Danielle Steel

Steel explores the perils of dating, relationships, and love within the intoxicating, infuriating world of three charming single men, also known as Toxic Bachelors.

It is New Year’s Eve when the storm of the century hits northern California. For Quinn Thompson, what happens in the storm’s wake will bring down a barrier he has built around himself since his wife’s death. For neighbor Maggie Dartman, it will spark friendship at a time when she needs it most. And for Jack Adams, a carpenter who will repair Quinn’s and Maggie’s homes, the storm brings an opportunity: to help two people and to be repaid with the greatest gift of all. Then something extraordinary begins to happen... Maggie, still grieving a loss, slowly comes alive again — and Jack finally shares a painful secret he has hidden for years. But Quinn, a man who has scaled heights of success in business, is now adrift, waiting as builders put the finishing touches on his newest passion, a 180-foot yacht he plans to sail around the world. Looking back at all he missed with his family while he built his empire, Quinn is consumed by guilt, focused only on escaping to the sea. But as his plans near completion, and his friendship with Maggie begins to change, Quinn faces a choice — between a safe haven and an adventure of the heart.

A violent crime brings together four lives in Steel's 60th bestselling novel, the story of a mother's courage, a family's terror, and a triumph of human strength and dignity in the face of overwhelming odds.

In a fresh, funny look at what happens when a woman who has everything finally meets her match, Danielle Steel proves that, in life and love, it's never too late for a second chance.

Against a vivid backdrop of history, Danielle Steel tells a compelling story of love and war, acts of faith and acts of betrayal... and of three generations of women as they journey though years of loss and survival, linked by an indomitable devotion that echoes across time. For the Wittgenstein family, the summer of 1915 was a time of both prosperity and unease, as the guns of war sound in the distance. But for eldest daughter Beata, it was also a summer of awakening. By the glimmering waters of Lake Geneva, the quiet Jewish beauty met a young French officer and fell in love. Knowing that her parents would never accept her marriage to a Catholic, Beata followed her heart anyway. And as the two built a new life together, Beata's past would stay with her in ways she could never have predicted. For as the years pass, and Europe is once again engulfed in war, Beata must watch in horror as Hitler's terror threatens her life and family — even her eighteen-year-old daughter Amadea, who has taken on the vows of a Carmelite nun. For Amadea, the convent is no refuge. As family and friends are swept away without a trace, Amadea is forced into hiding. Thus begins a harrowing journey of survival, as she escapes into the heart of the French Resistance. Here Amadea will find a renewed sense of purpose, taking on the most daring missions behind enemy lines. And it is here, in the darkest moments of fear, that Amadea will feel her mother's loving strength — and that of her mother's mother before her-as the voices of lost loved ones echo powerfully in her heart. And here, amid the fires of war, Amadea will meet an extraordinary man, British secret agent Rupert Montgomery. In Colonel Montgomery, Amadea finds a man who will help her discover her place in an unbreakable chain between generations... and between her lost family and her dreams for the future — a future she is only just beginning to imagine: a future of hope rooted in the rich soil of the past. With the grace of a master storyteller, Danielle Steel breathes life into history, creating a bold, sweeping tale filled with unforgettable characters and breathtaking images — from the elegant rituals of Europe's prewar aristocracy to the brutal desperation of Germany's death camps. Drawing us into a vanished world, Echoes weaves an intricate tapestry of a mother's love, a daughter's courage... and the unwavering faith that sustained them — even in history's darkest hour.

Johnny Peterson could light up a room with a word or a smile. He had a future filled with promise — until he stepped into a car on prom night and, in an instant, it was all taken away. In the months that followed, Johnny's family and his high school sweetheart, Becky, struggle to put together the pieces of their shattered lives. No-one is more devastated than Johnny's mother, Alice, but amid the heartache, something miraculous is about to happen. When a sudden illness sends Alice to hospital, a glorious vision comes to her — there, standing before her, is Johnny himself, gently urging his bewildered mother to be strong for her splintered family. Through a season of hope and healing, Johnny will walk by his mother's side, leading his parents, his girlfriend, his sister and his brother out of their grief. But as Alice is about to discover, Johnny has returned not just to help those he loves, but to uncover a purpose even he cannot comprehend — one that will change them all forever.

One of America's most cherished novelists takes readers on the roller-coaster ride of dating the second time around. Poignant and wickedly funny, «Dating Game» is about tackling life and love with both courage and laughter — told as only Steel can tell it.

Danielle Steel’s 56th bestselling novel is about family and friendship, about one woman’s struggle to break free from the past — and the man who helps her triumph. And most of all, it is about daring to believe in...Answered Prayers. On the outside, Faith Madison is the very picture of a sophisticated New Yorker. Slim, blond, stylish, Faith has a life many would envy. Overcoming a childhood marked by tragedy, married to a successful investment banker and having raised two grown daughters, Faith has enjoyed her role as mother and wife, and the good life that emanates from their bustling Manhattan town house. But every step of the way, Faith has carried within her a secret she could divulge to no one. And with it, she has kept an even more painful secret from herself. For Faith, it is the sudden death of her stepfather — a man who, like her husband, Alex, always remained just beyond her reach — that will touch off a journey of change and revelation. At the funeral, painful memories flood back — and an old friend reenters Faith’s life. Faith is greeting mourners, when she hears a voice behind her and a single word that brings a quick smile to her face: “Fred.” Only one person aside from her older brother, Jack, called her that. Brad Patterson was Jack’s best friend, a long, lanky boy who teased, tormented, and protected Faith when they fancied themselves “The Three Musketeers” as kids. When Jack died years later, Faith and Brad came together again in their common, inconsolable grief, then lost touch once more amid the demands of families and busy lives a continent apart. Now a lawyer in California, Brad has reentered Faith’s life just as she is making a decision that plunges her marriage into crisis. Determined to fulfill a long-held desire for a career of her own, Faith applies to law school against her husband’s wishes, igniting a barrage of anger and recrimination. Faith’s only solace is the correspondence she has begun with Brad, a man trapped in an empty marriage of his own, a friend she once lost and has found again. Soon e-mails are flying between them, bridging three thousand miles, sharing much-needed friendship, support, laughter. And as these two childhood friends rediscover each other, something extraordinary is beginning to happen. In the safety of their friendship, Brad will find the courage to make a decision he should have made years before. And Faith, too, is changing, beginning to believe in herself — and in her right to grab hold of her dreams. Gathering a strength she never knew she had, Faith is finally ready to face the most painful step of all: of sharing the secret that has long been haunting her, and truly opening up her heart for the first time in her life. With unerring insight into the hearts of husbands and wives, lovers and families, Danielle Steel tells a wise and moving story of the secrets that wound and the choices that heal — and of the second chances that come only once in a lifetime.

In her fifty-second bestselling novel, Danielle Steel weaves a compelling story of the power of lies, the misuse of trust — and of one woman's triumph over a devastating betrayal. Marie-Ange Hawkins has the kind of childhood that most people dream of. Freedom, love, security in a beautiful old French château. But when Marie-Ange is just eleven, a tragic accident marks the end of her idyllic life. Orphaned and alone, she is sent to America, to live with her great-aunt on a farm in Iowa. Bitterly resented by the old woman, cut off from everything she has known and loved, Marie-Ange is forced to work tirelessly on the farm, dreaming only of the day she can return to her beloved Château de Marmouton. In Marie-Ange's isolated existence, only the friendship of a local boy, Billy Parker, offers comfort and hope. But her only wish is to gain an education — and escape. Then, just after her twenty-first birthday, an unexpected visitor brings startling news and an extraordinary gift: the freedom to return to France, to Château de Marmouton. When she arrives in France, Marie-Ange learns that the château's new owner is Comte Bernard de Beauchamp, a dashing young widower who invites her into his home, then into his heart. But their magical life together, which soon includes marriage, children, and lavish homes, slowly takes an ominous turn. A mysterious woman tells Marie-Ange a shocking story, a story so chilling she doesn't want to believe it. Not even her dear friend Billy can help her now. He is thousands of miles away. And as the darkness gathers around her, Marie-Ange must find the faith and courage to take one, last desperate step to save her loved ones and herself. Danielle Steel's powerful novel is about being pulled into a place where nothing is what it seems. It is about being seduced and lied to and turned around, and wanting to believe the lies — until the moment comes, in one blinding instant, when survival and salvation depend on a final «Leap of Faith»: the only path to freedom, and life.

Simon Steinberg, a major movie producer, and Blaire Scott, an award-winning television writer, are among the most respected couples in Hollywood. They have defied the cliches, keeping their marriage together for decades. Their children — Samantha, Scott, and Allegra — are successful and happy, but must face challenges we fear for our own children as well. As an attorney for the stars, twenty-nine-year-old Allegra Steinberg is used to negotiating major movie deals, and fielding phone calls at all hours of the day and night. But she has little time for private life — until a chance encounter with a New York writer turns her life upside down. Suddenly, Allegra finds herself planning a wedding at her parents' Bel Air home. As preparations begin for a September ceremony, surprise announcements and ever-increasing anxiety bring out the best and worst in everyone. But as couples in each generation of the Steinberg family struggle with broken vows and new hopes, the real meaning of Allegra's wedding emerges. For the bride, the ceremony is a bridge between her past and her future. For her parents, it is a reminder of the bond that holds them all together. And for both families, it is an opportunity for reconciliation, and new hope. In a compelling portrait of real people on an unreal world, Danielle Steel uses Hollywood as a backdrop to reveal the dreams, the fears, and the expectations of a ceremony that unites us all and changes lives forever...

Life was good for Liz and Jack Sutherland. In 18 years of marriage, they had built a family, a successful law practice, and a happy home on Hope Street. Then, in an instant, it all fell apart. For Jack a five-minute errand ends in tragedy, and suddenly Liz is alone with an unbearable loss.

Everyone in Washington knows Madeleine and Jack Hunter. Maddy is an award-winning TV anchorwoman, and Jack is the head of her network and an adviser to the President on media issues. To the world, theirs is a storybook marriage. But behind the locked doors of their lush Georgetown home, a very different story emerges. For as Maddy’s career soars, a bitter edge of control and jealousy has crept in, so that the woman the nation idolises lives in degradation and fear. The cruelty she experiences at Jack’s hands leaves no bruises, no scars, only the wounds of fear, humiliation and isolation. Maddy’s journey to healing begins when the President’s wife offers her the opportunity to join her newly-formed Commission on Violence against Women. There Maddy hears chilling stories from terrified wives and girlfriends that sound eerily familiar. And there she meets Bill Alexander, a distinguished scholar and diplomat who also works on the commission. Bill suspects that something is terribly wrong in Maddy’s marriage and, as she takes the first steps towards freedom, a remarkable series of events begin to unfold. White House headlines bring the country to a standstill, and a devastating tragedy occurs which forces Maddy to realise just how much she has lost – her confidence, her trust, her self-respect. As her journey comes to a close, she finds a strength she never knew she had…and a gift which will change her life forever.

A story of courage and loss, of the power of the family and the strength of the human soul. Life was good for Liz and Jack Sutherland. In eighteen years of marriage they had built a family, a successful law practice, and a warm happy home near San Francisco, in a house on Hope Street. But one Christmas morning, in the midst of joy and children's laughter, tragedy strikes — and Liz is left alone, facing painful questions in the face of unbearable loss. How can she go on without her husband, her partner, her best friend? The months pass, and Liz finds the strength to return to work and tend to her children. Then a devastating accident sends her oldest son to hospital — and brings a doctor called Bill Webster into her life. As the long days of summer blend into autumn, a new relationship offers new hope. With the anniversary of her husband's death approaching, Liz will face one more crisis before she can look back at a year of mourning and change — and ahead to the beginning of a new life, in the house on Hope Street.

In my eyes she had always been old, always been mine, always been Granny Dan. But in another time, another place, there had been dancing, people, laughter, love... She had had another life before she came to us, long before she came to me... She was the cherished grandmother who sang songs in Russian, loved to roller-skate, and spoke little of her past. But when Granny Dan died, all that remained was a box wrapped in brown paper, tied with string. Inside, an old pair of satin toe shoes, a gold locket, and a stack of letters tied with ribbon. It was her legacy, her secret past, waiting to be discovered by the granddaughter who loved her but never really knew her. It was a story waiting to be told... The year was 1902. A new century was dawning as a motherless young girl arrived at a ballet school in St. Petersburg, Russia, at the age of seven. By age seventeen, Danina Petroskova had become a great ballerina, a favorite of the Czar and Czarina, who welcomed her into the heart of the Imperial family. But events both near and far away shook the ground upon which she danced. A war, an extraordinary man, and a devastating illness altered the course of her life. And when revolution shattered Russia, Danina Petroskova was forced to make a heartbreaking choice—as the world around her was about to change forever. «Granny Dan» is about the magic of history. In it, Danielle Steel reminds us how little we know of those who came before us—and how, if we could only glimpse into their early lives, and see who they once were, there is so much we would understand and learn. For in this extraordinary novel, a simple box, filled with mementos from a grandmother, offers the greatest legacy of all: an unexpected gift of a life transformed, a long-forgotten history of youth and beauty, love and dreams.

To look at one was to see the other. For family, even the girls' own father, it was a constant guessing game. For strangers, the surprise was overwhelming. And for the twins Olivia and Victoria Henderson, two remarkable young women coming of age at the turn of the century, their bond was mysterious, marvelous, and often playful — a secret realm only they inhabited. Olivia and Victoria were the beloved daughters of a man who never fully recovered from his wife's death bearing them in 1893. Shy, serious Olivia, born eleven minutes before her sister, had taken over the role of mother in their lush New York estate, managing not only a household but her rebellious twin's flights of fancy. Free-spirited Victoria wanted to change the world. She embraced the women's suffrage movement and dreamed of sailing to war-torn Europe. Then, in the girls' twenty-first year, as the first world war escalated overseas, a fateful choice changed their lives forever. It began when Victoria's life was about to become a public scandal. It led to a painful decision, and brought handsome lawyer Charles Dawson into the Henderson's life and family. Hand-picked by the twins' father to save his daughter's reputation, Charles was still mourning his wife's death aboard the Titanic, struggling to raise his nine year-old son alone, determined never to lose his heart again. Charles wanted to believe that, for the sake of his son, he could make an unwanted marriage work. But in an act of deception that only Olivia and Victoria could manage, the twins took an irrevocable step, which changed both their lives forever; and took one of the twins to the battlefields of France, the other into a marriage she longed for butcould not have. From Manhattan society to the trenches of war-ravaged France, Mirror Image moves elegantly and dramatically through a rich and troubled era. With startling insight, Danielle Steel explores women's choices: between home and adventure, between the love for family and the passion for a cause, between sacrifice and desire. But at the heart of Mirror Image is a fascinating, realistic portrait of identical twins, two vastly different sisters who lead their lives and follow their destinies against a vivid backdrop of a world at war.

In her 37th bestselling novel, Danielle Steel tells the compelling story of a woman who must struggle to overcome a shattering betrayal, and the cruelest kind of malice. At seventeen, the night of her mother's funeral, Grace Adams is attacked. It is not the first time, and a brutal crime ensues. And to everyone's horror, Grace will not tell the truth. She is a young woman with secrets too horrible to tell, with hurts so deep they may never heal. She is also beautiful enough for men to want her no matter how much she does not want them. Whatever the outcome, Grace Adams will have to live with whatever happened during those terrible years. After a lifetime of being a victim, now she must pay the price for other people's sins. From the depths of an Illinois women's prison to a Chicago modeling agency to a challenging career in New York, Grace must carry the past with her wherever she goes. And in healing her own pain, she reaches out to battered women and children who live a nightmare she knows all too well. When Grace meets Charles Mackenzie, a New York lawyer, she has found a man who wants nothing from her-except to heal her, to hear her secrets, and to give her the family she so desperately wants. But, with happiness finally within her grasp, and precious loved ones to protect, Grace is at her most vulnerable-in danger of losing everything to a vicious tabloid press and an enemy from her past, an enemy bent on malice at all costs. With rare insight and power, Danielle Steel writes this extraordinary woman's story, portraying her struggle to triumph over malice and betrayal, and to transform a lifetime of pain into a blessing for others. Revealing both the stark reality of domestic abuse and the healing power of love, «Malice», is more than superb fiction. It is a piece of life.

Alex had given up all hope of finding the right woman until he saw the beautiful Raphaella — young, wealthy and desperately lonely. Trapped in an empty life by a sense of honour and duty to her elderly husband, she denied herself any right to personal happiness, until she met Alex.

In the turbulent Germany of the 1930s, Kassandra von Gotthard met Dolff Sterne, the man who was to change her life. She was the beautiful wife of a wealthy Berlin banker, he a Jewish writer. Together they shared a love that happens only once in a lifetime, but it was fated to end in tragedy.

»Vanished» tells the story of a man and woman faced with an almost unthinkable tragedy — the mysterious abduction of their son. In the late 1930s, in the shadow of the Lindbergh kidnapping, and as war looms in Europe, Marielle Patterson shares and elegant Manhattan brownstone with her husband, Malcolm, and their little boy, Teddy. Though the couple's lives are filled with secrets, Marielle is a devoted wife and mother, and Malcolm is a man everyone admires. On the eve of Teddy's disappearance, Marielle runs into her first love, American expatriate Charles Delauney. And when Teddy is kidnapped, Charles is first blamed, then arrested. But as the search for Teddy widens, even Marielle is scrutinized by the FBI and special agent John Taylor. Suspicions and accusations mingle with terror and heartbreak as every threat, every failure, every fear, is remembered, examined, explored. During Charles Delauney's trial, a series of revalations begins to unravel the about Marielle, Charles, and Malcolm, uncovering the motives and passions controlling their lives. «Vanished» is a tale of guilt, desire, suspense, and of people drawn inexorably together, seeking the child who... vanished.

To the doctors the woman in the ambulance was just another casualty, just more beautiful than most, more badly hurt. She was Daphne Fields, a famous author whose stories were drawn from her own struggle; to choose between the two men she loved.

For Michael, handsome heir to a business empire, and Nancy, beautiful young orphan, the carefree days of innocence were drawing to an end. That fateful day after graduation, they sealed a bond for the years to come — a vow of love that would have to prove itself in the face of terrible tragedy.

Kate and Tom were the original star-crossed lovers. Kate is a beautiful model; Tom a successful football star at the peak of his career. It seems as though nothing can come between them. Together, they are invincible. But then one day, tragedy strikes… A gunshot ends Tom's career and puts him in a sanatorium — for ever. Kate is left alone in the world with nothing to live for. And she must face her greatest fear of all — the fear.

At 21 Annabelle Driscoll was the acknowledged beauty, but it was her sister Audrey — four years older — who had the spine and spirit. She had talent — a lot of talent — as a photographer; she had the restless urge of a born wanderer. Inevitably it was Annabelle who was the first to marry, leaving Audrey to wonder if life were passing her by. Sometimes she would dream of a man like a her father, someone with adventure in his sould and exotic places in his heart. The men she met in California were dull. Enen in New York they had failed to spark her. Only when she took ship for Europe aboard the Mauretania did she begin to mingle with her own kind. Onle when she boarded the Orient Express did she realise she was beginning a journey that would take her farther that she had ever dreamed possible… depp into China., Tibet, the magic of the Orient and later North Africa and Europe. Her life was never to be the same again.

In the late 1930s in New York, Marielle Patterson shares her life with her husband Malcolm and their little boy Teddy. But their lives are filled with secrets. Haunted by a past she has kept secret even from her husband, Marielle secretly lights a candle each year for a child who died in a tragic accident when he was scarcely more than a baby. Then Marielle runs into her first love, American expatriate Charles Delauney. And when her little Teddy is kidnapped Charles is first blamed, then arrested, as the Pattersons, the New York Police and the FBI turn the country upside down, looking for Teddy. A terrifying court drama seeks to put Charles Delauney behind bars, as a series of revelations begin to unravel the truth about Marielle, Charles, and Malcolm. Piece by piece the uncovering of their pasts creates a complex mosaic of the motives and passions controlling their lives.