Baby Love

Description

Fast-paced literary thriller in which ex-bellydancer Evangeline's fight to protect three-year-old Lily draws her into the seedy underworld of her past. Evangeline is a single parent whose child is the daughter of her sister, who was killed in a motorbike accident. Evangeline, who was driving the bike, sustained injuries which put an end to her bellydancing career. She now leads an exemplary life, writing and looking after Lily. But when she gets into trouble with the police, she is drawn into the shadowy world of drug dealers, pornographers and bent coppers that seems to have bizarre connections with her sister's past. With a plot that makes you rush to the end, this is a thriller without violence, a romance without sentiment and a brilliantly exciting debut.

Louisa Young is a writer, contributing regularly to the Guardian. She is the author of an acclaimed biography of her grandmother, the widow of Scott of the Antarctic, A Great Task of Happiness: The Life of Kathleen Scott. She lives in London with her daughter. This is her first novel.

'Funny, feisty, sexy and tender' Esther Freud 'Intelligent, funny and tough, Evangeline even manages to pull off the remarkable feat of making all those Victorian virtues that one acquires in the course of single-parenthood -- patience, endurance, self-denial -- sound positively sexy.' Jane Shilling, The Times 'Blends a promiscuous mix of single motherhood, belly dancing, psychotic boyfriends and motor bikes into a stylishly literate thriller.' Marie Claire 'You will keep coming back to this book when you should be doing something else.' Louis de Bernieres 'Exciting, compelling and tense.' Time Out 'Funny and scary... with a memorable David Lynch-style take on Shepherd's Bush. In writing honestly and unsentimentally, Young celebrates the unequivocal nature of parental love with verve and style.' Julie Myerson, Mail on Sunday