Tree of Pearls

Scintillating comic-romantic thriller, a finale to Louisa’s fab Egyptian trilogy: what life will Angeline choose?

The final volume in the Angeline Gower trilogy, following ‘Baby Love’ and ‘Desiring Cairo’.

Our angel is back. Angeline Gower is back home in Britain, back safe, back in her own bath. And, right on cue, that’s when trouble arrives, back for another bout with her. But this time she’s going to see it off for good….

There’s trouble in the form of her nemesis, her Russian roulette – wiseguy wideboy Eddie: he’s on the loose again, and who would the police send out to Egypt to trace him if not Evangeline? Then there’s trouble of another more painful, more joyful sort altogether: the trouble she has choosing between safe, solid, sensitive Harry, and hot, haughty, harmonious Sa’id. So, out among the sensuous wonders of Luxor, on the mobile and on the hoof, our angel shimmies and swerves with all her ex-belly dancer’s supple style through a series of emotional chicanes. Now and again, in a particularly tight corner, she spins off, but she always regains control and surges forward to seize the life and future she deserves for those she loves and, triumphantly, for herself.

Reviews

Praise for Louisa Young’s trilogy:

‘Spectacularly worth reading.’ The Times

‘Tough, tender, sexy, funny.’ Esther Freud

‘Hits an all too rare note of intelligent escapism.’ She

‘Streetwise and literate.’ Options

‘Wry, perky, entertaining.’ Observer

‘Engaging, wise-cracking, likeable, brilliantly sustained…funny, humane and utterly readable.’ Good Housekeeping

About the author

Louisa Young was a journalist for some years. Her first book was A Great Task of Happiness (1995), the life of Kathleen Bruce, her grandmother, the sculptor and wife of Scott of the Antarctic. She followed that with her Egyptian trilogy of novels: Baby Love (which was listed for the Orange Prize), Desiring Cairo and Tree of Pearls. They were followed by The Book of the Heart, a cultural history of our most symbolic organ. She lives in London with her daughter.