title: The Artist's Daughter
author: O'Grady, Leslie
description: Nora Woburn, daughter of the well-known painter Ivor Stokes, never dreamed what her future held when in 1860 she married the handsome, charming, and seemingly loving Oliver Woburn. Three years, numerous brutal beatings, and a miscarriage later, this spunky young woman, once the special friend of poets and painters like Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris, finds herself lonely, disinherited, and desperate. Pursued by her cruel husband, Nora escapes to Devonshire. There she finds employment at Raven's Chase, the vast estate of Sir Mark Gerrick, a man who seems to be haunted by his past. Her discovery of a long-lost portrait of herself leads her into new and far more serious danger. As Nora begins to learn of the depraved, violent underside of Victorian England's cultured facade, she must brave a deadly conspiracy that threatens to destroy both her and those she loves.