Perfidia

At seventeen, on the night of her mother's funeral, Grace Adams is attacked. A young woman with secrets too horrible to tell, with hurts so deep they may never heal, Grace will not tell the truth about the attack. She is beautiful enough for men to want her, but after a lifetime of being a victim, now she must pay the price for other people's sins. From the depths of an Illinois women's prison to a Chicago modelling agency, and from there to a challenging career in New York, Grace carries the past with her wherever she goes. In healing her own pain, she reaches out to battered women and children who live a nightmare she knows only too well. When Grace meets Charles Mackenzie, a New York lawyer, she has found a man who wants nothing from her - except to heal her, to hear her secrets, and to give her the family she so desperately wants. But with happiness finally within her grasp, Grace is at her most vulnerable - in danger of losing everything to an enemy from her past, an enemy bent on malice. Danielle Steel has written an extraordinary women's story with rare insight and power. Portraying the struggle to triumph over malice and betrayal, she transforms a life of pain into a blessing for others. Revealing both the stark reality of domestic abuse and the healing power of love, Malice is more than powerful fiction. It is a piece of life.