Hearts Of Gold

On a planet torn apart by class and economic divisions and feuding factions, a scientist and a rebel are drawn together in a forbidden love that could change their world forever.... Nolan uses his rational powers of observation to examine more closely the privileges he was born to enjoy—and the people he was raised to despise. Katrini follows her fiercest passions in the struggle to overthrow a legacy of hate—one that has poisoned her family for generations. Between rich and poor, strong and weak, intellect and feeling, only one thing could bring these two opposites together: a passion that is strictly forbidden.

Three women from very different backgrounds, bound by friendship, separated by destiny It was impossible, but in full view of the church, the Governor and wedding guests ... The bride had vanished. Some girls are born to be loved, some are born to be useful. Some girls are born to be bad. Indulged and wealthy Kat Fitzhubert is seemingly 'sold off' in an arranged marriage in a colony across the world. Lady Viola Montefiore is the dark-skinned 'changeling' of a ducal family, kept hidden and then shipped away. Titania Boot is as broad as a carthorse, and as useful. In the turmoil of an Australia in 1853 that reinvents itself from convict colony to a land of gold, one woman forges a business empire. One brews illegal poteen with a bushranger. And the third vanishes on her wedding day in a scandal that will mystify the world. In this magnificent and broad-sweeping saga, Jackie French defies the myth of colonial women as 'merely' wives, servants or whores. Instead portraying them as business women, farmers, bushrangers and brewers of illegal poteen, as well as arbiters of their destiny.

Trainee midwife Bethan Powell lives in the shadow of the workhouse during the Depression. It's difficult to say which is harder for her and fellow nurse Laura Ronconi - their gruelling work in the hospital, or the frictions and financial hardships at home. Bethan's Communist miner father, rigidly Chapel mother, unruly brothers and delightful but dubiously honest aunt, and Laura's vast Italian cafe-running family, cause the girls as much worry as any difficult case or strict ward sister. But working-class Pontypridd agrees on one thing - the 'crache', or gentry, who live in the big houses on the Common, may be just the other side of town, but they inhabit a different world. So when Bethan and Laura are smitten by two young doctors, can love really bridge the divide? Or is the pull of family too strong, the gulf too wide?

Goodness has nothing to do with it as a hard-luck private eye in 1940s Hollywood takes a case for legendary silver screen sex symbol Mae West. In the early days of talking pictures, the greatest sex symbol in Hollywood was the platinum-blonde bad girl Mae West. Naughty and gorgeous with a razor-sharp wit, West wrote her own material and controlled her own image—until the censors came in and outlawed the racy repartee that made her famous. By the forties, her star has faded and she’s banking everything on a scandalous memoir that she hopes will set the stage for a comeback. When the only copy is stolen, she calls in a favor from an old beau—the brother of wisecracking PI Toby Peters. When Mae West asks, “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?” you don’t say no. Peters arrives at a party at West’s house, where every guest is a man dressed as the woman herself—and one of them may be the thief who stole the manuscript. But before he can tear off the culprit’s wig, Peters finds that this is about more than theft. The crook wants to destroy Mae West, and he has murder on his mind. The star of Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky’s fun forties private eye series, “Peters is a good guy with a sense of humor, and every appearance he makes is a welcome one” (Booklist).

The final novel in Stirling's historical Patterson trilogy concludes the engrossing family saga set in 19th century Scotland. Elspeth and Anna Patterson have at last to face the disgrace that has stalked them since childhood. Driven from home by fear and shame, Elspeth and her baby find refuge among coal miners, where she becomes a harness-wife on the deep sea-coast pits of the Forth. Anna, cast off by her lover, Randall Bontine, sets out to ensnare a wealthy new husband. But Anna's ambition may ruin her life, and bring to Elspeth the fulfilment of the destiny that is her birthright...

A romance set against the background of the Australian Gold Rush Western Australia, 1890. Sarette Maitland is orphaned when her father dies of a snake bite on the goldfields. Rescued by adventurer John Kern, she takes the place of his own dead daughter in his heart. When tragedy strikes and Kern is killed, Sarette is introduced to Kern's nephew, Magnus, whose honesty and heart are tested when he discovers his uncles has left Sarette a considerable fortune . . .

Tales of America, adultery, football, incest, love, paranoia, sadism and Zionism.... Wickedly funny these stories may be, but heartless they are not. Disturbing images abound; like the loving family that feasts upon living butterflies; and other images that connect the themes with places deeper than the mind. The narrators are an extraordinary group: a berserk psychiatrist, a giraffe, a man with an invisible creature on his back, a Jewish private eye, a communist with a bowel fixation, and various other disillusioned souls. None the less, each story is lucid, concisely written and has a strong sense of location. In The Promised Land a diaspora Jew travels to Israel determined to plant his seed, only to find himself excluded from his erotic paradise. In Le Docteur Enchaîné, a London psychiatrist decides that he can only find satisfaction with a dumb woman and takes the remedy into his own hands. In The Luftmensh, Joshua Smolinsky, trailing a missing writer to New Orleans, becomes involved with ghosts from American and Jewish history. In A Moment of Happiness a Czech hypochondriac manipulates two tourists into providing him with 'that single 1/60th of a second when I am not afraid'.... Clive Sinclair has created a wryly alluring world in which the neurotics, the outsiders, become the spokesmen best equipped to deal with the hardness at its core. Like the surprising artichoke in the title piece, his stories have hearts of gold. "I found Hearts of Gold quite wonderful ... And all this despite my immense dislike for football, cunts and national movements of any kind. So it had to be a very good book ... and it was." Sir Angus Wilson "Evil, entertaining little fictions... Clive Sinclair is fluent, inventive, linguistically gifted" Victoria Glendinning, Sunday Times "Extremely sexy, wry, likeable, tortured, these stories crackle with talent" Jacky Gillott, The Times "Fireworks of all kinds explode in Clive Sinclair's first collection of short stories .... Hearts of Gold is remarkable" John Mellors, Listener