Who were her brother and his wife, really? And why did her brother die with the name George on his lips? Read more Bay’s sister, Janie, forms an unlikely alliance with a reporter to try to uncover the truth, convinced that Bay would never have killed his wife, that it must be a third party, but the more she learns about her brother and his wife, the more everything she thought she knew about them starts to unravel. But then Bayard is found dead with a knife in his chest on the night of their Twelfth Night Ball, Annabelle goes missing, presumed drowned, and the papers go mad. Yes, there are rumors that she’s having an affair with the architect, but rumors are rumors and people will gossip.

'Her best yet.A dark and scintillating tale of betrayal, secrets and a marriage gone wrong that will have readers on the edge of their seats until the final breathtaking twist.'-Pam Jenoff, N ew York Times bestselling author of The Orphan's TaleĪnnabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil live a charmed life in New York: he’s the scion of an old Knickerbocker family, she grew up in a Tudor house in England, they had a fairytale romance in London, they have three-year-old twins on whom they dote, and he’s recreated her family home on the banks of the Hudson and named it Illyria.

Mystery, murder, mistaken identity, romance-Lauren Willig weaves each strand into a page-turning tapestry.'-Sally Koslow, author of The Widow Waltz 'Brings to life old world New York City and London with all the splendor of two of my favorite novels, The Age of Innocence and The Crimson Petal and the White. (Jan.From New York Times bestselling author Lauren Willig comes The English Wife, a scandalous novel set in the Gilded Age full of family secrets, affairs, and even murder. Flashbacks to 1894 London introduce a woman known as Georgie and describe her initial encounter with Bay, interrupting the momentum of Janie’s story line, and awkward prose (“Fragments of poetry danced through her mind like crystal baubles”) is a minus. Determined to exonerate her sibling, Janie turns investigator, finding passion and love along the way. Annabelle’s subsequent disappearance and a tabloid’s instant assertion that Bay murdered her before committing suicide heighten the tragedy of his death. Bay utters the name George before expiring. Her self-pity is quickly superseded by horror after a cousin of hers stumbles on Bay lying on the ground outside the house, bleeding from a dagger wound. Janie Van Duyvil feels insignificant and out-of-place at a fancy Twelfth Night dinner party that her brother, Bay, and his wife, Annabelle, throw at the ancestral family home in Cold Spring, N.Y. Fans of romantic suspense will best appreciate this whodunit set in 1899 from bestseller Willig ( The Ashford Affair).

The english wife lauren willig