Lulu in Marrakech

Diane Johnson, a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and three-time National Book Award finalist (most recently in 1997 for Le Divorce) is the author of thirteen previous books. She divides her time between San Francisco and Paris.

Lulu Sawyer arrives in Marrakech hoping to rekindle her romance with businessman Ian Drumm. It's the perfect cover for her assignment with the CIA: tracing the flow of money from donors to radical Islamic groups. As she navigates the complex interface of East and West, Lulu stumbles into unforeseen intrigues: a young Muslim girl, Suma, is on the run from her brother intent on an honour killing; and a beautiful Saudi woman, Gazi, is vying for Ian's love, leaving her husband in a desperate bid to escape her repressive society. The more Lulu immerses herself in the workings of Marrakech, the more questions emerge as beneath the surface of this polite expatriate community lies a more sinister world laced with double standards as well as double agents.

L'Affaire

Diane Johnson, a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and three-time National book Award finalist (most recently in 1997 for Le Divorce) is the author of twelve previous books. She divides her time between San Francisco and Paris.

A wickedly funny and observant novel about the delicate questions of love, death and money. 
 
Amy Hawkins, Californian millionairess, is travelling in Europe, to find her culture, her roots and a cause to which she might devote her considerable fortune. She lands at one of the finest small hotels in the French Alps - a hotel noted for skiing and its famous cooking lessons - and soon finds that Americans are not the flavour of the month in France. 
 
A few days into her trip, she narrowly survives an avalanche. Two of the hotel's other guests, English publisher Adrian Venn and his much younger wife Kerry, are not as fortunate and both lie comatose in a nearby hospital. Amy steps in as Adrian's children - young and old, legitimate and illegitimate - assemble in Valmeri to protect their interests should he not pull through, and in her innocence sets in motion a series of events in France and England that threaten to topple carefully built family alliances once and for all. 
 
Add one or two small affaires and soon it is, as the French would say, a situation.

Le Divorce

Set in Paris, LE DIVORCE is an alluring and elegant comedy of love and divorce French-style. Isabel Walker, a young, not-so-innocent, American abroad, arrives in Paris to find that her sister's French husband ('the frog prince') has just walked out. While Isabel embarks on her own sentimental education - seduced by gourmet food, antiques, existentialism and an older man - her sister's marriage disintergrates into bitter Franco-American wrangles over money, titles and a mysterious painting. With a sharp tongue and an ironic eye for the foibles of the Parisian bourgeoisie, the French art world and American ex-patriots, Isabel is a collector of experience, even those she can't control. Comedy veers suddenly close to tragedy as passionate jealousy, self-interest and artistic intrigue interweave.

Diane Johnson

Clara Holly is a former actress, beautiful, rich, and 'well married, far from her Oregon beginnings' to the renowned but reclusive film director Serge Clay. Anne-Sophie is a proper young Frenchwoman with a smart little antique stall in the Paris flea market and a wedding to plan. As the plot thickens they are all drawn into a cross between a modern Feydeau farce and a Kafkaesque nightmare, as their paths and those of a host of other characters intersect at the Cray's château. Despite murder, misunderstanding, hostage-taking and erotic encounters, however, le marriage must go ahead in the grand French style.

Diane Johnson

Books by Diane Johnson

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