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Drawn to the arts from a young age, Victoria studied ballet for ten years, played the piano and guitar, wrote poetry and stories. Always fascinated as well with the sciences and languages, she began college at SUNY Stony Brook as a Biology major with a minor in Russian, but ultimately got her BA in English. After graduation, Victoria spent thirteen years as an editor of science fiction and fantasy, first at Harper & Row, then at Putnam/Berkley, and worked with authors such as Ursula LeGuin, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, Frank Herbert and Philip Jose Farmer.

In 1982 she married author Eric Van Lustbader. For the next several years she continued in the publishing business as a freelance editor, but then began a second, decade-long career with The Nature Conservancy on Long Island and throughout New York State, as a fundraiser and Board member.

In 2001, Victoria made the tumultuous decision to become a writer herself. Her first novel, Hidden, was published in June of 2006 by Forge Books. Her second, Stone Creek, will be published by HarperCollins in June 2008. She is currently at work on her third. She and her husband divide their time between NYC and the east end of Long Island.]]> female 2157212 0061369217 9780061369216 21 <![CDATA[Stone Creek]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1210988426m/2157212.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1210988426s/2157212.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2157212.Stone_Creek 3.37 67 In the small town of Stone Creek, a random encounter offers two lonely people a chance at happiness.

Danny, a young widower, still grieves for his late wife, but for the sake of his five-year-old son, Caleb, he knows he must move on. Alone in her summer house, Lily has left her workaholic husband, Paul, to his long hours and late nights back in the city. In Stone Creek, she can yearn in solitude for the treasure she's been denied: a child.

What occurs when Lily and Danny meet is immediate and undeniable—despite Lily being ten years older and married. But ultimately it is little Caleb's sadness and need that will tip the scales, upsetting a precarious balance between joy and despair, between what cannot happen . . . and what must.

An unforgettable novel of tremendous emotional heft, Stone Creek brilliantly illuminates how the powers of love and loss transform the human heart.

]]> 218925 3.38 115 32 2008 1671232 0765354632 9780765354631 8 <![CDATA[Hidden]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1186630835m/1671232.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1186630835s/1671232.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1671232.Hidden 3.41 39 Hidden marvelously re-creates New York City in the 1920s, from the hustle and bustle of the Lower East Side to the hushed hallways of the homes of the rich and powerful. In graceful, eloquent prose, Victoria Lustbader presents a fierce, compelling story of loyalty, forbidden desire, and the end of innocence. </div><div>
The battlefield traumas of The Great War cement an improbable friendship between Jed Gates, scion of the wealthy Gates family, and David Warshinsky, first-generation American from New York’s poverty-ridden lower East Side. David sacrifices his family and his Jewish heritage in pursuit of his untamable ambition, while, in eerie parallel, Jed sacrifices his private desires to assume the burdens of familial expectations.</div><div> </div><div>David’s young sister Sarah suffers the torments of a sweatshop and hardens her heart to the brother she once adored. Jed’s rebellious sister Lucy becomes a nurse in Margaret Sanger’s revolutionary birth control clinic. Sarah finds a tender love in sensitive Reuben Winokur, an immigrant tailor destined to prosper in his new country, but Lucy falls hard for David, who belongs to another.</div><div> </div><div>Brilliantly evoking time, place, and person, Hidden draws readers deep into the past to illuminate the present. For nothing is more eternal than human feeling, and nothing more important to the human heart.</div></div>]]> 218925 3.38 115 32 2006