Aurora Dryer is the adopted daughter of Lord and Lady Dryer of Alvington Manor. She has fallen for the prospector Rhys Thomas on a short-lived trip to Australia. Her challenge is to persuade her parents to let her follow her heart and return to the gold mining town of Bendigo to see if the magic can be re-captured.
Lucy Seymour, the young widow of murdered Ashleigh Seymour, makes the decision to travel with her small son Frankie to the diamond mines of South Africa to visit her brother-in-law, Rupert. Enticed by the offer of marriage, Lucy knows that she and her son have a long sea voyage and epic trek overland ahead of them, but she wishes to escape her uneventful provincial life with her in-laws.
Both women are yearning for excitement, but their journeys are destined to take different paths to those they had envisaged. Their story will take them to the gold and diamond mines of Australia and South Africa. In the pursuit of love they will face many adventures including a shipwreck, black magic, vendettas, arson, kidnap and extortion.
This fabulous novel, the fifth in the Heart of Stone series by the hugely successful author, Shelagh Mazey, is another belter.
Written in her own inimitable style there is, thank the lord, not only a chapter list in All that Glitters but a cast list, and then a prologue in the form of a letter which fills us in on enough of the journey thus far to save new readers wondering who is what. I do wish that there was this form of catch up in other series. Actually, Mazey uses the letter device to pull threads together from time to time – which works extraordinarily well.
Mazey always works with a large cast of characters, set against evocative sweeping backgrounds, which come alive under her care. Well researched, but never ponderous, this series has an exotic grandeur, the usual imperfect characters and ups and downs, which make life so interesting.
As always, there is a warmth and gentleness in the writing I find seductive. I know, I know, All that Glitters has only just come out – in eBook and paperback, but I am already wondering where Shelagh Mazey will take her characters in the next one. Can’t wait to see.
A triumph.
All that Glitters is available in pb and eBook on Amazon.co.uk