A mother and son bound to a land of terrible beauty. A story that will make you smile and make you cry and perhaps make you wonder. Wonder at the joy of the dreadful power of nature at it's wildest, at the power of human resilience and the joy and the pain of a small boy growing up and at the strength and love of his young mother and their shared love of the land. Just three years after the Great War, in the remote Highlands of Scotland, during a terrible storm, Mairi McDonald gives birth to a son. Her croft, high on the moors, on the slopes of the golden mountain, supports her few sheep. The sour soil provides a scant living for her and her troubled husband Hamish. Callum, her newborn son contains all her hopes and the hopes of the tiny community of The Glen who have recently lost so many lives to the devastations of war. As Callum grows he begins to love this capricious land and its way of life as much as his mother does, despite its hardships and setbacks., despite heartbreak, tragedy and dangers. But he also begins to yearn for a life beyond The Glen. Mairi too begins to wonder if her beloved son will ever have a future beyond that of her own small and remote world. Can Mairi's and Callum's dreams ever be fulfilled in such tumultuous times and against so many obstacles.

From the author of the bestselling Seven Sisters series, Lucinda Riley's The Light Behind the Window is a breathtaking and intense story of love, war and, above all, forgiveness.

The present: Emilie de la Martinieres has always fought against her aristocratic background, but after the death of her glamorous, distant mother, she finds herself alone in the world and sole inheritor of her grand childhood home in the south of France. An old notebook of poems leads her in search of the mysterious and beautiful Sophia, whose tragic love affair changed the course of her family history. As Emilie unravels the story, she too embarks on her own journey of discovery, realizing that the chateau may provide clues to her own difficult past and finally unlock the future.

The past: London 1943. A young office clerk, Constance Carruthers, is drafted into the SOE, arriving in occupied Paris during the climax of the conflict. Separated from her contact in her very first hours in France, she stumbles into the heart of a wealthy family who are caught up in a deadly game of secrets and lies.

Forced to surrender her identity and all ties to her homeland and her beloved husband, Constance finds herself drawn into a complex web of deception, the repercussions of which will affect generations to come.

Note to readers: In the US, this book is published under the title The Lavender Garden.