Danielle Steel is one of the world’s most popular and highly acclaimed authors, with over ninety international bestselling novels in print and more than 600 million copies of her novels sold. She is also the author of His Bright Light, the story of her son Nick Traina's life and death; A Gift of Hope, a memoir of her work with the homeless; and Pure Joy, about the dogs she and her family have loved. 
 
To discover more about Danielle Steel and her books visit her website at www.daniellesteel.com 
 
You can also connect with Danielle on Facebook at www.facebook.com/DanielleSteelOfficial or on Twitter: @daniellesteel

Danielle Steel

PublicationStatus

Brand

Format

AgeRange

Series

Imprint

CategoryLabel

Alex McBride

A respectable solicitor in the town of Hay-on-Wye, harried by his troubled wife, slowly and carefully poisons her to death. Pleased with the results, he sees an opportunity for another quick-fix solution and turns his murderous attentions to his business rival... 
 
Trapped in a marriage of convenience to an aging man almost thirty years her senior, thirty-eight year-old Alma falls in love with seventeen year-old George, when he answers her advertisement for a 'willing lad' to do the housework. It's the perfect set up - a well-disposed husband and a passionate lover - until George destroys it all by trying to get the husband out of the way... 
 
These two classic cases of spousal murder - one chillingly domestic, the other bizarre and touching - took place in 1922 and 1935. In these brilliant reconstructions, they continue to confound our expectations of how murderers are meant to proceed.

Famous Trials: Unwanted Spouses

Jay Rayner

I have been a restaurant critic for over a decade, written reviews of well over 700 establishments, and if there is one thing I have learnt it is that people like reviews of bad restaurants. No, scratch that. They adore them, feast upon them like starving vultures who have spotted fly-blown carrion out in the bush. 
 
They claim otherwise, of course. Readers like to present themselves as private arbiters of taste; as people interested in the good stuff. I'm sure they are. I'm sure they really do care whether the steak was served au point as requested or whether the soufflé had achieved a certain ineffable lightness. And yet, when I compare dinner to bodily fluids, the room to an S &amp; M chamber in Neasden (only without the glamour or class), and the bill to an act of grand larceny, why, then the baying crowd is truly happy. 
 
Don't believe me? Then why, presented with the chance to buy this ebook filled with accounts of twenty restaurants - their chefs, their owners, their poor benighted front of house staff - getting a complete stiffing courtesy of the sort of vitriolic bloody-curdling review which would make the victims call for their mummies, did you seize it with both hands?

My Dining Hell

Twenty Ways To Have a Lousy Night Out

Nineteen year-old Madeleine Smith may have been charged in 1857 with poisoning her lover, Emile L'Angelier, but her real sin was having sex - a lot of sex - out of wedlock. Her mistake was to write him frank and passionate letters, described by the trial judge as 'without any sense of decency', which L'Angelier threatened to send to her father when she cooled on the idea of marriage, having secretly engaged herself to someone else. 
 
Some fifty years later, the trial of Robert Wood, a respectable, hard-working illustrator by day, who frolicked with prostitutes by night, including the unfortunate Emily Dimmock, also hinged on a dangerous correspondence. Dimmock's murderer had evidently ransacked her rooms for a postcard written by Wood. Was there something he was desperate to hide? The author of his trial is certain he was guilty. 
 
But both escaped conviction - in Wood's case, thanks to the defence of the best defence barrister in the land. In Madeleine Smith's, the three judges ruled two-to-one to exclude from evidence L'Angelier's pocket book, which recorded her meetings with him on the day of the murder. These two salacious and controversial trials demonstrate how the dramatic difference between 'guilty' and 'not guilty' can sometimes be decided by a mere scrap of paper.

Famous Trials: Lucky Escapes

Thomas Cream, erstwhile Sunday school teacher and serial poisoner, has an unsettling air and wonky eye. He also happens to be a doctor, which provides him with ample means and an ideal cover for his murderous activities. His victims are vulnerable young women, whose trust he gains with drinks and trips to the music hall, before offering them pills or swigs from a medicine bottle. A few hours later, they are dying in agony. 
 
The Honourable Thomas Ley, meanwhile, has an even better disguise: he's the former Justice Minister for New South Wales and a successful businessman, albeit with a shady past. Rumours abound when a political opponent disappears without trace and a business partner winds up at the bottom of a cliff. 
 
Neither killer can help themselves - and this, in the end, leads to their downfall - and both defy our comprehension. Brilliantly reconstructed here, their trials, in 1892 and 1947, reveal a deeply sinister conundrum: by the time you've discovered the secrets in their heart, it's inevitably much too late.

Showing results for: ‘Danielle Steel’

Filters

Category

Publication Date

Format

Series

Imprint

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter