Джилли Купер — новинки

Set against the glorious Cotswold countryside, Riders offers an intoxicating blend of swooning romance, adventure and hilarious high jinks.
Brooding hero Jake Lovell, under whose magic hands even the most difficult horse or woman is charmed, is driven by his loathing of the dashing darling of the show ring, Rupert Campbell-Black. Having pinched each other’s horses and drunk their way around the capitals of Europe, the feud between the two men finally erupts with devastating consequences at the Los Angeles Olympics . . .
A classic bestseller, Riders takes the lid off international show jumping, a sport where the brave horses are almost human, but the humans behave like animals.

In Jilly Cooper’s latest, raciest novel, Rupert Campbell-Black takes centre stage in the cut-throat world of flat racing.
Rupert is consumed by one obsession: that Love Rat, his adored grey horse, be proclaimed champion stallion. He longs to trounce Roberto’s Revenge, the stallion owned by his detested rival Cosmo Rannaldini, which means abandoning his racing empire at Penscombe and his darling wife Taggie, and chasing winners in the richest races worldwide, from Dubai to Los Angeles to Melbourne.
Luckily, the fort at home is held by Rupert’s assistant Gav, a genius with horses, fancied by every stable lass, but damaged by alcoholism and a vile wife. When Gala, a grieving but ravishing Zimbabwean widow moves to Penscombe as carer for Rupert’s wayward father, it is not just Gav who is attracted to her: a returning Rupert finds himself dangerously tempted.
Gala adores horses, and when she switches to working in the yard, her carer’s job is taken by a devastatingly handsome South African man who claims to be gay but seems far keener on caring for the angelic Taggie. And as increasingly sinister acts of sabotage strike at Penscombe, the game of musical loose boxes gathers apace . . .

Sir Robert Rannaldini, the most successful but detested conductor in the world, had two ambitions: to seduce his ravishing nineteen-year-old stepdaughter Tabitha Campbell-Black, and to put his mark on musical history by making the definitive film of Verdi's darkest opera, Don Carlos.
As Rannaldini, Tristan, his charismatic French director, a volatile cast and bolshy French crew gather at Rannaldini's haunted abbey for filming, it is inevitable that violent feuds, abandoned bonking, temperamental screaming, and devious plotting will ensue. But although everyone wished Rannaldini dead, no one actually thought the Maestro would be murdered. Or that after the dreadful deed some very bizarre things would continue to occur.
Score! is Jilly Cooper's most thrilling novel to date.

'One truth I have learnt, as middle age enmeshes me like Virginia creeper, is that I shall never change-because my capacity for self-improvement is absolutely nil.'
Jilly Cooper's observations from her days as a much-loved newspaper columnist cover everything to do with sex, socialising and survival - from marriage, friendship and the minutiae of family life, to the tedium of going to visit people for the weekend, the str

Jilly Cooper's observations from her days as a much-loved newspaper columnist cover everything to do with sex, socialising and survival - from marriage, friendship and the minutiae of family life, to the tedium of going to visit people for the weekend, the stress of hosting dinner parties and the descent of middle age.
Entertaining and full of heart, this classic collection of journalism from the legendary author ex

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Etta Bancroft - sweet, kind, still beautiful - adores racing and harbours a crush on one of its stars, the handsome high-handed owner-trainer Rupert Campbell-Black.When her bullying husband dies, Etta 's selfish, ambitious children drag her from her lovely Dorset house to live in a hideous modern bungalowin the Cotswold village of Willowwood.
Etta's life is transformed when she finds a horribly mutilated filly wandering in the woods.She names herMrs Wilkinson and nurses her back to health. The filly charms everyone in the village, and whentests reveal her to be a spectacularly well-bred racehorse a village syndicate is formed to put the filly into training.Captivating vast crowds as she progresses from point-to-point to major races, she brings fame and fortune to the syndicate, until, at last, she is entered in the greatest jump race of them all.Can Mrs Wilkinson win the Grand National? And can Etta gain her heart's desire?

Etta Bancroft - sweet, kind, still beautiful - adores racing and harbours a crush on one of its stars, the handsome high-handed owner-trainer Rupert Campbell-Black.When her bullying husband dies, Etta 's selfish, ambitious children drag her from her lovely Dorset house to live in a hideous modern bungalowin the Cotswold village of Willowwood.
Etta's life is transformed when she finds a horribly mutilated filly wandering in the woods.She names herMrs Wilkinson and nurses her back to health. The filly charms everyone in the village, and whentests reveal her to be a spectacularly well-bred racehorse a village syndicate is formed to put the filly into training.Captivating vast crowds as she progresses from point-to-point to major races, she brings fame and fortune to the syndicate, until, at last, she is entered in the greatest jump race of them all.Can Mrs Wilkinson win the Grand National? And can Etta gain her heart's desire?

No picture ever came more beautiful than Raphael's Pandora. Discovered by a dashing young lieutenant, Raymond Kelvedon in a Normandy Chateau in 1944, she had cast her spell over his family - all artists and dealers - for fifty years. Hanging in a turret of their lovely Cotswold house, Pandora witnessed Raymond's tempestuous wife Galena both entertaining a string of lovers, and giving birth to her four children: Jupiter, Alizarin, Jonathan and superbrat Sienna. Then an exquisite stranger rolls up, claiming to be a long-lost daughter of the family, setting the three Belvedon brothers at each other's throats. Accompanying her is her fatally glamorous boyfriend, whose very different agenda includes an unhealthy interest in the Raphael.

During a fireworks party, the painting is stolen. The hunt to retrieve it takes the reader on a thrilling journey to Vienna, Geneva, Paris, New York and London. After a nail-biting court case and a record-smashing Old Masters sale at Sotheby's, passionate love triumphs and Pandora is restored to her rightful home.

Lysander Hawkley combined breathtaking good looks with the kindest of hearts. He couldn't pass a stray dog, an ill-treated horse or a neglected wife without rushing to the rescue. And with neglected wives the rescue invariably led to ecstatic bonking, which didn't please their erring husbands one bit.

Lysander's mid-life crisis had begun at twenty-two. Reeling from the death of his beautiful mother, he was out of work, drinking too much and desperately in debt. The solution came from Ferdie, his fat, fast-operating friend: if Lysander was so good at making husbands jealous, why shouldn't he get paid for it?

Let loose among the neglected wives of the ritzy county of Rutshire, Lysander causes absolute havoc. But it is only when he meets Rannaldini, Rutshire's King Rat of Rutshire and a temperamental, fiendishly promiscuous international conductor, that the trouble really starts. The only unglamorous woman around Rannaldini was Kitty, his plump young wife who ran his life like clockwork. Soon Lysander was convinced that Kitty must be rescued from Rannaldini at all costs, even if it means enlisting the help of the old blue-eyed havoc maker: Rupert Campbell-Black.

Abigail Rosen, nicknamed Appassionata, was the sexiest, most flamboyant violinist in classical music, but she was also the loneliest and the most exploited girl in the world. When a dramatic suicide attempt destroyed her violin career, she set her sights on the male-dominated heights of the conductor's rostrum.

Given the chance to take over the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra, Abby is ecstatic, not realising the RSO is in hock up to its neck and is composed of the wildest bunch of musicians ever to blow a horn or caress a fiddle. Abby finds it increasingly difficult to control her undisciplined rabble and pretend she is not madly attracted to the fatally glamorous horn player, Viking O'Neill, who claims droit de seigneur over every pretty woman joining the orchestra. And then Rannaldini, arch-fiend and international maestro, rolls up with Machiavellian plans of his own to sabotage the RSO.

Effervescent as champagne, Jilly Cooper's novel brings back old favourites like Rupert and Taggie Campbell-Black, but also ends triumphantly with a rampageous orchestral tour of Spain and the high drama of an international piano competition.

Into the cut-throat world of Corinium television comes Declan O'Hara, a mega-star of great glamour and integrity with a radiant feckless wife, a handsome son and two ravishing teenage daughters. Living rather too closely across the valley is Rupert Campbell-Black, divorced and as dissolute as ever, and now the Tory Minister for Sport.

Declan needs only a few days at Corinium to realise that the Managing Director, Lord Baddingham, is a crook who has recruited him merely to help retain the franchise for Corinium. Baddingham has also enticed Cameron Cook, a gorgeous but domineering woman executive, to produce Declan's programme. Declan and Cameron detest each other, provoking a storm of controversy into which Rupert plunges with his usual abandon.

As a rival group emerges to pitch for the franchise, reputations ripen and decline, true love blossoms and burns, marriages are made and shattered, and sex raises its (delicious) head at almost every throw as, in bed and boardroom, the race is on to capture the Cotswold Crown.

Set against the glorious Cotswold countryside and the playgrounds of the world, Jilly Cooper's Rutshire Chronicles, Riders, Rivals, Polo, The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous, Appassionata and Score!, offer an intoxicating blend of skulduggery, swooning romance, sexual adventure and hilarious high jinks.

Riders, the first and steamiest in the series, takes the lid off international showjumping, a sport where the brave horses are almost human, but the humans behave like animals.

The brooding hero, gypsy Jake Lovell, under whose magic hands the most difficult horse or woman becomes biddable, is driven to the top by his loathing of the beautiful bounder and darling of the show ring, Rupert Campbell-Black. Having filched each other's horses, and fought and fornicated their way around the capitals of Europe, the feud between the two men finally erupts with devastating consequences during the Los Angeles Olympics.

In Jilly Cooper's third Rutshire chronicle we meet Ricky France-Lynch, who is moody, macho, and magnificent. He had a large crumbling estate, a nine-goal polo handicap, and a beautiful wife who was fair game for anyone with a cheque book. He also had the adoration of fourteen-year-old Perdita MacLeod. Perdita couldn't wait to leave her dreary school and become a polo player.The polo set were ritzy, wild, and gloriously promiscuous.Perdita thought she'd get along with them very well.

But before she had time to grow up, Ricky's life exploded into tragedy, and Perdita turned into a brat who loved only her horses - and Ricky France-Lynch.

Ricky's obsession to win back his wife, and Perdita's to win both Ricky and a place as a top class polo player, take the reader on a wildly exciting journey - to the estancias of Argentina, to Palm Beach and Deauville, and on to the royal polo fields of England and the glamorous pitches of California where the most heroic battle of all is destined to be fought - a match that is about far more than just the winning of a huge silver cup...

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As a librarian, Imogen read a lot of books, but none of them covered real life on the Riviera. Her holiday with tennis ace, Nicky, and the whole glamorous coterie of journalist, playboy, photographer, was a revelation - and so was she. A prize worth winning. A wild Yorkshire rose among the thorny model girls, Cable and Yvonne, with a rare asset that they'd mislaid years ago... But the path of a jet-set virgin in that lovely wicked world was a hard one. Imogen began to wonder if virtue really was its own reward...

As soon as Octavia caught a glimpse of Jeremy in the nightclub, she knew she just had to have him. It didn't matter that he'd just got engaged to an old school friend of hers, plump, good natured Gussie; he was looking at Octavia in the way that suggested bed rather than breakfast, and she was weak at the knees... But Octavia was used to men falling in love with her at a moment's notice - it happened all the time if you were as rich and as stunning as she was. An invitation to join Gussie and Jeremy for a cozy weekend on a canal barge came like a gift from the gods. How could she fail to hook Jeremy? But the other part of the foursome was whizz-kid business tycoon Gareth Llewellyn, a swarthy Welshman with all the tenderness of a scrum-half...definitely not Octavia's type! And one way and another, he certainly managed to thwart her plans...

There was no doubt Bella Parkinson was a success: the most promising actress in London, bright, sexy - and hopelessly scatterbrained - she was taking the town by storm. Rupert Henriques, dashingly handsome and wealthy enough to buy her every theatre in London if she wanted it, couldn't wait to marry her...

But Bella had a secret in her past - and the one man who knew it was about to come into her life again... Rupert's sinister cousin Lazlo, for some reason of his own, was trying to prevent her marriage. Before she knew where she was, Bella found herself in real danger...

If Emily hadn't gone to Annie Richmond's party, she would never have met the impossible irresistible Rory Balniel - never have married him and been carried off to the wild Scottish island of Irasa to live in his ancestral home along with his eccentric mother, Coco, and the dog, Walter Scott. She'd never have met the wild and mysterious Marina, a wraith from Rory's past, nor her brother, the disagreeable Finn Maclean; never have spent a night in a haunted highland castle, or been caught stealing roses in a see-through nightie... Yes, it all started at Annie Richmond's party.

Sir Robert Rannaldini, the most successful but most detested conductor in the world, has two ambitions: first, to seduce Tabitha, the ravishing nineteen-year-old daughter of his arch-rival, Rupert Campbell-Black; second, to make the definitive film of Don Carlos, Verdi's darkest opera.

To this end he enlists the help of his charismatic French godson, Tristan de Montigny, the hottest director in Europe, who is capable of coaxing magical performances out of the most wayward and wooden prima donnas. As Rannaldini, Tristan and the entire cast insist on artistic control the recording is stormy. But this is as nothing to the ructions that occur when filming begins in Rannaldini's haunted fourteenth-century abbey.

Disgruntled spooks, temperamental singers and histrionic set designers are now joined by a bolshy French film crew, determined to pull everything in sight, particularly the tempestuous Tabitha, while all the women - and several of the men - are determined to bed Tristan. To their disappointment, he is only interested in keeping the movie on track - until he finds himself increasingly attracted to Tabitha, which Rannaldini will not tolerate. Then the news leaks out that Rannaldini is writing his memoirs, revealing dreadful secrets about everyone, and from that moment his fate is sealed.

Terrifyingly creepy and wonderfully mysterious, by turns wildly funny and unashamedly romantic, SCORE! is a thrilling novel. It is also a story about loneliness in high places, and heroism and passionate love triumphing against the odds.