From Publishers Weekly
British novelist-screenwriter Bagshawe (
The Go-To Girl) updates '70s mega-business romance
Scruples with this internationally flavored fantasia on love, lies and shopping. After 13 years of marriage, jewelry magnate Pierre Massot suddenly disappears from his British-born wife Sophie's life. For seven more years, Sophie (née Roberts) stays in Paris raising son Tom and cowering before mother-in-law Katherine until, with her priest's blessing, she has Pierre declared legally dead and starts showing interest in the family business. Naïvely, she allows herself to be taken in personally and professionally by the new CEO, Gregoire Lazard, and finds herself fooled by the grasping overdressed Oklahoma-born PR executive, Judy Dean, who was Pierre's lover until he disappeared. Gradually, Sophie masters retail, the family and even loves again, but not without a lot of hard knocks. Jewels and couture (Sophie's a clothes horse) are described in more detail than the sex, while murder and betrayal in Mother Russia give this story of the rich and glamorous its dark side. But House of Massot shenanigans and the mystery of Pierre's disappearance don't put much rock beneath the glitter.
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Book Description
Crossing decades and continents, "Sparkles" is the totally compelling story of the Massot family. Fabulously wealthy, internationally adored, the Massots own one of the last great aristocratic jewellery firms in Paris. But where is its owner Pierre, missing presumed dead for 15 years? And, what will happen to his beautiful young widow Sophie? The answers lie rooted in the past and form part of the future - in a way no-one could ever have guessed...
