The Hidden Girl

Sweeping and evocative, The Hidden Girl is a lost treasure from the global number one bestselling author Lucinda Riley.

You can’t alter destiny . . .

Born and raised in a small village on the Yorkshire moors, Leah Thompson grows more beautiful with each passing day. When she catches the attention of the influential, troubled Delancey family, she knows her life will never be the same again.

Years later, Leah takes the modelling world by storm, travelling from Milan to London and New York and living life in the lap of luxury. But her past follows her like a dark shadow, mysteriously intertwined with the tragic tale of two young siblings in Poland during the Second World War.

As two generations of secrets threaten to explode, Leah is haunted by a fatal, forgotten prophecy from her past, and must fight to challenge the destiny that has been mapped out for her in the stars . . .

Long before she became the bestselling author of The Seven Sisters series, Lucinda Riley wrote Hidden Beauty as Lucinda Edmonds. This standalone novel has been reworked and given new life as The Hidden Girl by Harry Whittaker, Lucinda’s son and co-author of Atlas: The Story of Pa Salt.

Lucinda Riley was born in Ireland in 1965 and, after an early career as an actress in film, theatre and television, wrote her first novel aged twenty-four. Her books have been translated into thirty-seven languages and continue to strike an emotional chord all around the world. The Seven Sisters series specifically has become a global phenomenon, inspiring its own genre.

Her books have been nominated for numerous awards, including the Italian Bancarella Prize, the Lovely Books Award in Germany and the Romantic Novel of the Year Award. She has received the Dutch Platinum Award for sales over 300,000 copies for a single novel in one year multiple times – a prize last won by J. K. Rowling for Harry Potter. In collaboration with her son Harry Whittaker, she also devised and wrote the Guardian Angels series of books for children.

Though she brought up her four children mostly in Norfolk, England, in 2015 she fulfilled her dream of buying a remote farmhouse in West Cork, Ireland, which she always felt was her spiritual home, and this was where her last five books were written. Lucinda was diagnosed with cancer in 2017 and died on 11 June 2021, surrounded by her family.

Harry Whittaker grew up in the 1990s and spent the first few years of his life on the rural west coast of Ireland. The son of the author Lucinda Riley, Harry became a storyteller himself, as an award-winning radio presenter for the BBC and a member of one of the UK’s most renowned improv troupes. In 2019, Harry and Lucinda co-authored the Guardian Angels series for children – four reassuring, timeless stories addressing worries that a small child may have.

After Lucinda’s death in 2021, it was announced that Harry would complete the Seven Sisters series on behalf of his late mother. Atlas: The Story of Pa Salt publishes globally in May 2023.

Harry lives in Yorkshire, England.