Susan W. (Suz) reviewed on + 721 more book reviews
From the dust jacket: "For Gaby Cocroft of Wadsworth, Ohio, the world is small-a cocoon of home and family-until the day her husband leaves and she is suddenly alone, without money, without work, without love. Summoning the courage to begin again, she comes to New York-only to discover that for a woman like her, the doors of the city remain firmly closed.
It is then, in a moment of desperate inspiration, that Gaby Cocroft becomes Gabrielle Didier. For cloaked in a borrowed identity, even a housewife from Ohio can be transfomed into a woman of mystery. It is a small lie. But, as Gaby will learn, even small secrets can take on a life of their own...
As Gabrielle Didier, Gaby drawn by a chance encounter, enters a world of breathtaking riches-and heart-stopping risk. For here, beneath the glamour of New York's fabled January Antiques Fair, the glittering exhibitions at London's Grosvenor House, the society soirees, and the suspense-filled auctions, as the dealers who will do anything to gain a coveted piece-or to destroy a competitor's reputation. Here are two historic auction houses-Lafitte et Fils and Castleton's-whose past alliance has turned to a consuming rivalry. Here is the corrosive struggle between brother and sister to gain control of Castleton's, a struggle in which Gaby will become inextricably ensnared.
Here, too, threaded tantalizingly through a sumptuously patterned novel, is the story of the search for a legendary tapestry-a magnificent and priceless model of the medieval weaver's art, long thought destroyed-and of those who will stop at nothing to find and possess it. Above all, here is Maximilian Richard, a man as exciting as he is mysterious, a man Gaby knows may not be what he seems, even as she surrenders to his irresistible charm."
It is then, in a moment of desperate inspiration, that Gaby Cocroft becomes Gabrielle Didier. For cloaked in a borrowed identity, even a housewife from Ohio can be transfomed into a woman of mystery. It is a small lie. But, as Gaby will learn, even small secrets can take on a life of their own...
As Gabrielle Didier, Gaby drawn by a chance encounter, enters a world of breathtaking riches-and heart-stopping risk. For here, beneath the glamour of New York's fabled January Antiques Fair, the glittering exhibitions at London's Grosvenor House, the society soirees, and the suspense-filled auctions, as the dealers who will do anything to gain a coveted piece-or to destroy a competitor's reputation. Here are two historic auction houses-Lafitte et Fils and Castleton's-whose past alliance has turned to a consuming rivalry. Here is the corrosive struggle between brother and sister to gain control of Castleton's, a struggle in which Gaby will become inextricably ensnared.
Here, too, threaded tantalizingly through a sumptuously patterned novel, is the story of the search for a legendary tapestry-a magnificent and priceless model of the medieval weaver's art, long thought destroyed-and of those who will stop at nothing to find and possess it. Above all, here is Maximilian Richard, a man as exciting as he is mysterious, a man Gaby knows may not be what he seems, even as she surrenders to his irresistible charm."
