Today I have a great Summer Read for you, Island of Secrets. You can sample it by reading an extract. First, here's a little about the book:
Set in the exotic city of Havana on the cusp of revolution, an
English woman discovers mystery, romance and scandal in the atmospheric
new novel by Rachel Rhys.
1957: Iris Bailey is bored to death of
working in the typing pool and living with her parents in Hemel
Hempstead. A gifted portraitist with a talent for sketching party
guests, she dreams of becoming an artist. So she can’t believe her luck
when socialite Nell Hardman invites her to Havana to draw at the wedding
of her Hollywood director father.
Far from home, she quickly
realizes the cocktails, tropical scents and azure skies mask a darker
reality. As Cuba teeters on the edge of revolution and Iris’s heart
melts for troubled photographer Joe, she discovers someone in the
charismatic Hardman family is hiding a terrible secret. Can she uncover
the ugly truth behind the glamour and the dazzle before all their lives
are torn apart?
This atmospheric
new novel by Rachel Rhys is ideal for fans of DINAH JEFFRIES, LUCINDA RILEY and
SANTA MONTEFIORE
What has been said so far?
'Intoxicating' SANTA MONTEFIORE
'Transporting' SUNDAY TIMES
'A fabulous summer read' DAILY EXPRESS
'Escapist fun' SUNDAY EXPRESS
'Delicious' SARRA MANNING
Extract- Chapter 2
It hits her the second she exits the plane. A solid wall of
damp heat that sticks Iris’s clothes to her skin.
Rancho-Boyeros airport is a long, low-slung building and
Iris is thrilled by the sight of palm trees shimmering through a heat haze in
the distance as she crosses the tarmac. Already the regimented line of oaks and
elms that border the little park she crosses on her way to Hemel Hempstead
station seems like a long-distant dream. She had left London the day before –
or the one before that. It is all such a blur. There was that first flight to
Amsterdam, before the longer one to Montreal, her heart thundering in her chest
like a runaway horse as the plane tilted up from the runway. While the
impossibly glamorous air hostesses patrolled the aisles, topping up glasses of
wine and Scotch and lighting cigarettes, Iris had wrestled with remorse for her
impatience when saying goodbye to her parents and Peter, excitement at leaving
leading her to skate over the way her mother’s left hand, tiny in its white
glove, fluttered at her throat, even while her right clutched tight to the
handbag Iris knew would contain the little bottle of Equanil she never went
anywhere without, and how the groove in the centre of her father’s forehead,
down which, when she was younger, he would let her roll a shilling, appeared
horribly pronounced in the sickly light of the airport terminal. Peter had
pulled her roughly aside. ‘Say you’ll always be my girl,’ he’d whispered. ‘Let
go, that hurts,’ she’d said, trying to pull away, but Peter’s fingers were
digging into the soft skin of her inner wrist. ‘Not until I hear you say it.’
His face had darkened and, though Iris tried to tell herself it was romantic
that he felt so strongly, she found his intensity unnerving. ‘I’ll always be
your girl,’ she’d repeated woodenly.
MISS IRIS
The sign is held by a young man wearing a smart cap and a
dark uniform, though when Iris gets closer she notices that his shoes, for all
they are polished to a dazzling shine, are worn at the heel. He straightens
when she approaches, his eyes sliding down and up her like a slow- moving
elevator. But when he speaks, he is deferential enough.
‘Miss Iris?’ Meeseerees. ‘I am Raúl. You come with me.’
The car is black, with a rounded bonnet that rises up like
the hump of a whale. Despite her crumpled green dress and her hair, which is
already wilting in the heat, making a mockery of the sleepless night she
endured before leaving England with sixteen small, tight rollers jabbing into
her skull, Iris is conscious of Raúl’s unabashedly appreciative gaze as he
holds the door open. As she settles herself into the back seat, there is a
moment when anxiety about being here on her own, so far from home, gets the
better of her and she wonders if this might be the last time she is seen alive,
even catches the eye of a passing schoolgirl in the hope she might imprint her
face on the girl’s memory.
On the move, Iris starts to unwind her window, but Raúl
waggles his finger, pointing to a control on the walnut dashboard. And soon,
blissfully cool air is blowing through the car. It is Iris’s first experience
of air conditioning and instantly she loves it, as the sweat dries on her skin
and actual goosebumps rise up on her arms. She stares through the window. The
city begins almost as the airport ends, the roads wider than back home, teeming
with giant cars like the one she is in right now but in bright jewel colours –
blue and red and green and orange. Here are gleaming, palmshaded pathways in
between the lanes of traffic, along which smartly dressed women push prams out
of the harsh glare of the sun, and a railway running parallel to the road.
There are grand stone buildings with flights of steps leading to pillared
porticos, and in the distance tall buildings and cranes strung across the
horizon. True, she spots a couple of matted- haired men dressed in little
more than rags, with that telltale blank stare of the
hopeless poor, and once she glimpses, off down a side street pitted with
potholes and running with muddy water, a jumble of what look like crude timber
shacks. But mostly her impression is of a smart metropolis with its own
heartbeat, worlds away from the one she has left behind.
How has she arrived here? It seems obvious to her now, in
her exhausted state, that a mistake has been made. This is not, as her father
has been at pains to point out, what people like them do. Now, when she tries
to think of how she met Nell Hardman, it seems so unlikely, as if she must have
dreamt it.
About the Author
RACHEL RHYS is the pen-name of a much-loved psychological suspense
author. Fatal Inheritance is her second novel under this name. Her debut
Dangerous Crossing a Richard and Judy bookclub pick, was published
around the world. Rachel Rhys lives in North London with her family.
You can follow Rachel here:
Thanks to Rachel Rhys, Black Swan and Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for tne extract and a place on the tour.
Check out the rest of the tour!
Thanks for supporting the blog tour Pam xx
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