In the tradition of gloriously absorbing, lush, and moving women's
fiction by authors such as Kate Morton, Lucinda Riley, and Joanne Harris
comes Precious Things.
Normandy, France, 1891: a young woman painstakingly sews an intricate
beaded collar to her wedding dress, the night before her marriage to
someone she barely knows. Yet Aimee longs for so much more....
Shanghai, 1926: dancing sensation and wild child Zephyr spies what looks
like a beaded headpiece lying carelessly discarded on a ballroom floor.
She takes it with her to Malaya where she sets her sights on a prize so
out of reach that, in striving for it, she will jeopardise everything
she holds dear....
Precious Things tells the story of a collar--a wonderful, glittering
beaded piece--and its journey through the decades. It's also the story
of Maggie, an auctioneer living in modern-day London, who comes across
the crumpled, neglected collar in a box of old junk, and sets out on an
unexpected mission to discover more about its secret and elusive past.
Maggie has a journey of her own too. Juggling a demanding job, a clingy
young child, and a rebellious stepdaughter, and with her once-solid
marriage foundering under the pressure of a busy life, Maggie has to
find out the hard way that you can't always get what you want... but
sometimes, you're lucky enough to get precisely what you need.
This is a wonderful, absorbing and moving novel about desire, marriage
and family, telling the story about how we so often reach out for the
sparkly, shiny things (and people) we desire, only to realise--in the
nick of time--that the most precious things are the ones we've had with
us all along.
