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The Goddess and the Gaiety Girl

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Katie King is a girl with big dreams for the future! A dancer in the heart of London’s theatre land, Katie is awaiting her big break, when her name will finally be in lights above the Gaiety Theatre. Fun-loving, cute and adoring of her charming boyfriend, the enigmatic Harry Carrington, Katie is sure that her unusual crowning glory of wild auburn curls will help catapult her out of the chorus line and into the leading roles she deserves.

But Katie’s dazzling smile masks a tragedy – she is desperately ill and her enforced absence from the stage means that she does not have the money for the private healthcare she so badly needs. A few streets away, illness has touched the life of another young woman with distinctive Titian hair, Larentia. She is nursing her sick father, the eminent historian Professor Braintree, and suffers similar horrors when he is diagnosed as incurable. Whilst brilliant and an expert in his field, the Professor’s books gain him respect, not money and they too cannot afford the surgery needed.

At first it seems that the only two things that the girls have in common are their astoundingly beautiful hair and a desperate need for money to employ the services of the pioneering surgeon Mr. Curtis Sheldon. However, the sudden death of the 4th Duke of Tregaron, a cad of the first order, whose unwanted attentions and lewd behaviour caused a naive Katie such pain in her first year in London, results in Harry coming up with a daring plan to capitalise on their short lived relationship. If Larentia agrees to play her part, and the new Duke, Justin Garon, believes their story there is just a chance that they can raise enough money to save both Katie and the Professor. But can an innocent young woman, with no experience of the darker side of life, be able to trick everyone? And what will be the ultimate cost of the deception if she fails? For this final curtain call Katie must sit back stage as Larentia prepares to give the performance of a lifetime.

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Author’s Note
Author’s NoteThe facts in this novel about Joseph Lister and his discovery of antiseptics are correct, as are references to the Gaiety Theatre. Arthur, the legendary British King of the Knights of the Round Table, has been a bone of contention among scholars for centuries. The 9th century Historia Britonurn referred to in the novel describes Arthur’s twelve battles against the Saxons, and the Annales Cambriae (c.950-1000), records the battle of Cambrian “in which Arthur and Medrant fell”. Alfred Tennyson further immortalised Arthur in verse, and I like to believe the French legends widely circularised in the 12th century – that Arthur never died but is waiting to return to save those who need him, when the world is overcome by evil. Perhaps that moment is not far away, when good will finally be victorious.

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