Romantic Suspense published by Blue Box Press 07 Feb 23
During the Nazi occupation of France, many French people joined the resistance. This is a story of two intrepid women who hid in plain sight and helped hundreds of Jewish families escape the persecution and death that awaited them at Nazi hands. Skillfully blending the past and the present, Ms. Rose takes readers on a spine-tingling journey of murder and revenge. Superb story telling.
Paul Osgood is a lawyer scion of a wealthy family with political aspirations. When he inherits all the contents of his family home, Osgood Manor, he brings in an auction house to appraise the contents and run the auction. From the moment Violene meets Paul, there are sparks between them. As she begins to catalog the manor contents, she comes across a Louis Vuitton trunk that sends out a strange energy that is visible to her psychic senses. She is able to locate a hidden compartment in the trunk, which is full of priceless jewels.
In pursuit of the truth regarding the provenance of the jewels, Violine travels to Paris to research the life of Paul’s aunt who had once owned the trunk. As it turns out, there are others who are also tracking Violene’s movements with malicious intent. As the story unfolds, it’s told between the tale of two friends in the past who lived in Nazi-occupied France and two adversaries in the present who are working for the Midas Group, a group dedicated to recovery and restoration of looted art treasures.
In case the action and adventure inherent in such a mystery is not enough for the reader, the author adds an element of the occult and magic. Love in itself is magic and perhaps Paul and Violene will find their future, as they solve the mysteries that lie behind in an innocuous expensive trunk owned by an American socialite in Nazi France.
The storytelling is superb. I was so caught up in the mystery and the twists and turns that I just could not put the book down, not for food or bodily functions. I love how the author weaves in the historical element into her chilling tales. Can’t wait to see what comes next.
Grade: A
Summary:
A captivating tale of two passionate women separated by decades but united by a shared vision. One, the famous jeweler Suzanne Belperron, fighting to protect her company and rescue the man she loves. The other, a young auctioneer whose exceptional gifts reveal a secret that endangers her very life.
“Only one thing saves you, and that is not losing sight of beauty.”
Paris, 1942. Suzanne Belperron is known as one of the most innovative jewelers of her time. Elsa Schiaparelli and the Duchess of Windsor are just two of her many illustrious clients. What no one knows is that Suzanne and her dear friend, American socialite Dixie Osgood, have been helping transport hundreds of Jewish families out of France since the war began. But now, the war has come to Suzanne’s front door—the Nazis have arrested her business partner and longtime lover, Bernard Herz.
New York, 1986. Violine Duplessi, an appraiser for a boutique auction house, is summoned to visit the home of Paul Osgood, a scholarly lawyer and political candidate who aspires to take over the Senate seat of his recently deceased father. Paul has inherited everything inside Osgood Manor, from the eighteenth-century furniture to the nineteenth-century Limoges china. But a vintage Louis Vuitton trunk is what calls to Violine, with the surprising but undeniable thrum of energy that can only be one thing: the gift passed down to her by La Lune, the sixteenth-century courtesan.
Since childhood, Violine has been able to read an object’s history and learn the secrets of its owners by merely touching it, but she silenced her psychometry when it destroyed her last relationship. Why has it returned now?
While inspecting the trunk, she senses it holds a hidden treasure and finds a hoard of precious jewels that provoke nightmarish visions and raise a multitude of questions. Who owned these pieces? Why were they hidden inside the trunk? Were they stolen? Could their discovery derail Paul’s campaign and their burgeoning attraction to each other?
So begins a search that takes Violine to Paris to work with the Midas Society, a covert international organization whose mission is to return lost and stolen antiques, jewels, and artwork to their original owners. There, Violine will discover both her and Paul’s surprising connections to the trunk—and to Suzanne Belperron, who silently and heroically hid an amazing truth in plain sight.
No excerpt available.
Other books in this series:
