1918, England. Armistice Day should bring peace into Leonora's life. Rather than secretly making cosmetics in her father's chemist shop to sell to army nurses such as Joan, her adventurous Australian friend, Leo hopes to now display her wares openly. Instead, Spanish flu arrives in the village, claiming her father's life. Determined to start over, she boards a ship to New York City. On the way she meets debonair department store heir Everett Forsyth . . . In Manhattan, Leo works hard to make her cosmetics dream come true, but she's a woman alone with a small salary and a society that deems make-up scandalous. 1939, New York City. Everett's daughter, Alice, a promising ballerina, receives a mysterious letter inviting her to star in a series of advertisements for a cosmetics line. If she accepts she will be immortalized like dancers such as Zelda Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker and Ginger Rogers. Why, then, are her parents so quick to forbid it? Her Mother's Secret is the story of a brave young woman chasing a dream in the face of society's disapproval.
Author
Natasha Lester is the multi-award winning and New York Times best-selling author of THE PARIS SEAMSTRESS, THE PARIS ORPHAN, THE PARIS SECRET and THE THREE LIVES OF ALIX ST PIERRE. Her new book, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ASTRID BRICARD is out now in Australia, and will be published in North America in Feb 2024. Prior to writing, she worked as a marketing executive for L’Oreal, managing the Maybelline brand, before returning to university to study creative writing. Natasha's books have been translated into more than twenty-one different languages and are now published all around the world. She lives in Perth, Western Australia with her 3 children and loves fashion history, practising the art of fashion illustration, collecting vintage fashion, travelling and, of course, books.
