The Chase

''I often feel as if I''d gladly sell my soul to Satan for a year of freedom. ''

Rosamond Vivian has been brought up as a recluse on a remote island off the English coast. When Phillip Tempest - charming, devastatingly handsome and almost twice Rosamond''s age - mysteriously appears one stormy night he finds a peach ripe for the plucking. ''I am willing to pay for my pleasure if necessary,'' Rosamond asserts boldly, but nothing can prepare her for the life that Phillip Tempest will lure her into sharing with him.

Instead of the freedom she craves, Rosamond finds herself caught up in the strange past of her new husband. Terrified of him and all he represents, she flees, adn so the chase begins - from Parisian garret to a mental asylum, from convent to chateau. But Phillip Tempest has never allowed anything to escape him, and Rosamond has become his obsession.

A compusive tale of love, desire and deceit, The Chase was considered too sensational to be published during Louisa may Alcott''s lifetime. Its discovery after more than a century marks a new page in literary history.