ARE YOU LISTENING? LETTER FROM A STRANGER - A BARBARA TAYLOR BRADFORD AUDIO BOOK PREVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

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ARE YOU LISTENING? DAY" 

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AUDIO BOOK CHOICE.....

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LETTER FROM A STRANGER

BY BARBARA TAYLOR BRADFORD

ABOUT THE BOOK:

In Letter From a Stranger, Barbara Taylor Bradford delivers a lush and evocative new novel of family secrets and betrayals that stretch from the streets of World War II Berlin to the winding alleys of Istanbul to the present day.

Justine Nolan is a documentary film maker who lost her beloved grandmother a decade ago—the person who was the only source of love and comfort in her life.  Her own mother Deborah had always been distant and uninvolved, following her own agenda in pursuit of her career as an interior designer.  But when Justine inadvertently opens a letter addressed to her mother, she discovers that not only is her grandmother Gabri alive, but that Deborah has deliberately estranged the family from her for all these years.  Justine’s search for her grandmother takes her to Istanbul where she begins to uncover the family’s secrets that stretch all the way back to World War II.  As the layers of deception peel away, Justine begins to understand a woman she never really knew…and she begins to ask questions about the true desires of her own heart. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Barbara Taylor Bradford is the author of 25 bestselling novels, including Playing the Game, Breaking the Rules, and The Ravenscar Dynasty. She was born in Leeds, England, and from an early age, she was a voracious reader: at age 12, she had already read all of Dickens and the Brontë sisters. By the age of twenty, she was an editor and columnist on Fleet Street. She published her first novel, A Woman of Substance, in 1979, and it has become an enduring bestseller.

Barbara Taylor Bradford’s books are published in over 90 countries in 40 languages, with sales figures in excess of 82 million. Ten of her novels have been adapted into television mini-series starring actors including Sir Anthony Hopkins, Liam Neeson, Deborah Kerr and Elizabeth Hurley. She has been inducted into the Writers Hall of Fame of America, and in June of 2007, Barbara was awarded an OBE (Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to Literature.

She lives in New York City with her husband, television producer Robert Bradford, to whom all her novels are dedicated, and their Bichon Frise dogs, who sit under her desk while she writes. 

AN EXCERPT FROM LETTER FROM A STRANGER:

The view from the second-floor terrace was panoramic, and breathtaking. Justine Nolan, who knew it well, was nevertheless startled when she saw it even after a short absence, and today was no exception.
 

She leaned against the white-painted wooden railings, gazing out at the sweeping line of the Litchfield Hills flowing toward the distant horizon. Their thickly wooded slopes rolled down to verdant meadows; beyond them Lake Waramaug, set deeply in the valley, shimmered in the sunlight like a great swathe of fabric cut from cloth of silver. As usual, Justine caught her breath, filled with intense pleasure that she was back at Indian Ridge, the house where she had grown up and spent much of her life.
 

It was a clear bright day, with a blue sky and bountiful clouds, but there was a snap in the wind, a hint of winter still, and it was cold for April.
 

Shivering, Justine wrapped her heavy-knit red jacket around her body as she continued to devour the view … the white clapboard houses, so typical of Connecticut, dotted here and there on some of the meadows, and to her right, set against a stand of dark green trees, three silos and two red barns grouped together in a distant field. They had been there for as long as she could remember, and were a much-loved and familiar sight.

To finish reading this excerpt, visit the Macmillan website HERE.

SOME OTHER BOOKS BY BARBARA TAYLOR BRADFORD:

            

          

            

MY THOUGHTS/REVIEW:

Barbara Taylor Bradford’s LETTER FROM A STRANGER is a tangled web of family secrets and lies. The central character is Justine Nolan, a documentary film producer, who is a twin to brother Richard. He is recently widowed and left with a young daughter to care for. With their mother, Deborah, away, the twins meet at the family summer home in Connecticut. While there, Justine opens a letter to her mother which uncovers a shocking deception and sets the events in motion!

Ten years ago, Justine and Richard were told that their beloved grandmother had died in a plane crash. However, in the letter, they find out she is still alive. Being closer to their grandmother than to their own mother, her loss was devastating. Although they intend to face their mother with the truth, they think it is more important to go find their grandmother first since the letter says she is ill. Written by a best friend of Grandmother, Anita’s plea to reunite Justine and Richard with Gabriele, who is almost 80, sounds urgent. 

Justine travels to Istanbul where Anita’s letter leads her to a former Secret Service Agent there. Michael Dalton now runs an international security company and happens to be Anita’s grandson. When they meet, Michael immediately feels a strong attraction to Justine but is cautious as he wonders if she also feels it. With his help, Justine learns things about her grandmother all the way back to WWII and the Holocaust. She also discovers things that will forever change her and her family. After finding Gabriele, Justine is shocked to uncover how and why the split ten years ago came about and the whole dynamic of the story shifts, dramatically! With these twists and turns, readers will be intrigued as one thing turns out to be another.
 

Barbara Taylor Bradford’s characters are well fleshed out and the setting is described so that it adds much to the story, especially the romantic parts. In LETTER FROM A STRANGER, readers go from Connecticut to Istanbul and from a seemingly selfish mother to a grandmother in Nazi occupied Germany. Bradford gives readers a combination of mystery, family, and love stories in one satisfying read.  Perhaps not my favorite Bradford book, but I still found enjoyment in it and recommend it especially to her devoted fans. 

    GIVEAWAY

   

THANKS TO ESTHER AND THE SUPER

PEOPLE AT MACMILLAN AUDIO BOOKS,

I AM DELIGHTED TO HAVE ONE COPY

OF THIS INTRIGUING AUDIO BOOK

TO GIVE AWAY TO ONE FOLLOWER

 

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GIVEAWAY ENDS AT
6 PM, EST, MAY 22

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