num_pages: 480
description: The New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives and A Certain Age creates a dazzling epic of World War II-era Nassaua hotbed of spies traitors and the most infamous couple of the age the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.The Bahamas 1941. Newly-widowed Leonora Lulu Randolph arrives in Nassau to investigate the Governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier. What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires?Or so Lulu imagines. But as she infiltrates the Duke and Duchesss social circle and the powerful cabal that controls the islands political and financial affairs she uncovers evidence that beneath the glister of Wallis and Edwards marriage lies an uglyand even treasonousreality. In fact Windsor-era Nassau seethes with spies financial swindles and racial tension and in the middle of it all stands Benedict Thorpe: a scientist of tremendous charm and murky national loyalties. Inevitably the willful and wounded Lulu falls in love.Then Nassaus wealthiest man is murdered in one of the most notorious cases of the century and the resulting coverup reeks of royal privilege. Benedict Thorpe disappears without a trace and Lulu embarks on a journey to London and beyond to unpick Thorpes complicated family history: a fateful love affair a wartime tragedy and a mother from whom all joy is stolen.The stories of two unforgettable women thread together in this extraordinary epic of espionage sacrifice human love and human courage set against a shocking true crime . . . and the rise and fall of a legendary royal couple.
language: English
title: The Golden Hour
publisher: William Morrow