The Ebony Swan

Family secrets are locked away at the intimidating Virginia estate of a prima ballerina in this suspenseful tale from a New York Times–bestselling author.
 
Susan Prentice is a young nurse at a crossroads. She’s broken off an engagement, the father who raised her has just died, and now she’s leaving the western shores behind for a trip to her family’s home on Virginia’s Northern Neck—where she saw her mother fall to her death twenty-five years ago. There, Susan’s grandmother, former ballet diva Alexandrina “Alex” Vargas Montoro, proves a formidable sentinel for the family’s mysterious history.
 
At first welcomed by her long-estranged relatives, spied on by suspicious neighbors, and drawn to Peter, Alex’s handsome young doctor, Susan has nothing but questions. And for every answer, there’s a warning—and the fear that she has only Peter to trust in. But even the doctor’s past is shaded with murder. Soon Susan will discover that she alone holds the key to her mother’s suspicious death, hidden away in her shattered memories. And someone intimately close to her is prepared to bury the truth forever.
 
The Ebony Swan is a “carefully crafted novel of psychological suspense by . . . [a] Mystery Writers of America Grand Master” (Publishers Weekly).
 

Born in Yokohama, Japan, on September 9, 1903, Phyllis A. Whitney was a prolific author of award-winning adult and children’s fiction. Her sixty-year writing career and the publication of seventy-six books, which together sold over fifty million copies worldwide, established her as one of the most successful mystery and romantic suspense writers of the twentieth century and earned her the title “The Queen of the American Gothics.”

Whitney resided in several places, including New Jersey. She traveled to every location mentioned in her books in order to better depict the settings of her stories. She earned the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master award in 1988, the Agatha in 1990, and the lifetime achievement award from the Society of Midland Authors in 1995. Whitney was working on her autobiography at the time of her passing at the age of 104.