A faded photograph leads a woman to a ruined French castle where she will discover the truth of her own identity . . . and the enduring mystery of love. Traveling to France on business, Alexandra Dawson has decided to seize the opportunity to explore a mysterious piece of her own heritage—a half-burnt picture of a woman who looks eerily like her, taken more than a hundred years ago in a local castle. In the charming rural village of Chandeniers, she discovers something else too—the gruff, ruggedly good-looking heir of the crumbled chateau. Eric Lagnel is completely uninterested in Alex's queries, until he realizes that she may have stumbled on a way to save the building. Their unlikely partnership is a surprise. But as Alex slowly unravels the secrets of her great-great-grandmother's photograph—and the true history of the chateau—she begins to understand that no one is ever prepared for the ways love can heal old wounds and open the hardest hearts.

A faded photograph will lead one young woman to a ruined French castle where she will discover the truth of her own identity . . . and the enduring mystery of love. Traveling to France on business, Alexandra Dawson has decided to seize the opportunity to explore a mysterious piece of her own heritage—a half-burnt picture of a woman who looks eerily like her, taken more than a hundred years ago in a local castle. In the charming rural village of Chandeniers, she discovers something else too—the gruff, ruggedly good-looking heir of the crumbled chateau. Eric Lagnel is completely uninterested in Alex’s queries, until he realizes that she may have stumbled on a way to save the building. Their unlikely partnership is a surprise. But as Alex slowly unravels the secrets of her great-great-grandmother’s photograph—and the true history of the chateau—she begins to understand that no one is ever prepared for the ways love can heal old wounds and open the hardest hearts.

It is 1948 and a young American couple arrive in France for a holiday, full of anticipation and enthusiasm. But the countryside and people are war-battered, and their reception at the Chateau Beaumesnil is not all the open-hearted Americans could wish for.

Drama Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, from Bram Stoker's novel Characters: 6 male, 2 female 3 Interior Scenes An enormously successful revival of this classic opened on Broadway in 1977 fifty years after the original production. This is one of the great mystery thrillers and is generally considered among the best of its kind. Lucy Seward, whose father is the doctor in charge of an English sanitorium, has been attacked by some mysterious illness. Dr. Van Helsing,

Originally from France, the du Pont family settled in the Brandywine River Valley. Chateau Country is an intimate portrait of the houses built by this Delaware dynasty. Their first dwelling was a modest six-room house just steps from the gunpowder mills that made the du Ponts wealthy. One hundred years later, their largest house had 176 rooms and thirty-six servants on 2,300 acres of land. Since company founder E.I. du Pont built Eleutherian Mills in 1802, almost one hundred houses have been built nearby and occupied by his descendants. Many spectacular estate houses have been razed, but thirty-three du Pont family properties that still exist are explored and accompanied by anecdotes. Some, including Eleutherian Mills, Longwood, Gibraltar, Nemours, and Winterthur, are open to the public; others remain hidden behind stone walls. Chateau Country takes readers inside these houses and describes a way of life that has all but disappeared.

In a busy modern life, meals are often relegated to five- or ten-minute time slots. The French have long been lauded as culinary experts, and the emphasis they place on time spent around the dinner table is yet another secret worth borrowing. Living la vie de château at Château Bosgouet in Normandy, Jane Webster and her Australian family have embraced the traditions of the French table with surprise and delight at each turn, from navigating the market to setting the table to making the most of a vegetable garden, and their adventures are captured here by the sophisticated eye of photographer Robyn Lea.

A courageous young noblewoman risks her life to hide French resistance fighters; seventy years later, her granddaughter visits the family’s abandoned chateau and uncovers shocking secrets from the past. Gisèle Duchant guards a secret that could cost her life. Tunnels snake through the hill under her family’s medieval chateau in Normandy. Now, with Hitler’s army bearing down, her brother and several friends are hiding in the tunnels, resisting the German occupation of France. But when German soldiers take over the family’s château, Gisèle is forced to host them as well—while harboring the resistance fighters right below their feet. Taking in a Jewish friend’s baby, she convinces the Nazis that it is her child, ultimately risking everything for the future of the child. When the German officers begin to suspect her deception, an unlikely hero rescues both her and the child. A present day story weaves through the past one as Chloe Sauver, Gisèle’s granddaughter, arrives in Normandy. After calling off her engagement with a political candidate, Chloe pays a visit to the chateau to escape publicity and work with a documentary filmmaker, Riley, who has uncovered a fascinating story about Jews serving in Hitler’s army. Riley wants to research Chloe’s family history and the lives that were saved in the tunnels under their house in Normandy. Chloe is floored—her family isn’t Jewish, for one thing, and she doesn’t know anything about tunnels or the history of the house. But as she begins to explore the dark and winding passageways beneath the chateau, nothing can prepare her for the shock of what she and Riley discover… With emotion and intrigue, Melanie Dobson brings World War II France to life in this beautiful novel about war, family, sacrifice, and the secrets of the past.

Providing intimate insight into life in a French château, this volume takes readers on an insider’s tour of the Château du Lude, a private residence that features its original decorative interiors. Nestled in the idyllic Loire Valley, the Château du Lude is one of the most historic châteaus in France; Bluebeard besieged the castle on his way to join Joan of Arc’s crusade, and it earned the rare distinction of having survived the French Revolution intact. Today, the Lude is inhabited and impeccably maintained by the Count and Countess Louis-Jean de Nicolay, whose family has owned the property for over 250 years. They invite readers to discover the château’s well-preserved interiors and gardens, which feature a medieval kitchen, an Italian Renaissance studiolo, and exceptional horse stables, offering a glimpse into the lifestyle of the château’s inhabitants, past and present. Newly commissioned photographs offer unprecedented access into the hidden corners of the estate otherwise closed to the general public.

It's 1979 and twenty-one-year-old Linda Kovic needs to learn a language fast in order to fulfill her dream of becoming a flight attendant. Broke yet determined, she chooses French immersion and contracts to become an au pair for a wealthy family in the Loire Valley. Yielding to poor judgment, she lies on her application and claims to speak basic French, confident she'll be forgiven once she arrives at the Chateau de Montclair. As she struggles to adapt to her challenging new environment with the hard-to-please Madame Dubois and her two incomprehensible children, Linda signs up and attends language classes at the local university. When she encounters, Adam, a handsome young student, her life becomes more complicated-much more complicated-adding fuel to her internal battle for independence. French Illusions: My Story as an American Au Pair in the Loire Valley is the first of two books based on the author's diaries.

A bestseller in France and winner of the Prix Renaudot, By a Slow River is a mesmerizing and atmospheric tale of three mysterious deaths in an oddly isolated French village during World War I.The placid daily life of a small town near the front seems impervious to the nearby pounding of artillery fire and the parade of wounded strangers passing through its streets. But the illusion of calm is soon shattered by the deaths of three innocents–the charming new schoolmistress who captures every male heart only to kill herself; an angelic ten-year-old girl who is found strangled; and a local policeman’s cherished wife, who dies alone in labor while her husband is hunting the murderer. Twenty years later, the policeman still struggles to make sense of these tragedies, a struggle that both torments and sustains him. But excavating the town's secret history will bring neither peace to him nor justice to the wicked. From the Trade Paperback edition.