Overview

From the internationally bestselling author of A Woman of Substance A forgotten past hides the key to the future. Meredith Stratton, at forty-four the owner of six elegant international inns, is about to celebrate her daughter’s engagement. At this seemingly happy time in her life she begins to suffer from a strange illness that baffles everyone. Her doctor cannot find a physical cause for her debilitating symptoms, and, desperate for answers, she seeks the help of a psychiatrist. Through therapy Meredith peels back the layers of her life to discover the truth behind her most careful creation – herself. Determined to get well, Meredith traces her roots back to another country where she learns about childhood experiences that dramatically changed her life. What she discovers is not only the key to the past but to her future happiness and fulfilment as a woman. Moving from the Connecticut countryside, the busy streets and suites of London, Paris and New York, to the pastoral beauty of a château in the Loire, Her Own Rules is an exciting and suspenseful novel about secrets, survival, redemption and love.

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9780586217412

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Reviews

'Barbara Taylor Bradford is a wonderful storyteller who can convey the power of love. The warmth and compassion of her tale brought tears to my jaded old eyes.' Sunday Express

Bradford's (Love in Another Town, 1995, etc.) latest romantic heroine swans through her 40's having it all - great kids, a promising relationship simmering, and a tidy business. But gnawing at her psychic innards is a lost childhood. Her journey takes her from shrink to sleuthing before the final celebration. An introductory flash reveals the tot Mari and her beset but adoring mother in their English cottage - a scene that concludes with Marl screaming, Me mam's dead! Back in the present there are the generally serene travels of lovely Meredith Stratton (tall, blond, eyes deep green), mother of Catherine and Jon, amicably divorced from Jon's father, and immensely successful in creating upscale hostelries at home and abroad. (Classy Meredith supplies her inns with such elegant touches as hot-water bottles in silk cases!) Her favorite inn is at Silver Lake in Vermont, where as a teenager she worked with the late innkeepers Jack and Amelia. They adored her baby, Catherine, conceived at Silver Lake. Meredith remembers nothing of her early childhood before the misery of an Australian orphanage and nasty adoptive parents. Now, however, when she visits monastic ruins in northern England, heartstrings to her buried past begin to ping. She suffers weak spells - in spite of an exciting tendre for the French designer Lue, and the happy news of Catherine's engagement. Then, thanks to sessions with a psychiatrist, some thunderclap recalls, and the help of a friend, Meredith's past begins to unroll. The conclusion swells with joyful noises and mega-happiness. This time out, Bradford taps an old scandal involving the transporting of English children, but, still, Meredith's childhood tragedy does seem implausible, and it's not until the hunt for Mari is underway that the tale moves at all. Fans may be assured, though, of lush digs and a Big Tear reunion. Lukewarm romance in one of those silk cases - and always saleable. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

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 worldwide bestseller. Her novels have sold more than eighty-five million copies worldwide in more than ninety countries and forty languages, and ten mini-series and television movies have been made of her books. She lives in New York City with her husband, television producer Robert Bradford.

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