Laure, seventeen, beautiful and already abandoned twice in her young life. Once by the glamorous mother she can barely remember, a woman who brought shame on the St Lazare family name and fled to America; and then again by a handsome soldier who left her pregnant and alone, facing the wrath of her grandmother. Améline, caught in a world where she's neither servant nor mistress, trapped between the St Lazare family she's always worked for and the simmering hostility of a country on the verge of meltdown. With a past she knows nothing about and no family of her own, she yearns to find a place that can be home. Melanie, the rock star's daughter who has everything money can buy except the love she craves. A daddy's girl caught in a whirl of damaging relationships, testing those closest to her. In one man, she sees the chance to change her life forever, but at what price?

Three girls in search of a missing piece of their lives; three girls who will change their worlds to find it. In a story that begins in the relentless heat of a Haitian summer and sweeps through the luxury of America's elite to the colourful chaos of East End London, BITTER CHOCOLATE is a glorious tale of the quest for love, marriage and finding a place to belong. All-consuming, irresistible and utterly captivating, it illustrates why Lesley Lokko is one of the most exciting contemporary authors of the moment.