{"product_id":"matters-of-the-heart-isbn-9780440243311","title":"Matters of the Heart","description":"\u003cb\u003eIn this spellbinding blend of suspense and human drama, Danielle Steel tells a powerful and unusual story of one woman’s journey from darkness into light, as she fights to escape a mesmerizing sociopath who holds her in his thrall. . . .\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003eTop photographer Hope Dunne has known joy and heartbreak, and finds serenity through the lens of her camera. Content in her SoHo loft, she isn’t looking for a man or excitement. But these things find her when she flies to London to photograph one of the world’s most celebrated writers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFinn O’Neill exudes warmth and a boyish charm. Enormously successful, he is a perfect counterpoint to Hope’s quiet, steady grace—and he’s taken instantly by her. He courts her as no one ever has before, whisking her away to his palatial, isolated Irish estate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHope finds it all, and him, irresistible. But soon cracks begin to appear in his stories: Gaps in his history, a few innocent lies, and bouts of jealousy unnerve her. Suddenly Hope is both in love and deeply in doubt, and ultimately frightened of the man she loves. Is it possible that this adoring man is hiding something even worse? The spell cast by a brilliant sociopath has her trapped in his web, too confused and dazzled to escape, as he continues to tighten his grip on her.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eDanielle Steel delivers an unforgettable tale of danger and obsessive love, as she explores the dark secrets that sometimes lurk just below the surface of ordinary lives, writing about men and women and their courage to prevail even in the face of evil.\u003cb\u003ePraise for Danielle Steel\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Steel is one of the best!”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Few modern writers convey the pathos of family and material life with such heartfelt empathy.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Philadelphia Inquirer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Steel pulls out all the emotional stops. . . . She delivers!”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What counts for the reader is the ring of authenticity.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eDanielle Steel\u003c\/b\u003e has been hailed as one of the world’s most popular authors, with over 650 million copies of her novels sold. Her many international bestsellers include \u003ci\u003eCountry, Prodigal Son, Pegasus,\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eA Perfect Life, Power Play, Winners, First Sight, Until the End of Time, The Sins of the Mother, \u003c\/i\u003eand other highly acclaimed novels. She is also the author of \u003ci\u003eHis Bright Light,\u003c\/i\u003e the story of her son Nick Traina’s life and death; \u003ci\u003eA Gift of Hope, \u003c\/i\u003ea memoir of her work with the homeless; \u003ci\u003ePure Joy, \u003c\/i\u003eabout the dogs she and her family have loved; and the children’s book \u003ci\u003ePretty Minnie in Paris.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003eChapter One\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hope Dunne made her way through the silently falling snow on Prince  Street in SoHo in New York. It was seven o'clock, the shops had just closed, and  the usual bustle of commerce was shutting down for the night. She had lived there  for two years and she liked it. It was the trendy part of New York, and she found  it friendlier than living uptown. SoHo was full of young people, there was always  something to see, someone to talk to, a bustle of activity whenever she left her  loft, which was her refuge. There were bright lights in all the shops.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was her  least favorite time of year, December, the week before Christmas. As she had for  the past several years, she ignored it, and waited for it to pass. For the past two  Christmases, she had worked at a homeless shelter. The year before that she had been  in India, where the holiday didn't matter. It had been a hard jolt coming back to  the States after her time there. Everything seemed so commercial and superficial  in comparison.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The time she had spent in India had changed her life, and probably  saved it. She had left on the spur of the moment, and been gone for over six months.  Reentry into American life had been incredibly hard. Everything she owned was in  storage and she had moved from Boston to New York. It didn't really matter to her  where she lived, she was a photographer and took her work with her. The photographs  she had taken in India and Tibet were currently being shown in a prestigious gallery  uptown. Some of her other work was in museums. People compared her work to that of  Diane Arbus. She had a fascination with the destitute and devastated. The agony in  the eyes of some of her subjects ripped out your soul, just as it had affected hers  when she photographed them. Hope's work was greatly respected, but to look at her,  nothing about her demeanor suggested that she was famous or important.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hope had  spent her entire life as an observer, a chronicler of the human condition. And in  order to do that, she had always said, one had to be able to disappear, to become  invisible, so as not to interfere with the mood of the subject. The studies she had  done in India and Tibet for the magical time she was there had confirmed it. In many  ways, Hope Dunne was an almost invisible person, in other ways, she was enormous,  with an inner light and strength that seemed to fill a room.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She smiled at a woman  passing by, as she walked through the snow on Prince Street. She was tempted to go  for a long walk in the snow, and promised herself she might do that later that evening.  She lived on no particular schedule, answered to no one. One of the blessings of  her solitary life was that she was entirely at liberty to do whatever she wished.  She was the consummate independent woman, she was enormously disciplined about her  work, and in dealing with her subjects. Sometimes she got on the subway, and rode  uptown to Harlem, wandering through the streets in T-shirt and jeans, taking photographs  of children. She had spent time in South America, photographing children and old  people there too. She went wherever the spirit moved her, and did very little commercial  work now. She still did the occasional fashion shoot for Vogue if the layout was  unusual. But most of the magazine work she did was portraits of important people  who she thought were worthwhile and interesting. She had published a remarkable book  of portraits, another of children, and was going to publish a book of her photographs  from India soon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She was fortunate to be able to do whatever she wanted. She could  pick and choose among the many requests she got. Although she loved doing them, she  only did formal portraits now once or twice a year. More often now, she concentrated  on the photographs she took in the course of her travels or on the street.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hope  was a tiny woman with porcelain white skin, and jet-black hair. Her mother had teased  her when she was a child and said she looked like Snow White, which in a way, she  did. And there was a fairy-tale feeling about her too. She was almost elfin in size,  and unusually lithe; she was able to fit herself into the smallest, most invisible  spaces and go unnoticed. The only startling thing about her was her deep violet eyes.  They were a deep, deep blue, with the slightly purple color of very fine sapphires  from Burma or Ceylon, and were filled with compassion that had seen the sorrows of  the world. Those who had seen eyes like hers before understood instantly that she  was a woman who had suffered, but wore it well, with dignity and grace. Rather than  dragging her down into depression, her pain had lifted her into a peaceful place.  She was not a Buddhist, but shared philosophies with them, in that she didn't fight  what happened to her, but instead drifted with it, allowing life to carry her from  one experience to the next. It was that depth and wisdom that shone through her work.  An acceptance of life as it really was, rather than trying to force it to be what  one wanted, and it never could be. She was willing to let go of what she loved, which  was the hardest task of all. And the more she lived and learned and studied, the  humbler she was. A monk she had met in Tibet called her a holy woman, which in fact  she was, although she had no particular affinity for any formal church. If she believed  in anything, she believed in life, and embraced it with a gentle touch. She was a  strong reed bending in the wind, beautiful and resilient.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was snowing harder  by the time she got to the front door of her building. She was carrying a camera  case over her shoulder, and her keys and wallet were in it. She carried nothing else,  and she wore no makeup, except very occasionally bright red lipstick when she went  out, which made her look more than ever like Snow White. And she wore her almost  blue-black hair pulled straight back, either in a ponytail, a braid, or a chignon,  and when she loosened it, it hung to her waist. Her graceful movements made her look  like a young girl, and she had almost no lines on her face. Her biography as a photographer  said that she was forty-four years old, but it was difficult to assess her age and  it would have been easy to believe she was far younger. Like the photographs she  took, and her subjects, she was timeless. Looking at her, one wanted to stop and  watch her for a long time. She rarely wore color, and dressed almost always in black,  so as not to distract her subjects, or in white in hot climates.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Once she unlocked  the front door to her building, she bounded up to the third floor with a quick step.  She was cold, and happy to walk into her apartment, which was considerably warmer  than it had been outdoors, although the ceilings were high and sometimes the wind  crept through the tall windows.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She turned on the lights, and took pleasure, as  she always did, in the spartan decor. The cement floor was painted black, the white  couches and inviting chairs were a soft ivory wool, and nothing about the decor was  intrusive. It was so simple it was almost Zen. And the walls were covered with enormous  framed black and white photographs that were her favorites among her work. The longest  wall was covered with a spectacular series of a young ballerina in motion. The girl  in the photographs was exceptionally beautiful, a graceful young blond dancer in  her teens. It was a remarkable series, and part of Hope's personal collection. On  the other walls were many photographs of children, several of monks in India at the  ashram where she had lived, and two enormous ones of heads of state.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Her loft was  like a gallery of her work, and on one long white lacquer table, set on sponge-covered  trays, all of her cameras were lined up in almost surgical order. She hired freelance  assistants when she did assignments, but most of the time she preferred to do all  her own work. She found assistants helpful, but too distracting. Her favorite camera  was an old Leica she had had for years. She used a Hasselblad and Mamiya in the studio  as well, but she still loved her oldest camera best. She had started taking photographs  when she was nine. She had attended a specially designed photography program at Brown  at seventeen, and graduated at twenty-one with honors, after doing a spectacular  senior project in the Middle East. She had worked for a year as a commercial photographer  after she graduated, and then retired for a dozen years, with only the occasional  very rare assignment, when she married shortly after graduating from Brown. She had  been back at work for the last ten years, and it was in the past decade that she  had made her mark in the world and become increasingly well known. She had been famous  by the time she was thirty-eight, when MOMA in New York showed an exhibit of her  work. It had been one of the high points of her life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hope lit candles around the  room and left the lights in the loft dim. Coming home to this room always soothed  her. She slept on a little platform, up a ladder, on a spare narrow bed, and loved  looking down at the room and the feeling of flying as she fell asleep. The loft was  completely different from anywhere she had ever lived, and she loved that about it  too. Because she had always feared it so much, this time she had embraced change.  There was something powerful about accepting what frightened her most. Her private  nemeses were loss and change, and rather than running from them, she had learned  to face them with dignity and strength.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There was a small black granite kitchen  at the back of the loft. She knew she had to eat, so eventually she wound up there,  and heated up a can of soup. Most of the time, she was too lazy to make much of a  meal. She lived on soups and salads and eggs. On the rare occasions when she wanted  a real meal, she went to some simple restaurant alone and ate quickly, to get it  over with. She had never been much of a cook, and made no pretense of it. It had  always seemed like a waste of time to her, there were so many other things that interested  her more—previously, her family, and now, her work. In the past three years, her  work had become her life. She put her whole soul into it and it showed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hope was  eating her soup, watching the snow fall outside, when her cell phone rang, and she  set the soup down, and dug the phone out of her camera bag. She wasn't expecting  any calls, and smiled when she heard the familiar voice of her agent, Mark Webber.  She hadn't heard from him in a while.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Okay, so where are you now? And what time  zone are you in? Am I waking you up?\" She laughed in response, and sat back against  the couch with a smile. He had represented her for the last ten years, when she went  back to work. He usually tried to push her to do commercial jobs, but he also had  a deep respect for her more serious artistic endeavors. He always said that one day  she would be one of the most important American photographers of her generation,  and in many ways she already was, and was deeply respected by both curators and her  peers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I'm in New York,\" she said, smiling. \"And you're not waking me up.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I'm  disappointed. I figured you were in Nepal, or Vietnam, or someplace scary and disgusting.  I'm surprised you're here.\" He knew how much she hated holidays, and all the reasons  why. She had good reason. But she was a remarkable woman—a survivor—and a dear friend.  He liked and admired her enormously.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I figured I'd stick around for a while. I  was sitting here watching the snow. It's pretty. I might go out and shoot for a bit  later. Some nice old-fashioned stuff.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"It's freezing out,\" he warned her. \"Don't  catch cold.\" He was one of the few people who worried about her, and she was touched  by his concern. She had moved around too much in recent years to stay in contact  with her old friends. She had lived in Boston since college, but when she got back  from India, she decided to move to New York. Hope had always been a solitary person,  and was even more so now. It concerned him, but she seemed content with her life  as it was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"I just got in,\" she reassured him, \"and I was having some chicken soup.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"My grandmother would approve,\" he said, smiling again. \"So what do you have planned  at the moment?\" He knew she hadn't taken any assignments, since nothing had come  through him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Nothing much. I was thinking about going up to the house in Cape Cod  over the holiday. It's pretty there this time of year.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"How cheerful. Only you  would think it's pretty. Everyone else would get suicidal there this time of year.  I have a better idea.\" He had on his \"have I got a deal for you\" voice, and she laughed.  She knew him well and liked him too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Like what? What crazy assignment are you going  to try and talk me into now, Mark? Las Vegas on Christmas Eve?\" They both laughed  at the prospect of it. Occasionally he came up with some wild ideas, which she almost  always turned down. But at least he had to try. He always promised the potential  clients he would.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"No, although Vegas for the holidays sounds like fun to me.\" They  both knew he loved to gamble and took occasional trips to Las Vegas and Atlantic  City. \"This is actually respectable and quite dignified. We got a call from a major  publishing house today. Their star author wants a portrait sitting for his latest  book cover. He hasn't delivered the book yet, but he will any minute, and the publisher  needs the shot done now for their catalog and layouts for advance publicity in the  trade. It's all very proper and on the up and up. The only problem is that they have  a tight deadline. They should have thought of it before.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"How tight?\" Hope asked,  sounding noncommittal, and stretching out on the white wool couch as she listened.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"They need to do the shoot by next week, for their production schedule. That means  you'd be shooting around Christmas, but he requested you, and said he won't do it  with anyone else. At least the guy's got good taste. And the fee is pretty hefty.  He's a big deal.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Who's the author?\" That would have an impact on her decision,  and her agent hesitated before he said the name. He was an important author, had  won the National Book Award, and was always at the top of the best-seller lists,  but he was a bit of a wild card, and had appeared in the press frequently with assorted  women. Mark didn't know how Hope would feel about shooting him, particularly if he  misbehaved, and he could. There were no guarantees that he wouldn't. She usually  preferred to work with serious subjects.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Finn O'Neill,\" he said, without further  comment, waiting to see what she'd say. He didn't want to influence her or discourage  her. It was entirely up to her, and it would be perfectly reasonable if they declined  since it was on short notice, and Christmas week.America's #1 Bestseller","brand":"Dell","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300731441381,"sku":"NP9780440243311","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780440243311.jpg?v=1767732426","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/matters-of-the-heart-isbn-9780440243311","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}