Fiction

Innocent Foxes

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“The thing you got to understand about foxes,” Dixie said, “is that they’re innocent of what they’re doing. They got no idea they’re destroying what they love most.”

Abundance, Montana, once a lively mining town in the days of the wild west, is now not much more than a ghost town.  Local girl, Dixie, a struggling single mother who has just lost her baby, tries to make ends meet while her feckless boyfriend Billy drifts from one job to another, always believing his next moneymaking scheme will be the winner.

Above them in the magnificent mountains surrounding Abundance, jaded Hollywood actor Spencer Scott conceals himself from the paparazzi on the ranch that has been his pristine sanctuary until the arrival of his obnoxious, nine-year-old son.

Then Billy puts into motion a plan almost too appalling to contemplate, and from which there is no escape.  As all four are forced to confront the brutal reality of the Montana mountains, so too are they forced to face their damaged lives in this moving new novel of loss and redemption from bestselling author Torey Hayden.

Overheard in a Dream | The Mechanical Cat

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TOREY says that although the story is entirely fiction, she wrote it to explore her own experiences with creativity. She had a very vivid fantasy life as a young child which started much the way Laura’s did in the scene from the book and it carried on well into her twenties. She says that also, like Laura, she used to “drive people nuts” when she was an adolescent by making up scenarios and characters and “testing” them in real life to see if they were realistic.

Originally THE MECHANICAL CAT was not accepted for publication in English. Now published in the UK titled OVERHEARD IN A DREAM.

In rejecting the novel, her publisher told her this was because the book did not fit into an existing genre. It was actually described as “too novel”. As a consequence, the book haSd its world debut in Sweden, followed a week later by the Italian publication and in Finland. Now published in Japanese, it has gone on to become a best seller in all four countries.

The Sunflower Forest

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Here is a treasure: an adult novel which speaks in the genuine voice of a 17-year old, while delving more deeply into her psyche.

Lesley’s Hungarian mother Mara – charming, childlike, lovable – was traumatized by her adolescent Holocaust experiences. Though her American husband and daughters try to live a normal life in Kansas, Mara holds them thrall to her moods and quirks. Lesley struggles to understand, but dealing with Mara is a severe strain which sets her apart from her peers.

When Mara’s psychosis results in tragedy, Lesley goes to Wales in search of her mother’s remembered joy, a sunflower forest.

Cathi Edgerton