Fates, Flowers

Sara Smith is one of the most monstrous characters you could hope to meet. She lives in Greenwich Village on Life Insurance courtesy of her late husband, but she has fallen into a dreary routine: work in a card shop by day, where she is the rudest sales clerk imaginable, and weary evenings passed in the same cellar bar night after night with the same old people. But when she meets and seduces a gorgeous boy called Steve, she has no idea what she is getting herself into. Neither has he. Neither will you. Imagine a John Waters movie filtered through Edgar Allan Poe, with a touch of Mark Twain and a soupcon of the old English comedy of manners... The funniest, blackest entertainment you will read all year, as bracing and enjoyable as eating chunks of dark chocolate dipped in whiskey! MATTHEW WATERHOUSE has worked extensively as an actor in theatre and for the BBC. He is best known for two years as a traveling companion of the BBC's 'Doctor Who.' This is his first novel.