Böcker av Susanne Dunlap

What happens when a daughter's dream and a mother's sordid past collide?New York, 1910. Seventeen-year-old Sylvie and her French-immigrant mother Justine eke out a living doing piecework in a tenement on the Lower East Side, while Sylvie attends school so that she can escape their life of poverty by becoming a teacher.At least, that's what her mother believes should happen. Sylvie, though, has a different dream. She wants to be a star in the new moving pictures, just like the beautiful Vitagraph Girl. When she meets a dangerously handsome Italian boy at church one Sunday and he encourages her ambitions, she begins secretly taking steps toward the career she knows her mother won't approve of.But Sylvie isn't the only one with secrets. Justine has kept her sordid past from Sylvie ever since they came to New York fifteen years before, stitching together a fabric of lies along with the shirtwaists she finishes every day, doing everything in her power to keep the truth from her daughter-that she fled Paris as a courtesan after committing a crime that could still get her arrested, or worse.When Justine's past catches up with her in a single act of brutality, Sylvie witnesses what she thinks is her mother's betrayal and runs away during a freak blizzard, putting them both in grave danger.Ambition, survival, and unexpected alliances combine in this mother-daughter story that proves love can conquer all-at a price.

The romantic story of a young female pianist in cholera-ravaged Paris of 1832, whose own tragedy leaves her susceptible to the passions and scandals of the composer Franz Liszt At the height of the Romantic era in Paris, there was no bigger celebrity than the composer and pianist Franz Liszt. A fiery and gorgeous Hungarian, he made women swoon at soirees and left a trail of broken hearts behind him. Anne, a countess and talented young pianist whose mother has just died of cholera, hears Franz Liszt in concert and is swept up in his allure. The enigmatic Marie d'Agoult, a friend of Anne's late mother, takes her under her wing and introduces her to the artistic world -- despite the objections of Anne's sullen and sorrowful father. Anne soon finds herself in the midst of dangerous intrigues, discovering a family secret so shocking that her father will go to any lengths to protect it. With the ominous presence of Paris's most deadly epidemic looming over every turbulent event, Liszt's Kiss is a rich evocation of a remarkable period as seen through the eyes of a sensitive young artist.

Set against the backdrop of Paris and the court of Versailles, and written in the grand tradition of "Amadeus" and "Dangerous Liaisons, Emilie's Voice" introduces a young heroine of modest upbringing who possesses the voice of an angel.