The first in the long-awaited new series from the author who invented the epic family dynasty...
THE RAVENSCAR DYNASTY by Barbara Taylor Bradford: A house, a legacy and a dynasty.
On a bitterly cold day in 1904, the Deravenel family's future changes for ever. When Cecily Deravenel tells her 18-year-old son Edward of the death of his father, brother and cousins in a fire, a part of him dies as well.
Edward is comforted by his cousin Neville Watkins, who is suspicious of the deaths. The two men vow to seek the truth, avenge the deaths and take control of the business empire usurped sixty years before. And so begins an epic saga about an astonishing family, set in extraordinary times.
Handsome, charismatic and a notorious womaniser, Edward battles his cousin, Henry Grant, for control of the family empire. Elizabeth Wyland, a young widow and a great beauty, stands by his side, and they are secretly married. She is power hungry, and ambitious. But Edward also has a mistress: Jane Shaw, a constant in his life. And as Elizabeth's jealousy damages their marriage, Edward's only solace is Bess, his brilliant first born.
Edward's position as the glamorous head of the Deravenels is fatally rocked when betrayal comes from within. Soon, catastrophe threatens to destroy the family and the business…Power and money, passion and adultery, ambittion and treachery – all illuminate a dramatic saga set against the backdrop of the Edwardian Era and the Belle Epoque, just before the First World War.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This is a modern novel, told in the modern vernacular, and set in the early part of the 20th Century. However, I have, to a certain extent, based my protagonist Edward Deravenel on the English medieval king, Edward IV. Born Edward Plantagenet, the Earl of March, he was the eldest son of the mighty Duke of York and his Duchess. Edward's father was a prince of the blood and a royal duke, head of the royal house of York, rightful heir to the throne of England.
When Edward's father was killed in the Battle of Sandal Castle in Yorkshire in 1640, during the Wars of the Roses, Edward assumed his father's heredity title and became Duke of York. He continued his father's heredity title and became Duke of York. He continued his father's fight to win back the throne from his cousin, Henry VI, Duke of Lancaster, the Earl of Warwick, later known as the Kingmaker.
The throne of England has been usurped by the House of Lancaster from the House of York some sixty years earl9ier, and it was in 1461 that Edward Plantagenet took that throne back when he defeated Henry VI and became king that same year.
Aside from "borrowing" the exceptional good looks of Edward Plantagenet, and his height of six feet four, unusual for those times, I have used some aspects of his character and personality in the depiction of Edward Deravenel. Significant events in the life of the medieval king are used in a modern form as the basis, in part, of Edward Deravenel's story.
Praise for Barbara Taylor Bradford:
"The storyteller of substance." The Times
"Queen of the genre." Sunday Times
"Few novelists are as consummate as Barbara Taylor Bradford at keeping the reader turning the page. She is one of the world"s best at spinning yarns." Guardian
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