The Bookseller's Daughter by Pam Rosenthal

From the Publisher

She Knows His Secret...

For Maire-Laure Vernet, serving as a scullery maid to a bored, aristocratic family isn't without its dangers. Trying to avoid the unwelcome predations of the men and their guests is one. Keeping the china in one piece is another--especially when she finds herself serving Viscomte Joseph d'Auvers-Raimond. Only Marie-Laure knows that Joseph is also a smuggler of forbidden books who'd once fallen ill in her late father's bookshop. That fateful meeting led to an innocent flirtation, fueled by a shared passion for books and ideas, but it had awakened desires that changed Marie-Laure forever.

He Senses Her Desire...

Joseph hasn't forgotten the encounter either. His papers are littered with drafts of an erotic story about a girl who bears a distinct resemblance to the servant spilling his tea. While pleasuring the jaded women of the aristocracy, he'd pictured this girl with the coppery hair and the ink-stained fingers who could indulge both his intellect and his most feverish desires. Now, the only way to save her from becoming his family's plaything is to seduce her first, and the lady seems extremely willing to comply...

All They Can Trust Is Their Passion

In the shadow of the French Revolution, two lovers embark on a seduction that plunges them into the heart of the aristocracy's most vindictive, carnal games, where white-hot desire is exceeded only by deception, betrayal--and murder...

Library Journal

Forced by her father's death to leave their bookstore and the literary life she adores, Marie-Laure shuns a practical but loveless marriage for a position as a scullery maid in an aristocratic household and ends up in a seemingly impossible romantic relationship with a book-smuggling nobleman she had met earlier under very different circumstances. Boldly setting her novel in prerevolutionary France, Rosenthal displays such an elegant style as she interweaves her intense love story with the social and political realities of the time that even readers averse to the historical period will be drawn in. A pair of intriguingly unconventional protagonists, a cadre of uncommon, well-defined secondary characters (both real and fictional), and a creative plot laced with some unexpected twists result in a literate, sensual romance enhanced with just enough historical detail to satisfy without overwhelming the reader. Lively, appealing, and unique-who could ask for anything more. Rosenthal (Almost a Gentleman) lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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