The Golden Hour - Beatriz Williams

Written by Beatriz Williams
Read by Cassandra Campbell, Saskia Maarleveld
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 32 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: HarperAudio
Release date: July 9, 2019
Duration: 16:18:09

The New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives and A Certain Age creates a dazzling epic of World War II-era Nassau—a hotbed of spies, traitors, and the most infamous couple of the age, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

The Bahamas, 1941. Newly-widowed Leonora “Lulu” Randolph arrives in Nassau to investigate the Governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all, American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier.

What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise, a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires?

Or so Lulu imagines. But as she infiltrates the Duke and Duchess’s social circle, and the powerful cabal that controls the islands’ political and financial affairs, she uncovers evidence that beneath the glister of Wallis and Edward’s marriage lies an ugly—and even treasonous—reality. In fact, Windsor-era Nassau seethes with spies, financial swindles, and racial tension, and in the middle of it all stands Benedict Thorpe: a scientist of tremendous charm and murky national loyalties. Inevitably, the willful and wounded Lulu falls in love.

Then Nassau’s wealthiest man is murdered in one of the most notorious cases of the century, and the resulting coverup reeks of royal privilege. Benedict Thorpe disappears without a trace, and Lulu embarks on a journey to London and beyond to unpick Thorpe’s complicated family history: a fateful love affair, a wartime tragedy, and a mother from whom all joy is stolen.

The stories of two unforgettable women thread together in this extraordinary epic of espionage, sacrifice, human love, and human courage, set against a shocking true crime…and the rise and fall of a legendary royal couple.

Cassandra Campbell and Saskia Maarleveld share narrating duties for the newest Beatriz Williams historical novel, which involves the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s stay in the Bahamas during WWII. The story jumps between three time periods, and although Campbell and Maarleveld both narrate capably, the frequent shifts are confusing. Campbell jauntily portrays Lulu Randolph, an aspiring young writer for a society magazine who arrives in the Bahamas to describe the glamour of the Windsors’ lifestyle. When Nassau’s richest resident is murdered, Lulu–rendered by Campbell as something of a Noir dame–pursues answers. In a European accent, Maarleveld also delivers the the account of a Swiss woman named Elfride, following her from 1900 through WWI, and recounting the lives of her descendants. N.M.C. � AudioFile 2019