> Skip to content
  • Published: 1 October 2007
  • ISBN: 9780552156400
  • Imprint: Corgi
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 752
  • RRP: $32.99

Pandora

A masterpiece of romance and drama from the No.1 Sunday Times bestseller Jilly Cooper




Love, high living, intrigue and a missing painting.

No picture ever came more beautiful than Raphael's Pandora. Discovered by a dashing young lieutenant, Raymond Kelvedon in a Normandy Chateau in 1944, she had cast her spell over his family - all artists and dealers - for fifty years. Hanging in a turret of their lovely Cotswold house, Pandora witnessed Raymond's tempestuous wife Galena both entertaining a string of lovers, and giving birth to her four children: Jupiter, Alizarin, Jonathan and superbrat Sienna. Then an exquisite stranger rolls up, claiming to be a long-lost daughter of the family, setting the three Belvedon brothers at each other's throats. Accompanying her is her fatally glamorous boyfriend, whose very different agenda includes an unhealthy interest in the Raphael.

During a fireworks party, the painting is stolen. The hunt to retrieve it takes the reader on a thrilling journey to Vienna, Geneva, Paris, New York and London. After a nail-biting court case and a record-smashing Old Masters sale at Sotheby's, passionate love triumphs and Pandora is restored to her rightful home.

  • Published: 1 October 2007
  • ISBN: 9780552156400
  • Imprint: Corgi
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 752
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

Jilly Cooper

Jilly Cooper is a journalist, author and media superstar. The author of many number one bestselling novels, she lives in Gloucestershire with her rescue racing greyhound, Bluebell.

She has been awarded honorary doctorates by the Universities of Gloucestershire and Anglia Ruskin, and won the inaugural Comedy Women in Print lifetime achievement award in 2019. She was appointed CBE in 2018 for services to literature and charity.

Also by Jilly Cooper

See all

Praise for Pandora

There is enough plot for several novels here (enough sex for dozens), all vividly conveyed in the author's excitable style... Her many fans will not be disappointed

Literary Review

A new Jilly Cooper novel guarantees a great summer for everyone... She tells a marvellous story with total conviction, and also hooks the reader from the first page. Her latest, an irreverant look at the international art world is full of fun and sex - and quite unputdownable. This is Jilly at her irrepressible best

Publishing News

Open the covers of Jilly Cooper's latest novel and you lift the lid of a Pandora's box. From the pages flies a host of delicious and deadly vices... Cooper's sheer exuberance and energy are contagious... Cooper fans will be waiting eagerly for the next novel

The Times

One reads her for her joie de vivre, her maudlin romanticism, her love of arty references and her razor sharp sense of humour. Oh, and the sex

New Statesman

Cooper is astute when describing the complex relationships between men and women. She's also on the nail when it comes to teenage-speak and can bring the English countryside alive more deftly than many literary stars... She's irresistible... Like Harvey Nicks and the promise of romantic dalliance, she frees you from the daily drudge and deposits you in an alternative universe where love, sex and laughter rule

Independent on Sunday

The whole thing is a riot - vastly superior to anything else in a glossy cover

Daily Telegraph

Pandora is a smart portrait of the venal, greedy and pretentious underbelly of the high art scene... Most impressive is [Cooper's] gift for crowd scenes... Cooper moves her cast about in ways that elaborate their characters, fuel the plot and ensure that set pieces are never boring

Irish Independent

Pandora is the best book Jilly has produced since Rivals... the action is priceless

Sunday Express

Triumphantly good

The Sunday Times

The prospect of Jilly's return, with a novel set in the glamorous international art world and promising "oodles of bad behaviour, intrigue, passion, tears and laughter", will surely cheer all but the most misanthropic

Bookseller

This is Jilly in top form with her most sparkling novel to date

Evening Standard