Inheritance

At Edgerton, their magnificent estate, the Chandlers seem to lead a charmed life. Surrounded by servants and cushioned by great wealth, they cling fiercely to the trappings of aristocracy and privilege in England of the Fifties and Sixties. Stunningly attractive eighteen-year-old Alice is marrying the heir to another great house while her more intellectual sister Eve has won a place at Oxford University. All is picture perfect. They are happy, revered and very, very rich. But all is not what it seems. As the day of her nuptials approaches, Alice is engaged in a secret liaison with a fatally handsome but wholly unsuitable lover. Her father is a compulsive philanderer whose chronic infidelity ultimately pushes his wife Felicity into the arms of another man. And Eve's academic future is about to be brutally curtailed by a cruel act of betrayal. Thirty years later, Felicity remembers that long ago wedding day when all of their lives changed forever. Wonderfully sympathetic, funny and beguiling, THE INHERITANCE is the story of an unusual family and the very unexpected ways in which fate sometimes works. Intensely human and brilliantly drawn, it will shock, delight and completely seduce you.Dilke, Annabel is the author of 'Inheritance ', published 2005 under ISBN 9780312334772 and ISBN 031233477X.