Love in the Dark

Although her vast inheritance seemed a blessing, it has become a curse now that Susanna Laven's mother is determined to marry her against her will to the impoverished Duke of Southampton. What's worse that as her mother repeatedly and cruelly tells her, she is the family's 'ugly duckling' her only attraction is her fortune! Desperate to escape a loveless marriage, she responds to an advertisement for a reader in French and Italian for a temporarily blind gentleman. Meeting the gentleman, a Mr. Dunblane, who is swathed head to toe in bandages after a terrible motor car accident, she finds him rude and short-tempered, but still accepts and soon finds herself on a luxury train speeding across France on its journey to Florence. There Susanna's eyes are opened to the glories of Florence - and love! to She had prayed to God to give her love, and in the blossoming relationship with her blind employer, who himself seems entranced by her, she may have found it. But it's an agony, not a joy - for surely it will end the moment Mr Dunblane's eyes are healed and he sees that she is not the beauty of his mind's eye's vision! Love in the Dark is the story of two people being blind in different ways - and of how love turns an ugly duckling into a swan with her evening knowing!

Barbara Cartland was the world's most prolific novelist who wrote an amazing 723 books in her lifetime, of which no less than 644 were romantic novels with worldwide sales of over 1 billion copies and her books were translated into 36 different languages. As well as romantic novels, she wrote historical biographies, 6 autobiographies, theatrical plays and books of advice on life, love, vitamins and cookery. She wrote her first book at the age of 21 and it was called Jigsaw. It became an immediate bestseller and sold 100,000 copies in hardback in England and all over Europe in translation. Between the ages of 77 and 97 she increased her output and wrote an incredible 400 romances as the demand for her romances was so strong all over the world. She wrote her last book at the age of 97 and it was entitled perhaps prophetically The Way to Heaven. Her books have always been immensely popular in the United States where in 1976 her current books were at numbers 1 & 2 in the B. Dalton bestsellers list, a feat never achieved before or since by any author. Barbara Cartland became a legend in her own lifetime and will be best remembered for her wonderful romantic novels so loved by her millions of readers throughout the world, who have always collected her books to read again and again, especially when they feel miserable or depressed. Her books will always be treasured for their moral message, her pure and innocent heroines, her handsome and dashing heroes, her blissful happy endings and above all for her belief that the power of love is more important than anything else in everyone's life.