The Seven Sisters

by Lucinda Riley

  Valérie Brochand, my neighbour in the South of France, who so kindly went to the Landowski museum for me in Boulogne-Billancourt and took hundreds of photos, and Adriana Hunter, who translated Landowski’s enormous biography and collated the important facts. David Harber and his staff, who helped me understand the workings of the armillary sphere.

  My ever-supportive mother, Janet, my sister, Georgia, and her son Rafe, who, at the age of nine, made The Midnight Rose his school reading book! Rita Kalagate, for telling me I would go to Brazil the night before I received an offer from my publishing house, and Izabel Latter for keeping me going in Norfolk and listening to me chunter on as she gently manipulates an aching body that has flown thousands of miles across the world or been hunched over a manuscript 24/7.

  Susan Moss, my best friend forever and now partner in crime on the detail of the manuscript, Jacquelyn Heslop, my ‘sis’ in another life, and my PA, Olivia Riley, who miraculously manages to decipher my scribble and introduced me to the concept of an armillary sphere.

  It was a starlit night in early January 2013 when I first came up with the idea of writing allegorically about my seven mythical sisters. I called the family together and sat by the fire, bubbling over with excitement and trying to explain what I wanted to do. To give them credit, not a single one of them said I was mad – though I must have sounded so at the time as the ideas began to grow. So it is to them I owe the biggest thank you for what has happened since. My darling husband and agent, Stephen – we have been on an exhilarating journey together in the past year and both learned a lot. And my fantastic children: Harry, who makes all my wonderful films; Leonora, who came up with the very first anagram – ‘Pa Salt’; Kit, my youngest who can always make me laugh; and of course Isabella Rose, my amazing ‘high-voltage baby’ of eighteen, to whom this book is aptly dedicated.

  Bibliography

  The Seven Sisters is a work of fiction set against a historical and mythological background. The sources I’ve used to research the time period and detail on my characters’ lives are listed below:

  Munya Andrews, The Seven Sisters of the Pleiades (Spinifex Press, 2004)

  Dan Franck, Bohemian Paris (Grove Press, 2001)

  Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (Penguin, 2011)

  Robert Graves, The White Goddess, a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth (Faber and Faber, 1975)

  Michèle Lefrançois, Paul Landowski: L’oeuvre sculpté (Crèaphis editions, 2009)

  Jeffrey D. Needell, A Tropical Belle Époque (Cambridge, 2009)

  Maria Izabel Noronha, De Braços Abertos (documentary) (2008)

  Maria Izabel Noronha, Redentor: De Braços Abertos (Reptil Editora, 2011)

  Peter Robb, A Death in Brazil (Bloomsbury, 2005)

  Nigel Spivey, Songs of Bronze (Faber and Faber, 2005)

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  Also by Lucinda Riley

  Hothouse Flower

  The Girl on the Cliff

  The Light Behind the Window

  The Midnight Rose

  The Italian Girl

  First published 2014 by Macmillan

  This electronic edition published 2014 by Macmillan

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London NI 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-4472-7493-3 HB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-7558-9 TPB

  eISBN 978-1-4472-1910-1

  Copyright © Lucinda Riley 2014

  The right of Lucinda Riley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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