THE RITORNELLO GAME. The first story in the Marlonburg Series.
Coming next: The Goldberg Variations
A family desperate for money. A child prodigy—the heir to the family fortune—missing. Riverview House holds many secrets.
Mark Newlin is a history professor at Gold College in southwestern Illinois. When tragedy thrusts him into a life he doesn’t want, well-meaning friends send him to a bed-and-breakfast on the river for rest and healing.
But Riverview House is not the peaceful retreat described in the brochure.
A nineteenth-century mansion built on the Mississippi River, for years it was the symbol of the Channon family’s prestige and their right to a place in American aristocracy. After several generations, the family has lost most of its money, and none of its arrogance. And the future of everything depends on one man. The heir to the Channon fortune. Whom no one has heard from in years.
Mark and his assistant Sean Merritt find themselves in the midst of an unusual family gathering. Against his will, Mark is drawn into the Channon family’s struggles. And as his concern for the heir’s welfare increases, he discovers the power to heal in the most unlikely place.
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To read an excerpt of The Ritornello Game, scroll down.
An excerpt from: The Ritornello Game
“For generations the people of Ashington Mills longed to see the inside of this house.”
Fia’s words stopped abruptly as she looked around the dining room. Mark couldn’t restrain his imagination. What was she seeing? The end of glory? Commoners filling the rooms that were her family’s alone when she was a child. Commoners dropping their napkins and crumbs on what was once her floor.
He felt sorry for her. Her pride blinded her and made her an unwelcome trial to those around her. But, to put it poetically, the place that once knew her, knew her no more. An awful feeling that he could understand. He couldn’t help being interested in the fall of the Channon dynasty. What it had been, compared to what it was now.
She pointed to the wall opposite them, where honey oak paneling rose from the floor until a wallpaper of gold and red took over, reaching up to the ceiling. “My great-grandfather brought that wallpaper from France. The gold you see in it is real gold.”
He looked again with open admiration at the work of the craftsmen who had done it, so engrossed in the story that the words just slipped out. “What happened to the family, Ms. Channon? Fia, I mean. What caused the loss of their fortune?”
She turned a glare on him that made him feel like a simpleton. “Nothing has happened to the Channons, Mr. Newlin. They have not lost one bit of their fortune. The Channon fortune is as great as it ever was.”
Something didn’t set right. Was she lying? Or had she exaggerated the glory days? Why would such a wealthy family have to rent out their home to travelers?
“Then who is the head of the family now? Just a question that any student of history might ask, of course,” he added quickly.
“My eldest brother John Christoph Channon was until his death. His son would be now.”
Would be? She was hiding something. Fia was choosing her words very carefully.
“And where is his son now?” He had a feeling the son was not Todd. Todd didn’t have the confidence of a man with millions backing him up. She was slow to answer so he rephrased the question.
“Where is the heir now?”
The cool hardness was back in her eyes, along with disdain she had inherited from her forebears. And yet, she answered him.
“We do not know.”
She patted her mouth with her napkin and ate the rest of the pilaf.
The river town that inspired the fictional town of Ashington mills in The Ritornello Game