Virgins of Paradise by Barbara Wood

Please note, the cover differs from the image!

'It happened on a warm, perfumed night that was full of hope and promise.  It was the night that marked the beginning of our family's downfall...'

On that night, Yasmina was born, in the magnificent Cairo house on Virgins of Paradise Street, home of the aristocratic Rasheed family.  It was the night her father did something that would haunt the family for generations and dictate the events of the next forty years.

This is the spell-binding story of those years; the story of the women who suffer the anguished triumphs of sex, love, honour and passion that are part of the daily tapestry of Egyptian life.

At the center is Amira, matriarch of the Rasheed clan.  Strong and proud, she will ensure that the blood-line continues, yet she will be haunted by a curse and by her vivid, disturbing dreams.  Alice Westfall, English aristocrat, will marry into the family, and take a dark secret to her grave.  Camelia will do the forbidden - and then reunite a lost and banished love.  Yet of all the women, it is the beautiful Yasmina, torn between two cultures, who will play the most important role.  It is she who must ultimately forge a link between family frictions - and between her duty and her desires.

Soft cover, fairly good condition.  598 pages, all intact.