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A lyrical work full of hope and children set in lustrous modern-day Paris. Fanny and Gerard fall in love in a way that surprises even them as their lives fill with good sex and loving companionship; but they long for a child to complete their happiness. Two of Fanny's lesbian friends feel similarly driven by the need to have a child. Jean-Marie is an internationally regarded professor of philosophy whose adoring students are willing sexual partners, but perhaps philosophy can't bear the weight of human emotion. When Gerard buys a beautiful old house in the suburbs, the disturbing contents of the attic binds the stories into an intriguing and darkly disturbing knot. Capturing the contemporary Parisian lives of an interwoven group of friends, this intoxicating work is written by a literary novelist at the height of her powers.
A beautiful man, and all she can do is tinker with his prose For Cassandra, an editor, books are easy. It's real life that's the challenge: it doesn't sit quietly and let itself be fixed. Right now Cassandra's life seems far too heavy on the suspense, while the romance is distinctly unconvincing. But that was before the murders started. And before she suspected that her own name was on the killer's hit list Murder, match-making and the dark arts of book editing: The Apricot Colonel is Halligan at her light-hearted best.
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A successful lawyer, bon vivant, loving husband and father, has a heart attack and dies while swimming in the local pool. A man apparently happily married, yet, with two divorces behind him and three puzzled children. In death it seems that he is not the person everyone thought. As his extended family gathers to mourn, secrets and lies unfold uncomfortably around them. Those pornographic images on his laptop? An unexpected lover - is he still philandering? But somewhere in the turmoil of mourning each of them has to find an answer to the question - who was this man really? What mysteries has he taken to the grave with him? Goodbye Sweetheart is a powerful novel of love, the desire for understanding, and the inevitable messiness of life.
'Why did Bluebeard kill his wives? Because that's what he did. It's a given. It's the plot. Until the lucky one, who is saved. The even more interesting question is: why did Mrs Bluebeard feel utterly unable to resist opening the door? Don't we all think, when it comes to these stories, that we'd have made it work? So much freedom, and one tiny forbidden thing. Not important, a token in fact. So easy to obey so small a prohibition. We think, if I had been Eve I wouldn't have picked the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, I wouldn't have given a piece to Adam. I and my progeny down the millennia would still be multiplying fruitfully in the Garden of Eden.' Life in all its ric...
A moving and eloquent novel that has confirmed Marion Halligan's status as one of Australia's finest writers.
A beautifully crafted novel about appetite, desire and murder from award-winning writer Marion Halligan.
If you can manage to simultaneously practice laziness and purity you will eat pretty well, because the food will be simple and good.' In prose as sensuous and seductive as a fine wine and a tasty dish, Marion Halligan takes us with her on a wandering journey into her novels, between past and present, across continents and on long sea voyages, with even a sojourn or two in France. The Taste of Memory has us sitting in gardens - or labouring in them - as well as at tables. And it celebrates the great oral tradition of cooks throughout time who pass on recipes out of the love of friends and food. The Taste of Memory invites us to look at the world and find it good.
All is not as it seems in the calm, well-ordered streets of the nation's capital. After the turbulence of their courtship, Cassandra and the colonel have settled into wedded bliss - only to have it shattered by a death far too close to home. A friend's daughter is found dead from a drug overdose - a tragic suicide. But when her unfinished manuscript turns up containing an explosive expose of the local child prostitution scene, suicide turns to murder. With characteristic panache, much reading between the lines, and a magnificent wardrobe of women's clothes (his), Cassandra and her colonel set out to find the truth in this eagerly awaited sequel to The Apricot Colonel.
When a man is brutally murdered, the social structure of have and have nots collide.