Sooner or Later: A Novel - Softcover

Adler, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440224659 ISBN 13: 9780440224655

Publisher: Dell, 1998

Synopsis

She saw him in the shadows.  She felt him watching her.  She knew he was going to get her...

The killer always left a signature on his victims...an X carved in their flesh.  But he'd spent the last twenty years in a mental hospital.  Long enough for the world to forget him.  But not long enough for him to forget the rich old woman who had him committed--or her pretty granddaughter.

Now he's been set free.

Ellie Duveen was busy running her own restaurant and tenderly watching over her fragile grandmother.  Then she met former cop Dan Cassidy, the owner of a local vineyard, and Ellie's hectic life slowed just enough to let her fall in love.

So Ellie didn't notice when police found a dead body marked with a grisly X.  She only felt someone watching her.  Following her.  And as a terrifying secret came back from the past to haunt her, Ellie needed an ex-cop's instincts and more.  She needed her own unshakable courage to outsmart a killer's deadly, twisted plan.

About this title

From the Publisher:

When Dan Cassidy walked into her Santa Monica bistro, romance was the last thing on Ellie Parrish Duveen's mind.

Alone in the world except for her beloved grandmother, Lottie, Ellie grew up as the sole heir to her family's once formidable fortune. Over time, however, that fortune dwindled, making it increasingly difficult for her grandmother to live in the family's old Italianate mansion in the Montecito hills. Between running her small restaurant and trying to take care of her grandmother, Ellie doesn't exactly have time for men.

Dan, once a New York City cop, owner of a rundown winery, is also too busy for love. Still, his attraction to Ellie is undeniable. But their brief glimpse of a future together is quickly interrupted, for a dark secret lurking in her family's infamous history is about to resurface. And what Ellie doesn't know about her own past could kill them all.

Unknown to Ellie, another man has also returned to California--her half-brother Buck Duveen, ostracized from the family 20 years ago and left forgotten in a sanitarium in New York. Suddenly released, Buck sets out to reclaim what once could have been his, and insinuates himself into Ellie's life. He wants the family's mansion. The fortune and privileged life he was denied. Most of all, he wants to strike back at the woman who sent him a away--Lottie Parrish--and everything surrounding her...including her granddaughter Ellie.

From the Back Cover:

"Exhilarating...Adler delivers an ending with a punch."
--Publishers Weekly

"Fast-paced, suspenseful."
--Library Journal

"Adler is a true genius."
--Affaire de Coeur

"Sensuous...swift plotting."
--Kirkus Reviews

An Alternate Selection of the Literary Guild and the Doubleday Book Club

About this edition

• Publisher: Dell
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0440224659
• ISBN 13: 9780440224655
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 432