The Golden Hour
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
From the New York Times bestselling author: a dazzling WWII epic spanning London, New York and the Bahamas and the most infamous couple of the age, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor
The Bahamas, 1941. Newly-widowed Lulu Randolph arrives in Nassau to investigate the Governor and his wife for a New York society magazine whose readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier.
But beneath the glitter of Wallis and Edward’s marriage lies an ugly – and even treasonous – reality. In the middle of it all stands Benedict Thorpe: a handsome scientist of tremendous charm and murky national loyalties. When Nassau’s wealthiest man is murdered in one of the most notorious cases of the century, Lulu embarks on a journey to discover the truth behind the crime.
The stories of two unforgettable women thread together in this extraordinary epic of sacrifice, human love and human courage, set against a shocking true crime… and the rise and fall of a legendary royal couple.
Reviews
Praise for Beatriz Williams:
‘A world filled with elegance, charm, and bygone manners … No-one does it better than Beatriz' Jane Green
‘Full of wit, romance, and surprising twists’ Popsugar
‘Definitely worth squeezing into your hand luggage’ RED
‘Summer of 1938: A scandalous love triangle and a famous hurricane converge… a perfect storm.’ GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
‘A fantastic summer read’ HELLO
‘Delightful and rewarding from an author to watch’ WE LOVE THIS BOOK
‘Williams' historical masterpiece is an all-encompassing, period-perfect read.’ RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!)
‘[A] fast-paced love story…the scorching sun illuminates a friend’s betrayal and reignites a romance’ O, The Oprah Magazine
‘A candidate for this year's best beach read – the period story of a derailed love affair seen through a sequence of summers’ Kirkus Book Reviews
About the author
A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia, Beatriz Williams spent several years in New York and London hiding her early attempts at fiction, first on company laptops as a communications strategy consultant, and then as an at-home producer of small persons, before her career as a writer took off. She lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The stories of two remarkable women a generation apart are cleverly intertwined in Williams's sweeping family saga. In 1941, Lulu Randolph, a 25-year-old widowed American journalist, is in Nassau, Bahamas, to write society articles about the duke and duchess of Windsor, Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. The duke as governor of this island paradise with a dark side and the duchess are portrayed as sometimes helping, but often contributing to, its problems of social inequality, racial tension, and corruption; they could also be complicit in the murder of gold mine owner Harry Oakes, and there are whispers of their Nazi sympathies. As Lulu's royal access leads her deeper into Nassau's shady political world and into a murky letter-passing operation with the duke and duchess, she falls in love with Benedict Thorpe, an English botanist with a mysterious background, who is captured by the Nazis in Europe. In the second story line, set in 1900, young German baroness Elfriede von Kleist suffers from postpartum depression; her sister-in-law banishes her to a Swiss clinic. She falls in love with an English patient, Wilfred Thorpe; their relationship takes many twists and turns as a result of Wilfred's military career, Elfriede's husband's betrayal, and two tragic deaths. Past and present come together when a complicated family history becomes known to all. Williams (The Summer Wives) illuminates the story with exotic locales and bygone ambience, and seduces with the irresistible Windsors. Readers will appreciate the wartime espionage that keeps the suspense high.
