The Mistress of Normandy

by Susan Wiggs

MIRA Books

Historical Romance

July 29, 2014

ISBN-10: 077831636X

ISBN-13: 9780778316367

Available in: Paperback (reprint)

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The Mistress of Normandy
by Susan Wiggs

#1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs transports readers to the lush French countryside of Normandy in a tale of love, family honor and true knights in shining armor…

Rand Fitzmarc has fought his way to prominence under the banner of King Henry V. At long last, his loyalty to the English crown will be rewarded with a title and land…in Normandy, France’s richest prize. Now the freshly knighted nobleman will have to battle once more for the right to possess his French barony, and for the hand of the woman who holds it.

Lianna of Bois-Long is determined to keep her lands free from the usurping English king and the husband he’s chosen for her…and her heart safe from any man. Yet when she meets a golden stranger in a sunny forest glade, Lianna is seduced by the heat of his tender gaze and his strong embrace.

But when her forest lover is revealed as the English baron who has come to claim her ancestral home, will Lianna be able to forgive his deception? Or will pride keep her from the man who has managed to steal her heart?

Originally published February 1991 as THE LILY AND THE LEOPARD for HarperCollins.

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Susan Wiggs' Bio

Using blunt scissors, pages from a Big Chief tablet, a borrowed stapler and a Number Two pencil, Susan Wiggs self-published her first novel at the age of eight. A Book About Some Bad Kids was based on the true-life adventures of Susan and her siblings, and the first printing of one copy was a complete sell-out.

Due to her brother's extreme reaction to that first prodigious effort, Susan went underground with her craft, entertaining her friends and offending her siblings with anonymously-written stories of virtuous sisters and the brothers who torment them. The first romance she ever read was Shanna by the incomparable Kathleen Woodiwiss, which she devoured while slumped behind a college vector analysis textbook. Armed with degrees from SFA and Harvard, and toting a crate of "keeper" books by Woodiwiss, Roberta Gellis, Laurie McBain, Rosemary Rodgers, Jennifer Blake, Bertrice Small and anything with the words "flaming" and "ecstasy" in the title, she became a math teacher, just to prove to the world that she did have a left brain.

Late one night, she finished the book she was reading and was confronted with a reader's worst nightmare--She was wide awake, and there wasn''t a thing in the house she wanted to read. Figuring this was the universe''s way of taking away her excuses, she picked up a Big Chief tablet and a Number Two pencil, and began writing her novel with the working title, A Book About Some Bad Adults. Actually, that was a bad book about some adults, but Susan persevered, learning her craft the way skydiving is learned--by taking a blind leap and hoping the chute will open.

Her first book was published (without the use of blunt scissors and a stapler) by Zebra in 1987, and since then she has been published by Avon, Tor, HarperCollins, Harlequin, Mira and Warner Books. Unable to completely abandon her beloved teaching profession, Susan is a frequent workshop leader and speaker at writers' conferences, including the Romance Writers of America conference, the PNWA and Maui Writers Conference. She won a RITA award in 1994, and her recent novel The Charm School was voted one of RWA's Favorite Books of the Year. She is the proud recipient of several RT awards, the Peninsula RWA's Blue Boa, the Holt Medallion and the Colorado Award of Excellence.

Susan enjoys many hobbies, including sitting in the hot tub while talking to her mother on the phone, kickboxing, cleaning the can opener, sculpting with butter and growing her hair. She lives on an island in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, Jay, her daughter, Elizabeth, and an Airedale that hasn't been groomed since 1994.