Then an enigmatic Frenchman arrives on their doorstep. With the wisdom of nature, he slowly begins to heal the past and the present. But who is he? When Miranda reads about his past in a diary she finds in the cottage by the garden, the whole family learns that a garden, like love itself, can restore the human spirit, not just season after season but generation after generation.

Wise and winsome, poignant and powerfully moving, The French Gardener is a contemporary story told with an old-fashioned sensibility steeped in the importance of family and the magical power of love.

When an elegant French antiques dealer dies in her adopted hometown of New York City, her son, Misha, is astonished to learn that she owned a priceless, uncataloged Titian known as The Gypsy Madonna. Misha wonders how she could have kept such a secret from him, bonded inseparably as they were since his childhood in German-occupied France. Now with the discovery of the Titian masterpiece and the loss of his mother, he must at last journey back to Bordeaux to uncover the truth about The Gypsy Madonna -- and himself.

Celestria Montague always spends her summers at Pendrift Hall, the rambling, shabby mansion adorned with wisteria and clematis that has been home to the Montague family for generations. It is 1958, and the family is celebrating her father's fiftieth birthday at a lavish ball. The celebratory night ends in death and tragedy, however, and young Celestria learns that the family may lose Pendrift Hall. Her grandfather urges Celestria to play detective, to solve the mysteries surrounding the night's events, and to save the ancient mansion if at all possible. Her quest takes her to Italy's rugged and beautiful Puglia, and into the dark, cool cloisters of the Convento di Santa Maria del Mare. Here Celestria meets an enigmatic stranger and confronts unwelcome truths about her family -- and herself.

Sea of Lost Love is Santa Montefiore at her very best -- sensitive, sensual, and complex.