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Flamingo Tears
The odyssey of a supreme court judge tainted with scandal: a brilliant female barrister, two women, one a pathologist and the other a lawyer, who run an underground little theatre, and the judge’s mother. They are privileged, comfortable and confident. The world about them changes. The sea recedes.
Lightning and thunder are constant in the background. Stories and rumours contaminate that which had been previously taken as a day-to-day normal. Confusion and tragic assumptions are made when the safety of truth is trumped by versions of something more convenient. All around them, fiction has become the constant fall-back against the unpalatable real.
Everything is perplexing and challenging. Though for all of them, there is something on the tip of their minds that they should be recognising. All is not new. Some things are being repeated historically, over and over again. They are acutely discomforted by the fact that the truth is uncertain in both words and intentions. They are out of kilter participating in a new version of life. An unreal version, that confronts and challenges them day after day: a challenging version devoid of rules or precedent. The points of the compass are confused. There is a risk, undefined, in making eye-contact. They have been thrust into a version of life that is not simply fake: they bleed too much, and know pain, and fear—or not! Is it all just a performance?
£9.99 -
Finding Handel
When the sixty-five-year-old Handel’s journey through Holland is interrupted by a road accident, he is nursed back to health by a hermit and a servant girl who both have deeply troubled lives. He embarks on an inner journey, recalling musical triumphs and failures, dreaming of his past loves, facing up to his faults of character and asking himself questions: why has he chosen Britain as his home? Why does he feel compelled to compose his final oratorio, 'Jephtha', in a race against time with his encroaching blindness?
His London friends realise he is missing and try to find him, led by his number one admirer, the artist Mary Delany, who passionately opposes the oppression of women and celebrates her own sexuality. Handel’s Christian faith is so badly shaken by a quarrel with the freethinking hermit that it threatens to prevent him from completing his life’s work. The novel takes us right away from the usual stereotypes of Handel as a haughty courtier or a comical foreigner, and into the mind of an intensely private and passionate man whose unique musical gifts are enjoyed more widely today than ever before.
£9.99 -
Final Settlement
Life during South Africa’s apartheid times had been idyllic for the white residents of a small village in the picturesque Nede Valley. Ken Chandler witnessed this when he moved there from England. However, he thought things would need to change following the abolition of apartheid and he saw that the nature and governance in the nearest towns and smaller townships had changed rapidly to suit the needs of the Zulu and Indian residents, but nothing had changed within the Nede valley.
How they were to maintain a “whites only” village was a major concern for its residents, but how were they to achieve this? Would it be amicably achieved or would they need to resort to violence? Eventually, change was brought about in the village, but not in a way that anyone would have envisaged.
£13.99 -
Family Business
Ben, 15, was difficult, withdrawn and liable to sulk and with the years had become ever more unhappy. His sister Jessica, 18, had become mother to him after their mother died of cancer, and Dad was most of his time in London running his import export business. Tom, 25, their brother has been a forever student and wants a last fling, skiing the winter in Canada, but as a fresh tragedy strikes all plans go awry. It seems someone wants them all dead, but who?
Ben’s psychological problem comes to the fore and Jessica, old beyond her years deals with that and the threats to both their lives as they hide out in the less populated areas of Scotland. At last Ben feels able to confide in his sister. The COVID-19 pandemic interferes with life just as Ben has found himself and new friends but Jessica manages him and manages to keep them safe to find new lives.
£10.99 -
Evolving Perspectives
This book has been split into three separate parts. You can read each part as a separate book. They can also be read in any order.
These parts share characters and events, so after reading one part, you will find additional insights and perspectives in the other parts. The order you choose to read the parts will produce slightly different results regarding how you will feel about the events that unfold.
The book is designed to be an easy entertaining read filled with interesting well drawn characters. I have tried to include a real sense of place for the two principal cities in which the book is set: Brighton, UK, and Sydney, Australia.
The three parts are as follows:
Connect – A cyber-thriller based on what happens to a woman who has her Facebook account hijacked and enters the world of hackers and the Dark Web to try and find who did it and get revenge.
One for You – A comedy romance that follows a group of single people who sign up to a speed dating event to find their perfect partner. Some of the dates that result from the event lead to true love, but others provide hilarious results.
Only Hope – A morality tale about a man who pins all his future dreams in life on winning the lottery. Has he wasted his life waiting for something that will never happen, or will he win and be happy as he always hoped?
£10.99 -
Everyone Follows Ella
Detective John Mathers must discover the identity of a social media influencer, Ella, who is driving vulnerable teenage girls to suicide, before his own daughter, Dawn, becomes their next victim. In a world where beauty is idolised, Ella offers the girls the chance to be as beautiful as she is; to preserve their youth and looks forever by becoming one of her ‘chosen angels’. Dawn is a shy, withdrawn girl who Mathers has sworn to protect since the death of her mother and who he does not want to see age a day. As he enters the girls’ online world, Mathers finds Dawn’s profile; a profile of a girl strikingly different to the impressionable innocent who hides in her room. He soon learns that to discover Ella’s real identity he must discover Dawn’s real identity. When the truth of Ella’s identity is finally revealed it will reveal with it a deeper truth of his own identity, and that of the daughter and life he thought he knew.
£6.99 -
Ese: The Misadventures of Moving Forward
Ese has comfortably situated himself into the consistent ebbs and flows of his existence, seemingly schooling life and cracking the code to instant success. All of that changes when he moves schools, becoming a big fish in a vast and enveloping ocean. Dealing with questions of sexuality, identity, love, crushes and finding a concrete path on the lonely road. From talent shows to scheduling conflicts, debates and romance, Ese goes through revelatory experiences in a hilariously honest fashion. Ese, with the help and hindrance of an eclectic crew, embarks on the messy misadventures of moving forward.
£11.99 -
Escape to Yackandandah
Two young ladies excitedly leave school just before Christmas to enter the work force. As teenagers, they do the usual things that teenage girls do. A summer rock concert in particular was a “must do”.
Then they disappear. No one knows how, when or where they have gone except the matronly police officer and two undercover agents.
The story unfolds with its twists and turns and things that we often experience in Australia. And, of course, some romance.
£8.99 -
Eric Bell
When Terry Ellis sees Eric Bell in town one day, he’s puzzled because Eric’s been dead for 18 months. Hoping to uncover the truth, Terry embarks on an event-filled quest that leads him to encounter a rich and varied cast of characters, each with their own story to tell.
Based in and around a small city in the far north of England, Eric Bell explores how, in a community where everyone seems to know everyone else, a man must find a way to disappear in order to save his family.
Shifting between past and present, truth and deception, and the uncertainty of memory, nothing – and nobody – is as it first seems.
Part-mystery, part-thriller, part-memoir, this twisting psychological drama examines the particular difficulties facing men losing their grip on life, love and ambition as time erodes previous certainties and the future looks hazy…
£9.99 -
Engulfed
My story isn’t the beginning or the middle. It is the end of the end. It was over before it could ever really begin. A tale of nothing and everything. The world stopped in a heartbeat. We were given a mere forty-eight hours. If that. It seemed cruel. Suddenly next-day delivery meant nothing, but getting ourselves to our family the next day meant everything. Those who weren’t within driving distance of their family didn’t have a hope in hell of returning to them to be with them. Those who did manage to get to them would feel as though the time spent with them just wasn’t long enough. Nothing was enough now.
A personal and intimate account of a young couple facing an almighty tragedy. Luke and Maya are still in the honeymoon period of their life, renting a small apartment, with their little dog Cassie; they are working tirelessly to save every penny they have to one day move into their own beautiful home and start a family. They didn’t see this coming. No one did. When the announcement for the end of the world comes, it is hard to believe, but with the world slowly grinding to a halt, Luke and Maya know that they have some hard decisions to make and time is running out. With less than forty-eight hours till the solar flare engulfs the earth, they are faced with impossible questions to answer.
What would you do?
Where would you go?
What matters most?£5.99 -
Ebrangle
Growing up without knowing about her true identity, Julianna DeGel came to a sudden discovery of who she actually is and who raised her. The innocent, sporty and clever girl got pushed into an unknown world by an unfortunate scenario; however, Julianna is determined to search for herself and her true power. Quick on her feet and highly intelligent, Julianna picked up the skills she needed to survive in her new environment in just weeks.
Not only did she reunite with her long-lost childhood friend, but Julianna also met a group of individuals along the way to resolve a murder mystery. The higher she climbed up the ladder of truth, the more overwhelming and complicated the situation got. Who can she really trust out of all the new people she met? Problems after problems, will she be able to fight her way through with her new power? Will she resolve the murder mystery?
£9.99 -
Dust on the Shelf
This tale of deceit on several levels is interspersed with historical and linguistic references.
As the second son of a wealthy family in Les Landes, a region of Western France, Bernard Gauthier is destined to enter Holy Orders according to an age-old tradition, now obsolete. His elder brother will inherit the rich property but Bernard has other ideas. He inherits some precious objects from his beloved grandmother. Does Bernard manage to free himself from the bond of poverty and celibacy required by the priesthood? What is the role of his formidable mother in all this? His interest in travel leads him to take a holiday in Australia where he is faced with an unexpected situation.
£8.99