The Serpent's Tooth

by Paver Michelle (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2005

  $3.25

  Belle Lawe had made the long journey to England in 1912. She was escaping from what she imagined to be a shameful secret, and by the time she has left school, and the Great War is raging in France, she attempts to immerse herself in a life of galety and fun. Adam Palairet, who had shared his childhood with Belle, returns wounded from the trenches having seen many of his friends and comrades blown to bits in the fighting. Belle, disappointed in love and with her favourite cousin dead in the influenza epidemic which was ravaging England, falls ill and only survives when Adam finds her and takes her to Scotland to recover. She is hostile towards Adam and resentful of his managing ways, but at the gaunt, grey edifice of Cairngowrie Hall they begin to work out their differences. When Adam has to return to the front, Belle has to confront the man who brought her so much misery in her childhood, and who threatens to remove her only chance of happiness.

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $3.25

  Since she was twelve years old, Belle has lived with a secret - a secret which cuts her off from her family, and isolates her wherever she goes. Against the unfolding horror of the Great War, her search for peace takes her from the brittle gaiety of English country house society to the remote Scottish mansions where her grandmother's tragedy was played out, and to the battlefields of Flanders. As the scarred and shattered men return from the trenches, and an influenza epidemic scythes across the country, Belle must finally discover a way to break free of her secret - or lose her last chance of happiness.