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Jackie Collins' scandalous new novel

The best-selling author is back with beloved character Lucky Santangelo

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Jackie Collins on her latest
June 26: The author tells TODAY host Matt Lauer about “Drop Dead Beautiful,”  its main character, Lucky, and her next sizzling series.

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TODAY
updated 4:40 p.m. ET June 25, 2007

The best-selling author Jackie Collins returns with her 25th fabulous novel, “Drop Dead Beautiful,” and her most beloved character Lucky Santangelo is back with a vengeance!

She's still every bit as strong, sexy and seductive! But Lucky is older and wiser and hot to reclaim her power position in Las Vegas. However, a deadly enemy from her past has resurfaced — a person determined to take everything from her, including the family she holds so dear: Two sons and an out-of-control teenage daughter who is just as outrageous as Lucky herself. What can we say, like mother like daughter. And if that old saying holds true, it's going to be one wild ride.

Get ready for the scandalously scintillating read that only Jackie Collins can deliver! Here's an excerpt from her new novel:


Chapter 1
Drop Dead Beautiful. The three little words were scrawled on the Cartier card Lucky Santangelo had just opened. Hand-delivered, the note had been brought up to the house in Bel Air by Philippe, her houseman, who’d discovered it in the mailbox at the end of the driveway.

Drop Dead Beautiful. No signature, no return address.

Was it an invitation to an upcoming event too clever for its own good?

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Whatever. One quick glance at the card, and Lucky tossed it in the trash.

Lucky Santangelo. A dangerously seductive woman with blacker-than-night eyes, full sensuous lips, a tangle of long jet-black hair, deep olive skin, and a lithe body. Wherever she went, Lucky still brought a room to a standstill, for not only was she wildly beautiful, she was also a powerhouse — a woman to be reckoned with, a force of nature. Street-smart and forever savvy — Lucky Santangelo had it all.

In her past, she’d built hotels in Vegas, owned a major movie studio, and been married three times. She’d also survived much heartache. Her mother, Maria, had been murdered when she was five years old. Her brother, Dario, was shot to death and tossed from a moving car. Then finally her fiancé, Marco, was gunned down in the parking lot of her Vegas hotel.

Eventually Lucky had found out that the man who’d ordered the brutal killings was her godfather, Enzio Bonnatti, a man she had always respected and trusted.

The information devastated her. Filled with vengeance, she’d lured Enzio into a carefully planned trap at his home, and shot him dead with his own gun, claiming that he’d tried to rape her. It was deemed a clear-cut case of self-defense.

Self-defense. Sure. She’d made it look like Bonnatti had been about to rape her, and the D.A. had bought it all the way. No surprise there. Her father, Gino, had major connections.

The real truth was that she’d shot the son of a bitch because he’d deserved to die, and she’d never regretted doing so. Justice had taken place. Santangelo justice.

Don’t fuck with a Santangelo — the family motto.

Grabbing her purse from a shelf in the luxurious dressing room, Lucky headed for the door. Everything was large and luxurious in Bel-Air — the privileged enclave of the very rich and famous. The house she and her husband, Lennie, were living in was a short-term rental. Recent storms had wreaked havoc on their home in Malibu and they’d been forced to leave while repairs were being made.

The beach was more her style. Bel-Air was too cut off from real life with its winding hillside streets and enormous mansions hidden behind vast gates and high walls of impenetrable greenery. People existed as if they were living under siege, surrounded by multiple security guards and vicious attack dogs. That way of living was not for her. She enjoyed feeling unprotected and free, which was one of the reasons she’d opted out of running Panther Studios several years earlier.