Deception and Desire - Tapa dura

When Ros Newman's car is found abandoned at her local West Country railway station, the police are not unduly concerned. They believe Ros has merely escaped the pressures of a glamorous but demanding job at the fashion firm Vandina, and the stress of coping with an obsessively jealous ex-husband.

But the current man in Ros's life, Mike Thompson, suspects there is a more sinister explanation, and so does her sister Maggie. She flies home from Corfu, leaving troubles of her own behind, to help Mike in his desperate search.

Mike and Maggie's investigations uncover a story of passion and ambition spanning thirty years, and a web of deception and desire which takes them from Corfu to a North Sea oil rig, and from Vermont, New England to South America. They soon realise, to their horror, it is not only Ros's life which is in danger. . .

Janet Tanner is a prolific and well-loved author and has twice been shortlisted for RNA awards. Many of her novels are multi-generational sagas, and some - in particular the Hillsbridge Quartet - are based on her own working class background in a Somerset mining community. More recently, she has been writing historical and well-received Gothic novels for Severn House - a reviewer for Booklist, a trade publication in the United States, calls her "a master of the Gothic genre". Besides publication in the UK and US, Janet's books have also been translated into dozens of languages and published all over the world. Before turning to novels she was a prolific writer of short stories and serials, with hundreds of stories appearing in various magazines and publications worldwide. Janet lives in Radstock, Somerset.