What the books are about

Specimen days

Specimen Days is a novel made up of three linked visionary narratives about the relationship between man and machine. The first narrative, a ghost story set at the height of the Industrial Revolution, tells the story of man-eating machines. An ecstatic boy, barely embodied in the physical world, speaks in the voice of the great visionary poet Walt Whitman. In part two, a noir thriller set in the early years of our current century, the city is at threat from maniacal bombers, while the third and last part plays with the sci-fi genre, taking our characters centuries into the future.

Ports of call

Ossyane, a young Lebanese man and his Jewish wife Clara return to live in Haifa after World War II. Just as war breaks out in the new-born state of Israel, Ossayne is forced to go to Beirut. The border with Israel closes behind him and he becomes separated from his wife with tragic consequences.

Out

In the Tokyo suburbs four women work the draining graveyard shift at a boxed-lunch factory. Burdened with chores and heavy debts and isolated from husbands and children, they all secretly dream of a way out of their dead-end lives. A young mother among them finally cracks and strangles her philandering, gambling husband then confesses her crime to Masako, the closest of her colleagues. For reasons of her own, Masako agrees to assist her friend and seeks the help of the other co-workers to dismember and dispose of the body. The body parts are discovered, the police start asking questions, but the women have far more dangerous enemies...

Diary of a married call girl

The witty, sexy sequel to Tracy Quan’s bestselling Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl. Like everyone, Nancy finds that as life goes on, she has to adapt. She’s learning to hone her respectable image as the wife of investment banker Matt, cooking fashionable meals and taking his shirts to the cleaners, while turning a few tricks on the side. Volume is down, but the sex is kinkier. And she finds herself pulled into the discreet subculture of the married call girl. Some women’s husband’s know what they do, some don’t, and some ‘know, but don’t know’. Nancy’s is in the dark, although her best friend Allison’s increasing presence in the media spotlight threatens to expose Nancy’s secret.

Confessions ...

All that you ever wanted to know — and never imagined — about what goes on behind-the-scenes at one of the world’s most prestigious plastic surgeon’s office. Cap Lesesne, one of the world’s most sought-after and respected cosmetic surgeons, has seen them all. He’s worked on queens, models, executives and housewives, turned a man into Elvis, been threatened by a Venezuelan oil magnate whose penis turned black and has been asked to implant breasts onto a transexual’s back. In this timely part-autobiography, part-expose, Cap reveals what life is like as the fairy-godfather with a scalpel, what it is that drives people to go under the surgeon’s knife.