Return of the Stranger - Softcover

Tannahill, Reay

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0752802844 ISBN 13: 9780752802848

Publisher: Orion, 1996

Synopsis

Tassie Smith's childhood is violently disrupted when a stranger appears on her mother Grace's, doorstep claiming to have inherited the family house and fortuneIt emerges that he is Tassie's long-lost brother, and, after a tricky start, shesoon begins to hero-worship him. But as her life unfolds it becomes apparent that there is very much more to brother Max than meets the eye, and that he has some powerful enemies - not least the man with whom Tassie herself falls in loveReay Tannahill uses wonderful period detail to evoke the Highlands, Glasgow and turn-of-the-century office life in London in this splendid story of family passion and skulduggery.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Tannahill's gracefully written third novel (after In Still and Stormy Waters, 1994) is a grand Victorian passion play that begins when Grace Smith and her daughters, Tassie and Selina, discover that her late husband's will has left control of the family fortune in the hands of an obscure young cousin named Max McKenzie. When the smooth, confident Max arrives at the family's Scottish mansion to stake his claim, he reveals that he is actually Grace's long-lost son, the product of an illicit affair who was quickly put up for adoption. As Max rebuilds the family cotton business and his financial reputation grows beyond the British Isles, he begins a lifelong rivalry with an up-and-coming journalist named Frances Rivers, who distrusts Max's rags-to-riches story. The plot thickens when Tassie and Frances fall in love, a relationship hindered by the journalist's aloofness as well as by Max's increasingly insistent attempts to control Tassie's life. Slowly exposing the flaws in Max's story and his character, Tannahill builds the tension into a final violent confrontation between business baron and journalist. The author weaves a marvelously tangled romantic web, adding lively period details about the woman's suffrage movement and the significant inventions of the time, capturing both the pace and the uniquely insular world of the late 19th century.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

The setting is turn-of-the-century Scotland, where Tassie's father has died, leaving everything, including the family home, to a mysterious relative. Thus Tassie and her mother, Grace, must move from the only home Tassie has ever known. The reader should feel sympathy for Grace, but here is a woman who so believes in male superiority that she married a man who raped her and then allowed him to give away the child born of that illicit union. There are, however, some interesting twists in this lengthy novel. The stranger, Max (yes, he is the long-lost child) eventually welcomes Grace and Tassie into his home and heart, then gradually shows a more sinister side. There are hints of incest and a suicide. Too bad the author of In Still and Stormy Waters (LJ 10/1/94) did not spend more time on developing her characters and plot. A marginal purchase.?Patricia Altner, Information Seekers, Bowie, Md.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Orion
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0752802844
• ISBN 13: 9780752802848
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480