To Be the Best (61 page)

In 1905 a young kitchen maid leaves Fairley Hall. Emma Harte is sixteen, single and pregnant.

By 1968 she is one of the richest women in the world, ruler of a business empire stretching from Yorkshire to the glittering cities of America and the rugged vastness of Australia.

But what is the price she has paid?

A magnificent dynastic saga,
A Woman of Substance
is as impossible to put down as it is to forget. This multi-million copy bestseller is truly a novel of our times.

‘An extravagant, absorbing novel of love, courage, ambition, war, death and passion’
New York Times

‘A spellbinding family saga…A
tour de force’ Annabel

‘A rags-to-riches blockbuster…brilliantly told’

Manchester Evening News

ISBN 0 586 20831 3

Emma Harte was the heroine of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s multi-million copy bestseller,
A Woman of Substance.

Now she is eighty years old and ready to hand over the reins of the vast business empire she has created.

To her favourite grandchild, Paula McGill Fairley, Emma bequeaths her mighty retailing empire with these heartfelt words: ‘I charge you to hold my dream.’

A towering international success and the glorious sequel to
A Woman of Substance,
this is the powerfully moving tale of one woman’s determination to ‘hold the dream’ which was entrusted to her – and in so doing find the happiness and passion which is her legacy.

‘The storyteller of substance’

The Times

‘A must for all Barbara Taylor Bradford fans’

Woman

‘I enjoyed every word’

Daily Express

‘The novel every woman is going to take on holiday’

Daily Mail

ISBN 0 586 05849 4

Sebastian, the fifty-six-year-old patriarch of the Locke clan, is handsome, charismatic, a man of immense charm and intelligence. He heads up the philanthropic Locke Foundation, funded by the vast family fortune built by his forefathers. Committed to relieving the suffering of those in genuine need, Locke travels the globe, personally giving away millions a year to the poor, the sick, and the victims of natural disasters and wars. He is seen as a beacon of light in today’s darkly violent world. That is why the police are so baffled when Sebastian is found dead in mysterious circumstances. Has he been murdered, and if so who would want to kill the world’s greatest philanthropist? Could such an upstanding man have enemies?

Vivienne Trent, an American journalist, met Locke as a child, married him, divorced him, but stayed close to him. Aware that there was another side to this enigmatic man, she sets out to find the truth about his death and about Locke himself.

‘Few novelists are as consummate as Barbara Taylor Bradford at keeping the reader turning the page. She is one of the world’s best at spinning yarns.’

Guardian

ISBN: 0 586 21739 8

Three generations of beautiful women:

Audra, the impoverished children’s nanny from Leeds who sacrificed everything for her only daughter.

Christina, the talented art student who won world renown as a fashion designer – yet who has known pain and heartache.

Kyle, the rebellious young woman who chafes against her mother’s success – and in whom her grandmother’s spirit of duty and sacrifice is reborn.

Act of Will
is the sparkling, compulsive story of their remarkable lives, moving from the bleak Yorkshire Dales, through London, to the glamorous world of New York
haute couture.

‘The fabulous novel from the first lady of fiction’

Woman

‘Pure gold – a runaway bestseller’

Cosmopolitan

‘Another winner from the Yorkshire lass’

Daily Express

ISBN 0 586 05850 8

Mallory Keswick is a woman with the world at her feet. Then out of the blue, that world is shattered by violent tragedy and she loses all that she holds dear.

Torn by grief, Mal knows that she must rebuild her life. She flees to a village on the Yorkshire moors where she learns to draw on the deepest reserves of her spirit, and to look life in the eye once more.

Returning to Connecticut, Mal opens a café and shop selling gourmet food and kitchenware and turns it into a highly successful venture. But there remains in her life an aching void, a grief that no individual, nor her new-found business acumen, can assuage. Then she meets Richard Markson, and once more, Mal’s life has come to a cross-roads. It is he who shows her that she has everything to gain – but only if she has the courage to take it.

Totally absorbing and heartrendingly real,
Everything to Gain
lays bare Mallory’s life to expose powerful feelings that are startlingly familiar, because they are our own.

‘Heart-rending stuff…
Everything to Gain
is truly uplifting’

Today

ISBN: 0 586 21740 1

Barbara Taylor Bradford was born in Leeds, and by the age of twenty was an editor and columnist on Fleet Street. Her first novel,
A Woman of Substance,
became an enduring bestseller and was followed by sixteen others, most recently
The Triumph of Katie Byrne.
Her books have sold more than sixty-one million copies worldwide in more than eighty-nine countries and thirty-nine languages. She lives in New York City with her husband, producer Robert Bradford.

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A WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE

VOICE OF THE HEART

HOLD THE DREAM

ACT OF WILL

THE WOMEN IN HIS LIFE

REMEMBER

ANGEL

EVERYTHING TO GAIN

DANGEROUS TO KNOW

LOVE IN ANOTHER TOWN

HER OWN RULES

A SECRET AFFAIR

POWER OF A WOMAN

A SUDDEN CHANGE OF HEART

WHERE YOU BELONG

THE TRIUMPH OF KATIE BYRNE

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