But everything changes when three young painters come to see Arthur's collection of medieval artifacts, including Gavin Thorne, a quiet man with the unsettling ability to read Imogen better than anyone ever has. The one bright spot in her life is her step-daughter, Evie, a high-spirited sixteen year old who is the closest thing to a child Imogen hopes to have. And then she discovers a pre-Raphaelite painting, hidden behind the false back of an old wardrobe, and a window onto the house's shrouded history begins to open.ġ849: Imogen Grantham has spent nearly a decade trapped in a loveless marriage to a much older man, Arthur. But when she arrives at Herne Hill to sort through the house-with the help of her cousin Natasha and sexy antiques dealer Nicholas-bits of memory start coming back. She hasn't been back to England since the car crash that killed her mother when she was six, an event she remembers only in her nightmares. The physical and emotional passions of the characters keep the stakes high and the pages turning, making this a powerful exploration of slavery and reformation on Barbados.2009: When Julia Conley hears that she has inherited a house outside London from an unknown great-aunt, she assumes it's a joke. The narrative alternates between the period of 1812–18: in the earlier age, ardent battles for love and land shape the future, while in 1854, Emily struggles to rebuild and run a plantation, but she’s filled with the same uncertainty that underlies her attempts to understand hidden details of her family line. Mary Anne marries and becomes pregnant, and soon Jenny is expecting as well, but lineages are questioned and, in Jenny’s case, shrouded with mystery. The story then reaches back to 1812, when connections between the plantation families and their slaves are gradually revealed through the relationships of landowners such as Mary Anne Beckles, as well as Mary Anne’s maid Jenny.

Nathaniel Braithright, the nephew of a wealthy freedman, by proclaiming her inheritance of the nearby derelict sugar plantation called Peverills. Emily Dawson has arrived in Barbados from England, and she surprises her new neighbor Dr. Rich settings, romantic intrigue, and engaging characters will draw readers into this dramatic epic of estate owners and slavery in 19th-century colonial Barbados from Willig ( The English Wife).

That Summer by Lauren Willig