Heather O'Neill – författare

A new deluxe edition of the international bestseller by Heather O’Neill, the Giller-shortlisted author of Daydreams of Angels and The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, featuring an original foreword from the author, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the coming-of-age story that People describes as “a vivid portrait of life on skid row.”

Baby, all of thirteen years old, is lost in the gangly, coltish moment between childhood and the strange pulls and temptations of the adult world. Her mother is dead; her father, Jules, is scarcely more than a child himself and is always on the lookout for his next score. Baby knows that “chocolate milk” is Jules’ slang for heroin and sees a lot more of that in her house than the real article. But she takes vivid delight in the scrappy bits of happiness and beauty that find their way to her, and moves through the threat of the streets as if she’s been choreographed in a dance.Soon, though, a hazard emerges that is bigger than even her hard-won survival skills can handle. Alphonse, the local pimp, has his eye on her for his new girl; he wants her body and soul—and what the johns don’t take he covets for himself. At the same time, a tender and naively passionate friendship unfolds with a boy from her class at school, who has no notion of the dark claims on her—which even her father, lost on the nod, cannot totally ignore. Jules consigns her to a stint in juvie hall, and for the moment this perceived betrayal preserves Baby from terrible harm—but after that, her salvation has to be her own invention.Channeling the artlessly affecting voice of her thirteen-year-old heroine with extraordinary accuracy and power, Heather O’Neill’s heartbreaking and wholly original debut novel blew readers away when it was first published ten years ago.  Now in a new deluxe package it is sure to capture its next decade of readers as Baby picks her pathway along the edge of the abyss to arrive at a place of redemption, and of love.

Original and bewitching rewrites of children''s stories and fairytales set around World War Two, by the Women''s Prize-shortlisted authorA cherub breaks all the rules when he spends one night with a girl on earth.Snow White and Rose Red forge a unique way to survive the Paris occupation.A soldier is brought back to life by a toymaker, but he''s not grateful.And a child begins the story of a Gypsy and a bear, who have to finish it themselves.These are old stories, but not as you know them. These are set not in the forests of Europe or fantasy worlds, but on the battlefields of World War Two and the wilderness of downtown Montreal.With her blazing imagination, irreverent humour and arresting prose, Heather O''Neill twists them anew: more magical for their realism, more profound for their darkness; captivating, witty and wicked.

''Joyful, funny and vividly alive'' Emily St John Mandel''The Lonely Hearts Hotel sucked me right in and only got better and better . . . I began underlining truths I had hungered for'' Miranda July''Makes me think of comets and live wires . . . raises goosebumps'' Helen Oyeyemi''A fairytale laced with gunpowder'' Kelly Link The Lonely Hearts Hotel is a love story with a difference. Set throughout the roaring twenties, it is a wicked fairytale of circus tricks and child prodigies, radical chorus girls, drug-addicted musicians and brooding clowns, set in an underworld whose economy hinges on the price of a kiss. It is the tale of two dreamers, abandoned in an orphanage where they were fated to meet. Here, in the face of cold, hunger and unpredictable beatings, Rose and Pierrot create a world of their own, shielding the spark of their curiosity from those whose jealousy will eventually tear them apart. When they meet again, each will have changed, having struggled through the Depression, through what they have done to fill the absence of the other. But their childhood vision remains - a dream to storm the world, a spectacle, an extravaganza that will lift them out of the gutter and onto a glittering stage. Heather O''Neill''s pyrotechnical imagination and language are like no other. In this she has crafted a dazzling circus of a novel that takes us from the underbellies of war-time Montreal and Prohibition New York, to a theatre of magic where anything is possible - where an orphan girl can rule the world, and a ruined innocence can be redeemed.

''Like Angela Carter, she is relentlessly inventive'' Sunday Times''Full of pathos, spirit and iridescent innocence'' Independent on SundayThe first novel by the author of The Lonely Hearts Hotel12-year-old Baby is used to turmoil in her life. Her mother is long dead, her father is a junkie and they shuttle between rotting apartments and decrepit downtown hotels. As her father''s addiction and paranoia grow worse, she begins a journey that will lead her through chaos and hardship; but Baby''s remarkable strength of spirit enables her to survive. Smart, funny and determined to lift herself off the city''s dirty streets, she knows that the only person she can truly rely upon is herself.

''Like Angela Carter, she is relentlessly inventive'' Sunday Times''Entrancing and antic and sensual as a dream'' GuardianThe second novel by the author of The Lonely Hearts HotelLonglisted for the Baileys Prize 2015At birth, Nouschka forms a bond with her twin that can never be broken.At six, she''s the child star daughter of Quebec''s most famous musician.At sixteen, she''s a high-school dropout kicking up with her beloved brother.At nineteen, she''s the Beauty Queen of Boulevard Saint-Laurent.At twenty, she''s back in night school. And falling for an ex-convict. And it''s all being filmed by a documentary crew.