A Hollywood actress known for her beauty flees to a secluded mountain cabin in North Carolina after being severely scarred in a car accident. There she finds unexpected love and a new life with a man who lost his family in 9-11.

In a spellbinding blend of suspense and human drama, Danielle Steel tells a powerful and unusual story of one woman’s journey from darkness into light, as she fights to escape a mesmerizing sociopath who holds her in his thrall….

Hope Dunne has carved out a name for herself as a top photographer, known the joys of marriage and motherhood, and the heartbreak of loss. In her chic SoHo loft, Hope is content with her life, finding serenity and beauty through the lens of her camera. She isn’t looking for a man or excitement. But these things find her when she accepts a last- minute assignment to fly to London at Christmas and photograph one of the world’s most celebrated writers—an Irish-American author known for novels of thrilling literary darkness. <br><br>To Hope’s surprise, Finn O’Neill exudes warmth and a boyish charm. Enormously successful, he is a perfect counterpoint to Hope’s quiet, steady grace—and he’s taken instantly by her. He courts her as no one ever has before, whisking her away to his palatial, isolated Irish estate.

Hope finds it all, and him, irresistible. Finn’s magnetism and brilliance are undeniable. But soon cracks begin to appear in his stories: gaps in his history, a few innocent lies, and bouts of jealousy unnerve her. Suddenly Hope is both in love and suspicious, caring and deeply in doubt, and ultimately frightened of the man she loves. Alone, thousands of miles from home, her mind is reeling. Is she just being paranoid? How many lies has he told? Are there more secrets to come? Is it possible that this adoring, attentive man—like the characters in his novels—is hiding something even worse? The spell cast by a brilliant sociopath has her trapped in his web, too confused and dazzled to escape as he continues to tighten his grip on her.

With razor-sharp insight, Danielle Steel delivers an unforgettable tale of danger and obsessive love. Fearlessly telling the truth, refusing to look away, Steel proves once again that as an American storyteller she has no peer when she explores the dark secrets that sometimes lurk just below the surface of ordinary lives, writing about men and women and their courage to prevail, in this case, even in the face of evil.

Danielle Steel celebrates families of every stripe in her compelling new novel—a tale of three very different couples who struggle and survive, love, laugh, and learn to take life…<br><br>Coco Barrington was born into a legendary Hollywood family, her last name loaded with expectations. Her mother is a mega-bestselling author who writes under the name of Florence Flowers—and her sister, Jane, is one of Hollywood’s top producers. They’re not your typical family by any means.…Jane has lived with her partner, Liz, for ten years, in a solid, loving relationship. Florence, widowed but still radiant, has just begun a secret romance with a man twenty-four years her junior. And Coco, a law school dropout and the family black sheep, works as a dog walker, having fled life in the spotlight for the artsy northern California beach town of Bolinas.<br><br>But when Coco reluctantly agrees to dog-sit in Jane’s luxurious home, she soon discovers how much things can change in just a matter of days.…It turns out Jane’s house comes complete with an unexpected houseguest: Leslie Baxter, a dashing but down-to-earth British actor who’s fleeing a psycho ex-girlfriend. Their worlds couldn’t be more different. The attraction couldn’t be more immediate. <br><br>Suddenly Coco is seeing things differently: Leslie is not just a celebrity, he’s a single dad to an adorable six-year-old girl. Her mother is not just a self-centered walking advertisement for great cosmetic surgery, she’s a woman in love, with vulnerability and new insight. And Jane and Liz are about to take the bravest plunge of all—into parenthood. As Coco contemplates a future with one of Hollywood’s hottest stars, as her mother and sister settle into their lives, old wounds are healed and new familes are formed—some traditional, some not so traditional, but all bonded by love.

With wit and intelligence, Danielle Steel’s new novel explores love in all its guises, taking us into the lives of three unusual but wonderfully<i> real couples. Funny, sexy, and wise, <b>One Day at a Time is at once moving, thought provoking, and utterly impossible to put down.

A fair-haired beauty at 19, Lady Mairi is heiress apparent to her father Lord Dunwythie's rich barony. He has carefully taught her how to manage their estates, but a feud between his clan and the Maxwell clan is brewing as the two families edge toward a clan war - their dispute over money owed. Mairi's father believes he owes nothing, and of course Mairi sides with him.

When the impulsive and blue-eyed Rob Maxwell chances to meet Mairi in a barley field, they feel instant attraction, despite their families' antagonisms. Knowing he must put his clan first, Rob enacts a plan to force Dunwythie to pay his debt: Rob kidnaps Mairi, making the abduction appear the work of a stranger; then he and his sheriff-brother offer to help Dunwythis rescue his daughter IF, and only if, he will pay them the monies due. Yet after Rob captures Mairi's body, she captures his heart. When Dunwythie summons the aid of the most powerful clan in all Scotland (the Douglases), clan-tensions rise to a fever pitch. Love takes its own feverish course, as Mairi and Rob join forces to prevent a clash between hot-headed clans, and to protect their budding love.

<B>From the New York Times bestselling author-the fourth passionate romance in the Border Chronicles series.

Lady Cicely Bowen, daughter of the Earl of Leighton, is sent away by her father when her jealous stepmother threatens her safety. Soon the exiled Cicely becomes best friends with Lady Joan Beaufort, the king's cousin-and when Joan is married to King James I of Scotland she chooses Cicely as one of the ladies accompany her north...

At the Scot's court Cicely finds herself pursued by two men-elegant Andrew Gordon, the laird of Fairlee, and Ian Douglas, the laird of Glengorm, a rough-spoken border lord. When Ian kidnaps Cicely just as Andrew is about to propose, the royal court is sent into an uproar. The queen is demanding the return of her friend and the Gordons are threatening to set the border on fire. But the border lord is difficult to tame-and the lady's heart is even harder to claim.

Former FBI agent Sam Delvecchio brings the keen skills of a profiler to his new position as a Mercy Street Foundation operative–and not a moment too soon. His first assignment, the cold-case murder of a local soup kitchen volunteer, has all the telltale signs of a serial killer’s work. That grim suspicion is confirmed when FBI agent Fiona Summers shares the details of two other killings with eerie similarities to Sam’s case: The bodies in all three cases have been carefully posed. And when a fourth victim is discovered, the two investigators realize they’re pursuing the same twisted quarry.<br><br>Local parish priest Kevin Burch, Mercy Street founder Robert Magellan’s cousin, recognizes the posings for what they are: The killer is staging the church’s seven Acts of Mercy (“Feed the hungry, clothe the naked . . .”) with the bodies of his victims. But as Sam and Fiona race to prevent the final three murders, taunting messages from their target lead to the most chilling realization of all.

After Ann Nolan, a California beat cop, adopts the daughter of a notorious drug dealer, the ruthless father vows to take back his only child. In response, Ann flees across the country, changes her name, and starts a new life as an investigator for the Mercy Street Foundation, the billionaire-endowed organization dedicated to finding missing persons. As Emme Caldwell, she takes the lead on the Foundation's first case: Nineteen-year-old Belinda Hudson disappeared from her sorority house leaving behind only one cryptic clue. Retracing the vanished student's steps leads Emme to Heaven's Gate, a fertility clinic, and the mysterious Donor 1735.

Belinda's legal guardian, Nick Perone, is determined to shadow Emme's every move as she searches for his niece. But the closer Emme gets to Donor 1735 and the chilling truth, the more apparent it becomes that she's escaped one dangerous man only to run head-on into another-one who's far more determined and every bit as deadly.

American travel expert Kiera Morissey is adept at getting in and out of tight spots. But when a deathbed promise brings Kiera back to Draycott Abbey, she meets rugged Scotsman Calan MacKay, and her life is changed forever. For fifteen years, changed by turns to a swift creature of night, Calan has used his deadly strength and speed to protect. But he wakes with bruises on his body and blood on his hands. And Kiera may be the key to getting his life back.<P>Calan stirs emotions in Kiera that she's never felt before. Getting in and out may be her skill, yet she finds it impossible to leave the abbey until she's unraveled its mysteries, and Calan's dark secret. But will the shadows from the past and an ancient vow of evil threaten the future they may have together?

New York Times bestselling author Mariah Stewart crafts compelling stories of romantic suspense, full of richly imagined characters, dazzling plot twists, and breathless action that keeps the pages turning. Now Stewart begins a thrilling new series–with a novel that proves to be her biggest and boldest yet.

On a balmy spring evening, four high school seniors–three boys and a girl–enter a park in the small Pennsylvania city of Conroy. The next morning, two of the boys are found shot to death, and the girl and the third boy are gone. After three weeks with no leads and no sign of either of the two missing teenagers, the chief of police begins to wonder if they too were victims. But with no other suspects, the authorities conclude that one of these kids was the shooter.<br><br>The missing boy’s grandmother, a secretary at the local parish church, maintains his innocence. On her behalf, the parish priest, Father Kevin Burch, hires former detective Mallory Russo as a private investigator to figure out what happened in the park that night. Mallory had ended her nine-year stint with the Conroy police force some time ago after becoming a target of a smear campaign. Now a true-crime author, Mallory is surprised to receive the priest’s offer–and highly intrigued by the case. She can’t help but accept the challenge–especially when she learns that her investigation will be financed by Father Burch’s cousin the reclusive billionaire Robert Magellan, a man whose own wife and infant son disappeared without a trace a year ago, a man who understands the heartache of not knowing what happened to a loved one.

Detective Charlie Wanamaker is facing another sort of tragedy. He fled Conroy years ago with no plans to return to what he considered a dying factory town–until a family emergency brought him back. Finding the situation much worse than he’d thought, he trades his job as a big-city detective for one with the Conroy police department. Assigned to the park shooting case, Charlie quickly realizes that the initial investigation left a lot of questions unanswered. Unofficially, he teams up with Mallory to uncover the truth and find the two kids, dead or alive. What Charlie and Mallory discover will take them down a twisted path that leads to an old unsolved murder–and justice for a killer with a heart of stone.

Mercy Street is tautly paced, resonant with emotion, and relentlessly gripping. It showcases Mariah Stewart at her most brilliant, as she ratchets up the suspense to new levels of excitement.


Praise for Mariah Stewart<br><br>“Mariah Stewart is one to watch and savor for a long time.”
–The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Stewart can always be counted on to write an exciting romantic suspense thriller.”
–TheBestReviews.com


From the Hardcover edition.