Bronze »

The new novel from the author of Thinner Than Thou, Bronze is a brooding tale of love and art and dark ambition. When Jude Atkins hops a plane to be with a handsome artist she met online, she has no idea what horrors await her on the Carolina coast. Peter Benedict says he's a painter, but all the Benedicts are sculptors. His powerful mother, Ava, rules the family, and she has a secret. Peter loves Jude, but this is not the first time he's been in love. What happened to Dana, the first woman he brought home to Wayward Plantation? Why is his father so troubled, and what made his father's generation flee to the other side of the world? This gifted, troubled family has a secret Jude will learn only when it's almost too late. The old house hides a terrible legacy that ties the Benedicts to Wayward, where beautiful, dangerous Ava rules and Thorne, her hulking henchman, lurks. Now Ava is calling them all back...

Publishers Weekly

The cost of being a slave to talent, fame or fortune provides the theme for this exceptional thriller from Reed, an expert at creating witty cautionary tales (Thinner Than Thou). Sinister secrets lurk at Wayward, a South Carolina plantation, whose "doomed inhabitants," the Benedicts, are "caught in a dark globe of family obsession, terrible and huge." More than a hundred years earlier, Beauchamp Benedict's famous sculpture, God and His Creation, mysteriously disappeared en route to the National Cathedral, and now a centennial celebration is in the works, masterminded by the leader of his descendants, the maniacal Ava Benedict. The Benedicts have continued to awe the world with their sculptures, which, alas, require blood sacrifice. Judith "Jude" Atkins, a lowly jewelry designer, may become a victim, along with 11-year-old Edgar Benedict, the little brother of Peter, a painter who wants to escape the family legacy and with whom Jude has fallen in love. Seductive pacing and Reed's trademark glittering prose make this a chilling, satisfying exploration of art for art's sake vs. life for life's sake. Agent, Andrew Blauner. (Nov.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.