Hideaway

Nora Roberts

BORN into a rich and famous Hollywood acting dynasty, Cate Sullivan’s early years in sun-baked California should have been a dream childhood…

But a game of hide-and-seek at a family party to celebrate the life of the nine-year-old’s recently departed great-grandfather turned into a night of trauma which threatens to blight the rest of her life.

Escape to the stunning mountains of California’s Big Sur, the green, rolling hills of County Mayo in Ireland, and the bright, bustling streets of New York City in a rich, sweeping saga of domestic drama, suspense and romance from Nora Roberts, one of America’s best-loved and most successful writers.

Author of over two hundred novels, Roberts transports her readers into the glittering, glamorous lives of the tight-knit Sullivan clan, a family whose roots lie in rural Ireland but who have become Hollywood royalty with four generations of actors and actresses. With a cruel betrayal at its heart and starring a feisty, charismatic young woman haunted by her past but still determined to come out of the shadows and find her own way in life, Hideaway is a compelling tale of love, family, and wicked revenge. 

MULTI-LAYERED PLOT: Nora Roberts

In true Hollywood tradition, Cate Sullivan became a child star at the tender age of twenty-one months when she even managed to upstage her glamorous actress mother Charlotte Dupont. Cate’s genes stretch back to Liam Sullivan, her Irish immigrant great-grandfather who sailed to America as a boy and found fame and fortune in California. 

And it was at the sprawling family ranch, Sullivan’s Rest, that Cate was forced to lose her childhood innocence when she was kidnapped for a ten million dollar ransom by two men as she played in the grounds with her cousins during a party to mark 92-year-old Liam Sullivan’s passing.

Drugged and bound, and locked in a nearby empty holiday home on that cold February night, the girl many considered to be a pampered princess was in fact a clever and determined young survivor and, against the odds, she managed to escape her abductors. As she stumbled wildly through the night, she found refuge at the small ranch of teenager Dillon Cooper, his mother and grandmother who were shocked to find the injured, exhausted girl huddled in the kitchen and quickly reunited Cate with her loved ones.

But Cate’s ordeal was far from over… first came the discovery of a shocking betrayal that would send someone she had trusted to prison, and then there were years spent away in western Ireland, peaceful and protected but with restlessness growing in her soul.

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Finally, she returns to Los Angeles as a young woman, gathering the courage to go on the stage again and get past the trauma that has derailed her life. What she doesn’t yet know is that two
seeds were planted that long-ago night… one of a great love, and one of a terrible vengeance.

Roberts certainly knows how to ramp up drama, atmosphere and tension, and this twisting, turning drama with its multi-layered plot, sense of increasing menace, and exploration of what it means to be part of a high-profile Hollywood family will have readers hooked.

Cate is the star player – an intuitive, whip-smart girl who grows restless at the constraints her past have placed on her life – but the supporting cast of the family’s different generations are all cleverly portrayed, each with their own personal problems but still tied firmly to the wind-blown mast of the Sullivan ship.

   

With a plot brimming with cruelty, vengeance and betrayal, there is darkness aplenty here, but there is also love, loyalty, heartfelt emotion, and the strength of family ties which make Hideaway an all-embracing and entertaining read for long summer nights.

(Piatkus, hardback, £20)