This Side of Innocence

#1 New York Times Bestseller: A saga of power, greed, and illicit love set in the Gilded Age of upstate New York. Jerome Lindsey and his foster brother, Alfred, couldn't be more different. The son of a wealthy banker in upstate New York, Jerome leaves home for a life of extravagance and adventure, seducing countless women along the way. Meanwhile, Alfred becomes an executive at the family bank and his adoptive father's heir apparent. After his wife dies, Alfred shows little interest in remarrying--until he meets Amalie Maxwell, the ravishing and headstrong daughter of a tenant farmer. Fearing that his inheritance is at stake, Jerome returns home to expose Amalie as a shameless gold digger. But the more he schemes against her, the closer he's drawn to her. Now, Jerome and Amalie will discover the thin line between love and hate--and that a moment of passion can have a lifetime's worth of consequences. A mesmerizing tale of forbidden desire and a brilliant portrait of small-town America during the Reconstruction Era, This Side of Innocence is "a masterful piece of storytelling" from one of the twentieth century's most beloved authors (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

About the Author :
Taylor Caldwell was one of the most prolific and widely read authors of the twentieth century. Born Janet Miriam Holland Taylor Caldwell in 1900 in Manchester, England, she moved with her family to Buffalo, New York, in 1907. She started writing stories when she was eight years old and completed her first novel when she was twelve. Married at age eighteen, Caldwell worked as a stenographer and court reporter to help support her family and took college courses at night, earning a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Buffalo in 1931. She adopted the pen name Taylor Caldwell because legendary editor Maxwell Perkins thought her debut novel, Dynasty of Death (1938), would be better received if readers assumed it were written by a man. In a career that spanned five decades, Caldwell published forty novels, many of which were New York Times bestsellers. Her best-known works include the historical sagas The Sound of Thunder (1957), Testimony of Two Men (1968), Captains and the Kings (1972), and Ceremony of the Innocent (1976), and the spiritually themed novels The Listener (1960) and No One Hears But Him (1966). Dear and Glorious Physician (1958), a portrayal of the life of St. Luke, and Great Lion of God (1970), about the life of St. Paul, are among the bestselling religious novels of all time. Caldwell's last novel, Answer as a Man (1981), hit the New York Times bestseller list before its official publication date. She died at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1985.

Review :
"500 pages so solidly satisfying, so pulsing with life, that one resents their coming to an end." --The Philadelphia Inquirer "A gift of storytelling which is all too rare." --Kirkus Review Praise for Taylor Caldwell "Taylor Caldwell spins a yarn with force. . . . Her sense of timing and her ability to keep even the most alert reader guessing is something readers don't find very often." --Hartford Courant "Taylor Caldwell never falters when it comes to storytelling." --Publishers Weekly