From the author of the Seven Sisters series, The Angel Tree is Lucinda Riley's compelling mystery of family secrets and forgotten pasts on the sweeping pastures of south-east Wales.
Read by the award-winning actor Juliet Stevenson (Truly, Madly, Deeply)
'Sweeping, absorbing, beautifully written and utterly compelling' – Lancashire Evening Post
Thirty years have passed since Greta left Marchmont Hall, a grand and beautiful house nestled in the hills of rural Monmouthshire. But, after a tragic accident, more than two decades of her life have disappeared from memory. When she returns to the Hall for Christmas, she has no recollection of her past there.
Then, during a walk through the wintry landscape, she stumbles across a grave in the woods. Though the inscription is weathered, the headstone still tells her: a little boy is buried here.
The discovery strikes a chord in Greta's mind, igniting a quest to recover her lost memories. A quest that will take her deeper into her own life, and that of her daughter . . .
Praise for Lucinda Riley:
'A masterclass in beautiful writing' – The Sun
'Captivating . . . poignant yet uplifting' – Woman's Own
'Heart-wrenching, uplifting and utterly enthralling' – Lucy Foley, author of The Hunting Party
A version of this story has previously been published under the title Not Quite an Angel, under the name Lucinda Edmonds – now extensively rewritten as The Angel Tree. A tale of family secrets and forgotten pasts from the international number one bestselling author of the Seven Sisters series, Lucinda Riley.
Lucinda Riley was born in 1965 in Ireland and, after an early career as an actress in film, theatre and television, wrote her first novel aged twenty-four. Her books have been translated into thirty-seven languages and continue to strike an emotional chord with cultures all around the world. The Seven Sisters series specifically has become a global phenomenon, creating its own genre.
Her books have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Italian Bancarella Prize, the Lovely Books Award in Germany, and the Romantic Novel of the Year Award. In 2020 she received the Dutch Platinum Award for sales over 300,000 copies for a single novel in one year – a prize last won by J. K. Rowling for Harry Potter.
In collaboration with her son Harry Whittaker, she also devised and wrote a series of books for children called The Guardian Angels.
Though she brought up her four children mostly in Norfolk in England, in 2015 she fulfilled her dream of buying a remote farmhouse in West Cork, Ireland, which she always felt was her spiritual home, and indeed this was where her last five books were written.
Lucinda was diagnosed with cancer in 2017 and died on 11 June 2021, surrounded by her family. The Angel Tree packs a real psychological punch, exploring the fall-out from troubled childhoods and how events in the past impact on not just our perception of the world but on how we handle our relationships with other people . . . Sweeping, absorbing, beautifully written and utterly compelling, this is a saga to sit back and savour on long winter nights A brilliant page-turner just soaked in glamour and romance A masterclass in beautiful writing
