Search results for ""Author Crystal Jeans""

A delightfully subversive and darkly funny new novel from Polari Prize-shortlisted author Crystal Jeans, inspired in part by Dickens'' Great ExpectationsIn the night, I slept with my head under a shawl, listening to the ceaseless low groans of the house, telling myself that my mother would never have sent me to live with a murderer or a witch or a Miss Havisham1924.When Anastasia's beloved mother dies, she has no choice but to go to rural Skimpole and move in with the Aunt' too fearsome for a first name, an outcast from the village who lives in a dilapidated mansion with two servants and an unruly pack of dogs.The many mysteries of Skimpole are irresistibly intriguing: how did Anastasia's father really die? Who wrote the extremely raunchy love letters she has found in the Aunt's bedroom, signed Big Willy'? And why does everyone in the village hate the Aunt so much?When some of the Aunt's friends from her youth arrive at the house, wreathed in cigarette smoke and an air of debauchery,

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‘An absolute *blinder* … so so funny and sexy. So excited now to read everything by Crystal Jeans’ Caroline O’Donoghue, author of Scenes of a Graphic Nature ‘A glorious celebration of queer friendship and all kinds of love. Funny, outrageous, heartbreaking and so much fun’ Kate Davies, winner of the Polari Prize ‘Hilarious, fresh and sexy, with a tale that takes the reader from Egypt to Hollywood’ Irish Independent ‘Funny, filthy and phenomenally good’ Matt Cain ‘Filthy and hilarious, this is a gloriously naughty romp of a read that also has something serious to say about queer love. I didn’t want it to end’ S.J. Watson ‘Perfect for fans of Tipping the Velvet and Gentleman Jack… a delicious and diligent piece of fiction that will provide you with enough great comebacks to last a lifetime… This is a delightful book I wish to fling at my friends with affectionate abandon' DIVA ‘By turns raucous and poignant, hilarious and shattering this is a wonder of a story’ Jess Kidd ‘This delicious romp is the sort of thing Nancy Mitford might have written if she’d been gay… wonderfully blithe, witty and moving’ Rowan Pelling, DAILY MAIL 1921: a boy, a girl, a moonlit midnight kiss. A terrible, repulsive kiss. Bettina and Bart have grown up as best friends, so surely they will end up together? After all, Bettina is young, rich, headstrong…. and gay. Bart is young, rich, charismatic… and also, definitely, gay. Any doubts are dispelled by, in short order: that ghastly kiss; a torrid encounter for Bettina in the school boiler-rooms; and an eye-opening Parisian visit for Bart. Society will never stand for it. What else can they do but enter into a ‘lavender marriage’ and carry on indulging their true natures in secret? As the ’20s and ’30s whizz past in a haze of cigarettes, champagne and casual sex, Bart and Bettina have no idea that they are hurtling, via Hollywood and Egypt, Paris and London, towards tragedy and bloodshed…

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