Wideacre

"Wideacre is a shining debut novel that introduces an unforgettable heroine more captivating and strong-willed than Scarlett O'Hara, more alluring than Amber. Beatrice Lacey is a beautiful woman so totally consumed by her obsession with her ancestral home that she risks everything -- reputation, love, honor, and even murder -- to possess it. Beatrice, sensual and infinitely manipulative, schemes and seduces her way toward fulfilling her ambition. As a woman in eighteenth-century England without property rights, Beatrice can only look forward to being exiled from the land she loves to an arranged marriage. But the laws of men and nature mean nothing to her as Beatrice single-mindedly pursues her goal of becoming the true mistress of Wideacre. No one and nothing can stand in her way -- not family ties, not the bonds of marriage, not even the possibility of true love -- as she sets off an inexorable chain of events that will insure her hold on the land. Yet even as Beatrice's scheming seems about to yield up her dream, she is haunted by the one person alive who knows the extent of her plans... and her capacity for evil. Beatrice Lacey is so compellingly drawn that she commands our sympathies even as she weaves her intricate web of destruction. We share her passionate struggle and with it her dawning recognition of the dark side of her obsession. Sumptuously set in Georgian England, Wideacre is intensely gripping, rich in texture and history, full of color and authenticity. Here is a sweeping saga as irresistible in its singular magic as its heroine. This is Philippa Gregory's first novel. She conceived the idea for Wideacre about three years ago while working for her Ph.D. on English novels of the eighteenth century. She is at work on a sequel to Wideacre. She lives in England."