THE ORIGINAL SIN

A first hardcover (and first US publication) for American writer Gabriel, who lives in Spain: a hefty but positively riveting tale of love and loss that spans three continents and as many generations. Wealthy, cultivated Mercedes Eduard seems to have everything money can buy, but her serene life in Costa Brava is abruptly shattered when she receives a photograph of her daughter—half- naked and chained to a bed. On the back of the photo is a terse note: GO TO THE POLICE AND SHE DIES. Jump-cut then to the daughter herself: 20-year-old Eden Van Buren, a spoiled rich girl with a nasty heroin habit. While she's locked in a windowless basement cell somewhere in the Arizona desert, her painful drug withdrawal evokes—surprisingly—sympathy and concern from her mysterious masked captor. His identity and his purpose in kidnapping Eden are revealed slowly, bit by tantalizing bit, in this bizarre, passionate story. For although he seems like a madman, Joel Lennox is indeed a man with a purpose. Unknown to Mercedes or Eden, he is the son that Mercedes gave away years and years ago. Placed into the hands of a God-obsessed preacher and his bitter wife, Joel was repeatedly tortured—both mentally and physically—by his adoptive parents. He believes that the kidnapping and the ten-million-dollar ransom he seeks are no more than his rightful revenge against a mother who abandoned him and a sister who was given all the love he craved. But Joel doesn't count on falling in love with his captive. And when he learns, finally, the real reason that Mercedes was forced to give him up, his vision of the world is destroyed in precisely the way he had hoped to destroy Mercedes. A sexy, hard-to-put-down read from a writer likely to draw an enthusiastic following.