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  • Published: 15 November 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099541943
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $24.99

Billie's Kiss




'The Vintner's Luck heralded the arrival of a beguiling writer - Billie's Kiss is just as vividly written, and is an intelligent mix of history of relish for character' Sunday Times

With an Edwardian twist on The Tempest, and all the surprising, earthy and magical qualities of The Vintner's Luck, Knox's irresistible new novel is set on the remote, divided Scottish island of Kissack and Killing, one half of which looks historically and geographically towards Catholic Ireland, the other towards the Protestant north and Scandinavia. In the spring of 1903 a ship explodes as it docks on the island, drowning many of the passengers and crew in the icy waters of Stolnsay harbour. Young, strawberry-blond-haired Billie Paxton is among the only survivors. Clumsy, illiterate and suddenly alone, Billie will not say why, before the explosion, she jumped from ship to shore, and so falls under the immediate suspicion of her fellow passenger, Murdo Hesketh and his cousin and employer, Lord Hallowhulme, who owns the island - and has controversial plans for improving the lives of its inhabitants. Gloriously inventive and vividly atmospheric, Billie's Kiss conjures up a way of life hurtling towards a brave new world, in an enchanting novel that combines a strange, sexy love story with an Edwardian mystery, bringing together murder and eugenics, progress, prejudice and the loss of innocence.

  • Published: 15 November 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099541943
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $24.99

About the author

Elizabeth Knox

Elizabeth Knox is the author of five books, but The Vintner's Luck was the first to be published outside her native New Zealand. It met great critical and popular success, was longlisted for the Orange Prize and turned into a film in 2009. She is married and lives with her family in Wellington

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