. Sans compter qu'elle a eu plus que sa part de malchance en amour. En fait, après avoir compris que les héros romantiques sont chose du passé, elle décide qu'il est temps de prendre un nouveau départ. En partant pour l'Angleterre, Éloïse est décidée à terminer sa thèse sur cet élégant duo d'espions, le Mouron rouge et la Gentiane pourpre. Mais elle découvre quelque chose que même les plus brillants historiens ont manqué: la mystérieuse histoire de l'OEillet rose - l'espion le plus insaisissable de tous les temps. Alors qu'elle tente de démasquer cet espion obscur, Éloïse tombe sur les réponses à toutes sortes de questions. Comment l'OEillet rose a-t-il sauvé l'Angleterre de Napoléon ? Qu'est-il arrivé au Mouron rouge et à la Gentiane pourpre ? Et Éloïse Kelly réussira-t-elle à échapper au mauvais sort et à trouver son propre héros en chair et en os ?

Toutes les familles ont leurs secrets, mais celui d'Addie, la grand-mère de Clementine, est un peu plus lourd que d'autres... Lorsqu'elle arrive à Ashford Park en 1905, Addie, jeune orpheline londonienne, n'a que 5 ans. Et si son oncle et sa tante l'accueillent dans la plus grande indifférence, la fillette passe une enfance heureuse auprès de sa cousine, la belle et audacieuse Bea. Entre elles deux, naît une amitié indéfectible que seule la Grande Guerre parvient à briser : Addie s'engage comme infirmière quand Bea fuit l'Europe avec Frederick, l'homme dont sa cousine est pourtant follement éprise. Bien des années passent sans que les jeunes femmes ne se donnent de nouvelles, jusqu'au jour où, contre toute attente, Bea supplie Addie de la rejoindre au Kenya. Un voyage qui changera le cours de son destin...

À la mort de sa mère, Rachel Woodley, jeune gouvernante, se croit sans famille et sans argent. C'est alors qu'elle découvre que son père, qu'elle pensait décédé, est bel et bien en vie. Mieux encore, il a une autre fille.

En quête d'explications, la jeune femme part pour Oxford où elle fait la connaissance de Simon Montfort, aristocrate et journaliste mondain. Celui-ci accepte de la faire passer pour une de ses cousines éloignées et l'introduit au sein de l'aristocratie londonienne. En retour, Rachel lui fournit de quoi alimenter sa chronique. Un échange de bons procédés qui n'est pas sans risque.....

Rachel découvre bientôt les dessous de ce monde sans pitié.

1945: When critically wounded Captain Cooper Ravenel is brought to a private hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, young Dr. Kate Schuyler is drawn into a complex mystery that connects three generations of women in her family to a single extraordinary room in a Gilded Age mansion.

Who is the woman in Captain Ravenel’s miniature portrait who looks so much like Kate? And why is she wearing the ruby pendant handed down to Kate by her mother? In their pursuit of answers, they find themselves drawn into the turbulent stories of Olive Van Alan, driven in the Gilded Age from riches to rags, who hired out as a servant in the very house her father designed, and Lucy Young, who in the Jazz Age came from Brooklyn to Manhattan seeking the father she had never known. But are Kate and Cooper ready for the secrets that will be revealed in the Forgotten Room?

A scholarship girl from Brooklyn, Kate Moran thought she found a place among Smith’s Mayflower descendants, only to have her illusions dashed the summer after graduation. When charismatic alumna Betsy Rutherford delivers a rousing speech at the Smith College Club in April of 1917, looking for volunteers to help French civilians decimated by the German war machine, Kate is too busy earning her living to even think of taking up the call. But when her former best friend Emmeline Van Alden reaches out and begs her to take the place of a girl who had to drop out, Kate reluctantly agrees to join the new Smith College Relief Unit.

Four months later, Kate and 17 other Smithies, including two trailblazing female doctors, set sail for France. The volunteers are armed with money, supplies, and good intentions - all of which immediately go astray. The chateau that was to be their headquarters is a half-burnt ruin. The villagers they meet are in desperate straits: women and children huddling in damp cellars, their crops destroyed and their wells poisoned.

Despite constant shelling from the Germans, French bureaucracy, and the threat of being ousted by the British army, the Smith volunteers bring welcome aid - and hope - to the region. But can they survive their own differences? As they cope with the hardships and terrors of the war, Kate and her colleagues find themselves navigating old rivalries and new betrayals which threaten the very existence of the Unit.

With the Germans threatening to break through the lines, can the Smith Unit pull together and be truly a band of sisters?

The New York Times bestselling authors of The Glass Ocean and The Forgotten Room return with a glorious historical adventure that moves from the dark days of two World Wars to the turbulent years of the 1960s, in which three women with bruised hearts find refuge at Paris’ legendary Ritz hotel.

The heiress . . .

The Resistance fighter . . .

The widow . . .

Three women whose fates are joined by one splendid hotel

France, 1914. As war breaks out, Aurelie becomes trapped on the wrong side of the front with her father, Comte Sigismund de Courcelles. When the Germans move into their family’s ancestral estate, using it as their headquarters, Aurelie discovers she knows the German Major’s aide de camp, Maximilian Von Sternburg. She and the dashing young officer first met during Aurelie’s debutante days in Paris. Despite their conflicting loyalties, Aurelie and Max’s friendship soon deepens into love, but betrayal will shatter them both, driving Aurelie back to Paris and the Ritz— the home of her estranged American heiress mother, with unexpected consequences.

France, 1942. Raised by her indomitable, free-spirited American grandmother in the glamorous Hotel Ritz, Marguerite “Daisy” Villon remains in Paris with her daughter and husband, a Nazi collaborator, after France falls to Hitler. At first reluctant to put herself and her family at risk to assist her grandmother’s Resistance efforts, Daisy agrees to act as a courier for a skilled English forger known only as Legrand, who creates identity papers for Resistance members and Jewish refugees. But as Daisy is drawn ever deeper into Legrand’s underground network, committing increasingly audacious acts of resistance for the sake of the country—and the man—she holds dear, she uncovers a devastating secret . . . one that will force her to commit the ultimate betrayal, and to confront at last the shocking circumstances of her own family history.

France, 1964. For Barbara “Babs” Langford, her husband, Kit, was the love of her life. Yet their marriage was haunted by a mysterious woman known only as La Fleur. On Kit’s death, American lawyer Andrew “Drew” Bowdoin appears at her door. Hired to find a Resistance fighter turned traitor known as “La Fleur,” the investigation has led to Kit Langford. Curious to know more about the enigmatic La Fleur, Babs joins Drew in his search, a journey of discovery that that takes them to Paris and the Ritz—and to unexpected places of the heart. . . .

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