Buy new:
Save with Used - Good

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Winter Secret Paperback – November 29, 2018
Purchase options and add-ons
The Winter Secret is a thrilling mystery from Lulu Taylor, top ten bestselling author of The Snow Rose.
‘My dear boy, the place is cursed. It always has been and it always will be . . .’
Buttercup Redmain has a life of pampered luxury, living in beautiful Charcombe Park. Her older husband, Charles Redmain, is wealthy and successful, and proud of the house he has painstakingly restored, once owned by a famous ancestor. Buttercup is surrounded by people who make her life delightfully easy. But the one thing she really wants seems impossible.
There are other discomforting realities: her husband’s ex-wife Ingrid still lives nearby although Buttercup has never met her. And it soon becomes clear that all the people who make Buttercup’s life so carefree are also watching her every move. Does she actually live in a comfortable but inescapable cage? And what is the real story of her husband’s previous marriage?
In the late 1940s, Xenia Arkadyoff lived in Charcombe Park with her father, a Russian prince, and her mother, a famous film star. Life seemed charmed, full of glamour and beauty. But behind the glittering facade lay pain, betrayal, and the truth about the woman Xenia spent her life protecting.
Now Charcombe Park is calling back people who were once part of its story, and the secrets that have stayed long hidden are bubbling inexorably to the surface . . .
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPan Books
- Publication dateNovember 29, 2018
- Dimensions5.12 x 1.34 x 7.76 inches
- ISBN-101509840737
- ISBN-13978-1509840731
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover comes a novel that explores life after tragedy and the enduring spirit of love. | Learn more
Frequently purchased items with fast delivery
Product details
- Publisher : Pan Books
- Publication date : November 29, 2018
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 1509840737
- ISBN-13 : 978-1509840731
- Item Weight : 12.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.12 x 1.34 x 7.76 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #10,017,743 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #41,472 in Contemporary Romance (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Lulu Taylor is the author of ten novels: THE WINTER SECRET, HER FROZEN HEART, THE SNOW ROSE, THE WINTER CHILDREN, THE SNOW ANGEL and THE WINTER FOLLY, as well as HEIRESSES, MIDNIGHT GIRLS, BEAUTIFUL CREATURES and OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE.
THE WINTER SECRET tells the story of Buttercup, a young second wife living in a large house in Dorset, disconcerted to know the first Mrs Redmain lives nearby, close but unseen. Her adoring husband wants to make her perfectly happy but all she really wants is a baby. The gorgeous house was once home to a movie star, the legendary Natalie Rowe. Her daughter Xenia, an old woman now, is tied to the house by love and suffering and an order to wait for the man who never returned. As we learn the truth about Natalie’s life and death, Buttercup starts to realise that things are not quite as they seem...
HER FROZEN HEART
1947. Tommy is a young widow determined never to love again. She directs her energies into maintaining her family home and dealing with the privations of war and rationing. Her brother’s return from the war, and the unexpected houseguest he brings with him, turns her life upside down and soon she realises she is in a battle for everything she holds dear.
In the present day, Caitlin is almost catatonic with grief when her husband Patrick is killed. Then she begins a strange journey through the remnants of his life to find the messages he has left, the ones that will tell the truth about them both...
Enthralling and mysterious, HER FROZEN HEART moves from the depths of the great freeze of 1947 to an Oxford summer of discovery and rebirth.
THE SNOW ROSE tells the tale of Kate, on the run with her daughter and hiding out in a large, empty house where she is a guardian. What does Kate want to escape so badly that she’s prepared to leave her home and her husband to be alone with her little girl? The two elderly sisters who live nearby know the truth about the house and seem to know more about Kate than she likes. And they also know that history is about to repeat itself...
THE WINTER CHILDREN Dan and Olivia Felbeck want children and when their dream comes true with the arrival of their twins, they are overjoyed. But there is something about the children that is irresistible to their friend, Francesca. She arranges a new home for the family but it soon becomes clear she wishes to join them there... The house was a girls’ school, and it still houses secrets and pain from those years. Pain that must, somehow, come back to the surface. But Olivia is engaged in a battle for the survival of her family. She just doesn’t know it yet...
THE SNOW ANGEL is a gripping story of forbidden love and its consequences. In the sixties, Cressida Fellbridge is a young debutant determined to find a purpose in life. She doesn't particularly want her portrait painted but when she meets the artist her father has commissioned, she's unable to prevent herself falling wildly in love. But Ralph is already married to the tempestuous and possessive Catherine... In the present day, Emily Conway finds her life utterly changed in an instant when she and her husband are involved in a car accident. She has to rebuild her life from scratch, and when a surprise bequest gives her possession of a house, it looks like a blessing. But nothing as is simple as it seems... Dark and compelling, THE SNOW ANGEL is a suspenseful novel of love and loss across the years.
THE WINTER FOLLY traces the story of two women who have married into the aristocratic Stirling family. Alexandra outraged society and her family to follow her heart and marry Nicky Stirling. But when her father revealed a terrible secret, she was unable to cope with the knowledge. In the modern day, Delilah Stirling is deeply in love with her husband but she knows there are things he will not reveal to her. Like the eventual fate of his mother, Alex. When she decides to find out the truth for herself, she puts everything at risk... A novel of intertwined lives and the burden of the past, THE WINTER FOLLY is moving, exhilarating and hard to put down.
Lulu's earlier quartet of novels is set in the world of high society and vividly portray the wild, wealthy and sometimes hedonistic lifestyle of the gorgeous young things who inhabit it. Full of drama and passion, these novels are racy and utterly engrossing, with the power to keep you turning the pages late into the night.
HEIRESSES takes the reader into the world of perfume when three sisters inherit a family business once full of prestige but now on its knees. Can they rescue it from the clutches of a businessman who wants to buy them out, and the machinations of the malevolent Jecca? What is her secret tie to the Trevellyan sisters?
MIDNIGHT GIRLS is set in the world of exclusive, luxurious members clubs, and charts the lives of three friends who share a dark secret from their time at boarding school. When friendship turns to enmity, all is fair in love and war...
BEAUTIFUL CREATURES is a modern Gothic fairytale, the story of gorgeous identical twins, Octavia and Flora, who inherit a fortune on their twenty-first birthdays. But the world is a nastier and more dangerous place than they realise, and there are dangers at every turn...
OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE tells the story of Daisy Dangerfield and Chanelle Hughes, two girls born on the same day in very different circumstances, whose paths are destined to cross in very unexpected ways...
Lulu was brought up in Oxfordshire. She has lived and travelled all over the world but now lives in the Dorset countryside with her husband. Visit her Facebook page, website at www.lulutaylor.co.uk or follow her on Twitter @misslulutaylor
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonTop reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.
- Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2020The Winter Secret is an unsettling, pacey, atmospheric novel about love, life, loss, secrets, power, control, friendship, family, jealousy, and tragedy.
There are two main memorable characters, Xenia, a young girl in the late 1940s whose life is anything but glamourous when her mother’s starlet lifestyle leads to a neverending rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows. And Buttercup, the present-day Mrs. Redmain whose life is pristine and wonderful until the cracks begin to appear and everything is not quite as perfect as it originally seemed.
The writing is eloquent and descriptive. The characterization is well done with a cast of characters that are distressed, vulnerable, and sympathetic, and a setting, Charcombe Park, that is a character itself with its history, grandeur, isolation, and multitude of secrets. And the plot uses a past/present, back-and-forth style to create tension and suspense as it quickly unravels all the personalities, relationships, behaviours, and motivations within it.
Overall, The Winter Secret is a clever, haunting, absorbing novel that swept me away to a country estate marred by both cruelty and love and immersed me in a story rife with deception and obsession.
Top reviews from other countries
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in Canada on July 14, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars This was a gift. They did get it.
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseNot sure if it was any good.
- Leeds 26Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 23, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read
I have read all Lulu Taylor 's books and cannot wait for the next. Always a great page turners. Would recommend.
- Kate AdamsReviewed in France on May 3, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars Tense, well written psychological thriller
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseA well paced story, with a disturbingly vivid picture of a marriage where the husband exerts coercive control, with disastrous results. Excellent.
- sally whitfieldReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 2, 2020
5.0 out of 5 stars Good action packed story
This is the third lulu Taylor book I've read and am becoming quite a fan of her books. I must admit I raced through this one wanting to know how it would all end. There is two stories to this book like her other two I've read, I found Xenia story fascinating but I didn't care for her I found her very bitter although probably understandable under the circumstances. The one in the present centered around Buttercup was at first looking as though it would be quite predictable, also I guessed straight away what the secret was but it didn't spoil it for me and as the book went on I didn't guess how it was going to end.
- Ms. R. A. RowettReviewed in the United Kingdom on March 31, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Love
Format: PaperbackVerified PurchaseThis author has me addicted