Butterfly's Shadow

In the tradition of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, a sweeping and affecting novel that takes Puccini's much loved Madame Butterfly as its dramatic starting point.

Langley's detailed descriptions of war blaze with brilliance

A compelling portrait of a man in search of his lost self

Beautifully written and vividly imagined, this is an impressive achievement

Lee Langley's big, ambitious new novel is a riveting read... and a deeply moving human story

A lovely novel... fragile and beautiful and so finely wrought

Her fiction often depicts an interplay of past and present, and here it is used to stunning effect

The style is graceful and deliciously readable, and the novel ends with an unforgettably eerie and moving image'

Lee Langley is the author of nine highly praised novels including Changes of Address (shortlisted for the Hawthornden Prize) and Persistent Rumours (winner of a Commonwealth Writers' prize). Her most recent book was A Conversation on the Quai Voltaire, a volume of short stories, poetry and journalism. Her adaptation 'The Tenth Man', based on a Graham Greene story, was made into an award-winning movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Derek Jacobi. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in London.

Lee Langley's bewitching story of lost hope and thwarted love opens where Puccini's opera ends; with Madame Butterfly - Cho-Cho-San - handing over her beloved son to his American father before killing herself. In America Joey grows up torn between two cultures, haunted, like his parents, by their memories of what really happened on that fateful day. 
 
But just as Joey's fate is inextricably linked with the country of his birth, so too is the fate of America, and both of their paths will ultimately lead to Nagasaki.

A Conversation on the Quai Voltaire

This lively, colourful historical novel, which hinges on the relationship between a master and his valet, invites the reader into its own Liaisons Dangereuses ......

A thoroughly enjoyable historical romp, well-researched, elegantly written

The novelist's own passion for and dedication to her subject translates into an easy - and enjoyable - historical romp

A novel of compelling power. Her habitually careful craftsmanship and sumptuous prose fit the elegance and high drama of the period

[Langley] brings Denon and his world thrillingly and charmingly to life

Langley's achievement is that her own fascination with him is shared by the reader

An effective historical mystery story and an affecting emotional drama

Lee Langley is the author of nine highly praised novels including Changes of Address (shortlisted for the Hawthornden Prize) and Persistent Rumours (winner of a Commonwealth Writers' prize). Her adaptation 'The Tenth Man', based on a Graham Greene story, was made into an award-winning movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Derek Jacobi. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in London.

Collector, adventurer and artist, Vivant Denon was a youthful courtier at Versailles; he lived through the French Revolution, and galloped across Egypt with Bonaparte. A skilled survivor, he knew everyone and found world fame without seeking it, risking his life and happiness in an endless quest, a love affair with art. 
 
Taking a real historical figure, his extraordinary life, his passions, his friendship with Napoleon and the Venetian contessa who was Denon's great love, Lee Langley has created a rich canvas that captures the dying grandeur of Venice, Robespierre's terror, the battle of the Nile and a dazzling liaison dangereuse, alongside a tender love story. With wit and imaginative invention, she brings to life a tumultuous period and a fascinating man. 
 
Living in his shadow is Baptiste, his servant, watching as his master, ever closer to Napoleon, fills the Louvre museum with treasures looted from the enemies of France. Denon's private life is also open to the valet's watchful eye. And he too has hopes. And secrets.

False Pretences

It is a tribute to Lee Langley's controlled style and wit that by the end you long to start the book again.

A stunning collection of short stories, each of which stands alone, yet is satisfyingly linked . . . Langley is a talented chronicler of the human condition.

A series of delicately fashioned cameos . . .  tantalising and satisfying.

Lee Langley was born in India and spent her childhood there. Her last three novels were set in India. Changes of Address and A House in Pondicherry were shortlisted for the Hawthornden Prize and Persistent Rumours won both the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Novel (Eurasia) and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Best Novel Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Teasing out the extraordinary within the everyday, FALSE PRETENCES is a contemporary novel in mosiac. Through the separate yet interlinked stories, it traces the lives of two women as they deal with the complexities of love, private terrors, violence and - most precarious of all - hope. There is mystery, wry humour, sometimes tragedy beneath the jaunty surfaces glimpsed through the years, until, by the end, we have encompassed their lives.

Lee Langley

A richly imaginative novel of love, loss, time and the rise and fall of a great maritime empire, that sends two thwarted lovers spiralling through the chaos of history. 
 
The story begins in 1429 on Madeira, when a peasant girl meets a boy- a Jewish outsider- from a Portuguese sailing ship. Esperança and Emmanuel know they must part when the ship sails. From that first meeting and parting, others follow... 
 
Emmanuel is in turn sailor, mapmaker, bookseller, jazz musician; Esperança an illiterate peasant, a rich girl in Faro and a clever, bookish recluse who confronts a murderer in nineteenth-century Lisbon. In twentieth-century London, Esperança is faced with a double incarnation, one of the true Emmanuel and the other a shadow. Over the centuries the couple face peril and tenderness. Each life is short. What survives is love.

Distant Music

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