Lovers & Liars

Lovers and Liars is Sally Beauman's sensuous, very contemporary story of public masks and secret lives, of a "perfect" marriage that is not what it seems, and of lovers long separated yet destined to meet, tumultuously, again.

On a frosty January morning soon after the New Year's revels, an exquisitely dressed, beautiful blonde woman sends four identical parcels to four different destinations: Paris, New York, Venice and London. But the lovely messenger is not who she claims to be. Photographer Pascal Lamartine receives his package in Paris: it is a woman's black glove, silky, scented, and disturbing. In London, reporter Gini Hunter, daughter of a famous Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, opens her parcel to find even more threatening contents. And within hours, Gini's enterprising editor assigns both her and Pascal to expose the story of a lifetime; a story so rich, so ripe with potential scandal, that it could make headlines--and ruin lives. For Gini and Pascal must penetrate the perfect facade of John Hawthorne, the charming, charismatic U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, to sift through the layers of ever-shifting truth about his life. The wealthy scion of a famous American family--in short, perfect presidential material--John Hawthorne appears to have thrown away a promising political career to take a diplomatic post. Why? His wife, Lise, a legendary beauty, is a master at seducing the media; her delicate features are a constant presence on the society pages for her charity work, her skills as a hostess, and her unrelenting chic. Yet the exhaustive, adoring coverage has left the real woman mysteriously opaque. And now, unbelievably, she seems to be the source of certain whisperings about her husband. But beyond the sensational story they are about to unmask--a black-widow web of deceit, betrayal, and dark desires more complex and perilous than they could have imagined--Gini and Pascal must confront themselves, their past, and their brief, passionate