Hearts Of Gold

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?

A SCIENTIST BY NATURE - he used his rational powers of observation to examine more closely the privileges he was born to enjoy - and the people he was raised to despise. A REBEL AT HEART - she followed her fiercest passions in the struggle to overthrow a legacy of hate - one that had poisoned her family for generations. ON A PLANET DIVIDED - between rich and poor, strong and weak, intellect and feeling, only one thing could bring these two opposites together: a strictly forbidden desire. For justice. For equality. FOR EACH OTHER...

Return to Dreagan for a special Valentine's story featuring Constantine, the King of Dragon Kings, and his mate… He’s loved her for eons, wanted her forever, and a day never passes without her at the forefront of his mind. The only way Con could pass the time as his fellow Dragon Kings slept away the centuries was to record his thoughts in journals: one for his responsibilities as King of Dragon Kings, and another for the object of his desire. Now that she’s finally back in his life and his arms, it’s time she learns the truth. He played a part all those eons—maybe a little too well—but he never stopped loving her, and his journal will show her just how much. But Con is the one in for a surprise as his mate turns the tables on him and leads him on a merry chase. If he can find her, he knows he’s in for something special. But then again, every day is extraordinary with his love by his side. And, thankfully, their future has never looked brighter.

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).

In 1939, Haydn Powell returns to his native Pontypridd as a star for the summer season. It is his dream come true, but is soon soured when he finds his family divided. Haydn seeks consolation with the theatre crowd, but is also drawn to Jane, a young waif lodging with his family. But Jane is haunted by poverty and burdened by bitter secrets. Then there is Haydn's childhood sweetheart, Jenny, who is determined to win him back. She tries to make him jealous by flirting with his brother, the hot-headed boxer Eddie. But it is Jenny's reckless pursuit of her own ends that creates a dangerous tension in a town already braced for war ...

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