The Midnight Rose / Lucinda Riley

X

Spanning four generations, The Midnight Rose sweeps from the glittering palaces of the great Maharashtra of India to the majestic stately homes of England, and follows the extraordinary life Anahita Chavan, from 1911 to the present day...
In the heyday of the British Raj, eleven-year-old Anahita, from a noble but impoverished family, forms a lifelong friendship with the headstrong princess Indira, the privilege daughter, the privileged daughter of rich Indian royalty. Becoming the princess's official companion, Anahita accomplished her friend to England just before the outbreak of the Great War. There, Anahita meets the young Donald Astbury-reluctant heir to the magnificent, remote, Astbury Estate-and his scheming mother.
Eighty years later, Rebecca Bradley, a young America film star, has the world at her feet. But when her turbulent relationship with her equally famous boyfriend takes an unexpected turn, she's relieved that her latest role, playing a 1920's debutante, will take away from the glare of publicity to the wilds of Dartmoor in England . Shortly after filming begins at the now-crumbling Astbury Hall, Ari Malik, Anahita's great-grandson, arrives unexpectedly, on a quest to uncover his family's past. What he and Rebecca discover begins begins to unravel the dark secrets that haunt the Astbury dynasty.