The Empty House

Virginia Keile has a secret dream. To have a second chance at loving the tall, handsome Cornish farmer she met - and foolishly lost - the heady summer she was a debutante. Life has taught Virginia a great deal in twenty-seven years - about wedding a titled bachelor picked out by her mother, about a lonely marriage that ended in her husband's accidental death, and about nearly losing her children to her husband's mother and bossy Nanny.

Now she has come back to picturesque Cornwall to rent a battered seaside cottage. For herself and for the children. And to discover if this time she can fill an empty house with love.

Rosamunde Pilcher has had a long and distinguished career as a novelist and a short story writer, but it was her phenomenally successful novel, The Shell Seekers, that captured the hearts of all who read it and won her international recognition as one of the best-loved storytellers of our time. Her bestselling novel, Coming Home, was made into a television film. Her most recent bestseller was Winter Solstice. She was awarded an O.B.E for services to literature in 2002, and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Dundee University in 2010.