One of the hardest parts of authordom is waiting the months and months (and sometimes years) to share what you’ve written.  Which is why I’m so excited to share with you the first two chapters of my upcoming book, The Summer Country!

You can find the first two chapters, beautifully formatted by my publisher, here.

I can’t wait to hear what you think!

Here’s the official blurb:

The New York Times bestselling historical novelist delivers her biggest, boldest, and most ambitious novel yet—a sweeping Victorian epic of lost love, lies, jealousy, and rebellion set in colonial Barbados.

Barbados, 1854.  Emily Dawson has always been the poor cousin in a prosperous English merchant clan—merely a vicar’s daughter, and a reform-minded vicar’s daughter, at that. Everyone knows that the family’s lucrative shipping business will go to her cousin, Adam, one day. But when her grandfather dies, Emily receives an unexpected inheiritance: Peverills, a sugar plantation in Barbados—a plantation her grandfather never told anyone he owned.

When Emily accompanies her cousin and his new wife to Barbados, she finds Peverills a burnt-out shell, reduced to ruins in 1816, when a rising of enslaved people sent the island up in flames. Rumors swirl around the derelict plantation; people whisper of ghosts.

Why would her practical-minded grandfather leave her a property in ruins?  Why are the neighboring plantation owners, the Davenants, so eager to acquire Peverills? The answer lies in the past– a tangled history of deceit, greed, clandestine love, heartbreaking betrayal, and a bold bid for freedom.

A brilliant multigenerational saga in the tradition of The Thorn Birds and North and South, The Summer Country will beguile readers with its rendering of family, tragedy, and the endurance of hope against all odds.

Oh, and just in case you missed it, my publisher is also currently running a book club sweepstakes.  If you’re in a book club (or would like to be), you could win eight copies of The Summer Country plus a phone-in with the author (that’s me).  The sweepstakes closes on Tuesday, April 30th.  You can enter here.