FICTION · LARGE TYPE
Rosalind Laker
Also known as: Barbara Øvstedal, Barbara Paul
[Barbara Paul]is one of the pseudonyms of [Barbara Øvstedal]. She stopped using this name when another author of the same name (Barbara Paul) gained popularity; and changed over to the pseudonym [Rosalind Laker]. : :
Most acclaimed
The sugar pavilion
1994
Sophie Delcourt, the enchanting talented daughter of a Parisian confectioner, is forced to flee the country in the midst of revolution and bloodshed with a four-year-old aristocrat and elderly Marquis in her charge. Bereft and abandoned in the Sussex countryside, she is saved from highwaymen by the intriguing Tom Foxhill, art collector to the Prince of Wales. Soon, Sophie finds herself forming a passionate bond with him, a bond which even her love for another cannot sever… After settling in Regency Brighton, at first she does not realise that threats of vengeance have followed her from France. But soon her worries are settled by a new home, local work and friends for her young charge Antoine. Sophie strives to build her own confectionery business and eventually finds her path leading to the glorious Sugar Pavilion of the Prince Regent himself. Her life becomes more exciting and challenging than she had ever expected, but danger also creeps near in the form of smugglers and the distressing threat of French revolutionaries… The Sugar Pavilion is a powerful Regency novel, rich with period detail.
Orchids and diamonds
1995
Working in the high fashion world of early twentieth-century Paris, lovely Juliette Cladel falls in love with a young Russian count and sculptor, Nikolai Karsavin, but the young lovers soon find themselves separated by family duties, war, and revolution. In the last opulent, extravagant years in Paris before the First World War, Juliette Cladel, a young French woman working in haute couture, and Nikolai Karasvin, a Russian diplomat, are brought together through their shared interest in the theatre work of the Spanish designer Mariano Fortuny. The chance discovery by Juliette of one of Fortuny's uniquely pleated, figure-hugging gowns, revolutionary at a time when women wore corsets and petticoats, provides a further bond between her and Nikolai when she wears it to their first dinner and it creates a scandal. Their turbulent love affair is shortlived, and circumstances separate Juliette and Nikolai when he returns to Russia. Juliette moves to Italy and marries another man.