New York Times  bestselling author Barbara Wood's latest novel  follows a disinherited English baron and a young New York heiress who marry and move West to build an agricultural empire in Palm Springs in the 1920s when it was just a budding town on the edge of the Mojave Desert. It's a saga about ambition on both large and small scales and the rapidly modernizing world as the harsh, sun-drenched landscape transforms from a Native American haven to the playground of Hollywood's rich and famous. Land of the Afternoon Sun  is also the story of a woman finding her own personality and strength in the West against a breathtaking desert landscape that changes constantly and shows its deadly side in poisonous snakes, flash floods and sand storms, with dramatic moments of forbidden romance, reversals, treachery, betrayal and, ultimately, triumphs.