#1 New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown delivers a smoldering tale of love, betrayal,
and one woman's quest for revenge for an unspeakable sin in BREATH OF
SCANDAL, available on March 31st.
Excerpt from BREATH OF SCANDAL
New York City, 1990
She was going back to Palmetto.
Standing at her office window, Jade Speny adjusted the blinds and gazed down
twenty stories at the snarled traffic around Lincoln Center. A cold wind whipped
around the street comers with the impetus of the city buses that belched noxious
fumes into the polluted air. Looking like frantic, yellow beetles, taxi cabs
scurried from one congested traffic lane to another. Pedestrians never broke
their stride, but continued to move, clutching their belongings.
It had been a struggle for Jade to adjust to such constant motion when she moved
to New York. At first intersections proved hazardous. There was nothing quite as
terrifying as standing on the curb of a busy avenue in downtown Manhattan,
wondering which would mow her down first—a menacing taxi, a lumbering city
bus, or the hoards of people pressing her from behind and growing impatient with
the out-of-towner whose speech was as slow as her hesitant gait.
As with every challenge, Jade had ducked her head and tackled it. She didn't
move as fast, or hear as quickly, or speak as rapidly as the natives, but she
wasn't intimidated by them—just different. She hadn't been bred to bustle. Jade
Sperry had been raised in an environment where the most industrious individual
on a summer day might be a dragonfly skimming a tidal swamp.
By the time she reached New York, she had become accustomed to hard work and
self-sacrifice. So she had acclimated and survived, because her South Carolinian
stiff necked pride was just as characteristic as her speech.
Today, it had all paid off. Thousands of hours of planning, plotting, and hard
work had finally been rewarded. No one could guess how many years and tears she
bad invested in her return to her hometown.
She was going back to Palmetto.
There were those there who had much to atone for, and Jade would see to it that
they did. The restitution she had dreamed of was within her grasp. She now had
the power to make it happen.
She continued to gaze out the window, but little of the street scene below
registered with her. Rather, she saw tall grass swaying in coastal marshes. She
smelled pungent salt air and heady magnolias. She tasted low-country cooking.
The skyscrapers were replaced by tall pines; the broad avenues became sluggishly
flowing channels. She remembered how it felt to breathe air so heavy and thick
that it didn't even stir the limp, gray Spanish moss that dripped from the
branches of ancient live oaks.
She was going back to Palmetto.
And when she got there, all hell was going to break loose.
On a rainy Southern night, Jade Sperry endured a young woman’s worst nightmare
at the hands of three local hell-raisers. Robbed of her youthful ideals and at
the center of scandal and tragedy, Jade ran as far and as fast as she could. But
she never forgot the sleepy “company town” where every man, woman, and child was
dependent on one wealthy family. And she never forgot their spoiled son, who
with his two friends changed her life forever. Someday, somehow, she’d return .
. . exacting a just revenge, freeing herself from her enemies’ grasp, and,
perhaps, fulfilling a lost promise of love.
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About Sandra Brown
Sandra Brown is the author of more than sixty New York Times bestsellers,
including DEADLINE(2013), LOW PRESSURE (2012), LETHAL (2011), TOUGH CUSTOMER
(2010), SMASH CUT (2009), SMOKE SCREEN (2008), PLAY DIRTY (2007), RICOCHET
(2006), CHILL FACTOR (2005), WHITE HOT (2004), & HELLO, DARKNESS (2003).
Brown began her writing career in 1981 and since then has published over seventy
novels, bringing the number of copies of her books in print worldwide to upwards
of eighty million. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages.
A lifelong Texan, Sandra Brown was born in Waco, grew up in Fort Worth and
attended Texas Christian University, majoring in English. Before embarking on
her writing career, she worked as a model at the Dallas Apparel Mart, and in
television, including weathercasting for WFAA-TV in Dallas, and feature
reporting on the nationally syndicated program “PM Magazine.”
In 2009 Brown detoured from her thrillers to write RAINWATER, a much acclaimed,
powerfully moving story about honor and sacrifice during the Great Depression.
Brown recently was given an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Texas
Christian University. She was named Thriller Master for 2008, the top award
given by the International Thriller Writer’s Association. Other awards and
commendations include the 2007 Texas Medal of Arts Award for Literature and the
Romance Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
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