Description
Under the tablecloth, Frances's hand reached for mine and clasped it. I knew what it meant, that clasp and the mischievous grateful glance that accompanied it: it meant I was thanked, that there were secrets here. I could accept that. I too had secrets - who doesn't? Sent abroad to Egypt in 1922 to recover from the typhoid that killed her mother, eleven-year-old Lucy is caught up in the intrigue and excitement that surrounds the obsessive hunt for Tutankhamun's tomb. As she struggles to comprehend an adult world in which those closest to her are often cold and unpredictable, Lucy longs for a friend she can love. When she meets Frances, the daughter of an American archaeologist, her life is transformed. As the two girls spy on the grown-ups and try to understand the truth behind their evasions, a lifelong bond is formed. Haunted by the ghosts of her past, the mistakes she made and the secrets she kept, Lucy disinters her past, trying to make sense of what happened all those years ago in Cairo and the Valley of the Kings. And for the first time in her life, she comes to terms with what happened after Egypt, when Frances needed Lucy most.
About the Author
akaVanessa JamesSally Kinsey-Miles graduated from Girton College, Cambridge (MA in English Literature) She married Christopher Beauman an economist. After graduating, she moved with her husband to the USA, where she lived for three years, first in Washington DC, then New York, and travelled extensively. She began her career as a journalist in America, joining the staff of the newly launched New York magazine, of which she became associate editor, and continued to write for it after her return to England. Interviewed Alan Howard for the Telegraph Magazine in 1970 in an article called 'A Fellow of Most Excellent Fancy'. (Daily Telegraph Supplement, May 29th.) Apparently a very long interview. The following year they met again, and the rest is history. After a long partnership Sally and Alan married in 2004. She has one son, James, and one grandchild.Sally had a distinguished career as a journalist and critic, winning the Catherine Pakenham Award for her writing, and becoming the youngest-ever editor of Queen magazine (now Harper’s & Queen). She has contributed to many leading newspapers and magazines in both the UK and the USA, including the Daily Telegraph ( from 1970-73 and 1976-8 she was Arts Editor of the Sunday Telegraph Magazine), the Sunday Times, Observer, Vogue, the New York Times and the New Yorker. She also wrote nine Mills & Boon romances under the pseudonym Vanessa James, before publishing her block-buster novel Destiny in 1987 under her real name. It was her article about Daphne du Maurier, commissioned by Tina Brown, and published in The New Yorker in November 1993, which first gave her the idea for writing Rebecca de Winter’s version of events at Manderley – an idea that subsequently became the novel, Rebecca’s Tale. In 2000 she was one of the Whitbread Prize judges for the best novel category.
0
0
