PARADISE PRESS fine writing by lesbians and gay men since 1999

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Merle Elsa Wallace Though I was so tired I could not sleep at first, scenes of my journey passing before me, the mountains and valleys, and then my father cold and angry and heated and angry, tall over me as though I was a child again and able to stand trembling in my shoes before his rage;  and at last lying in this room full of my sisters and brothers in their clear colours, and Ferris's hand on my hair so strong and loving though she was the one I remembered teasing and tormenting me when I was small and I hadn't recalled her with especial tenderness, not like Given who always allowed me to play with her dolls' house;  and in this pale green room it was as if I was floating under the surface of a pool with all these bright beings crowded close about me, too many of them, too brilliant, healthy to an unreal degree with their dark smooth skins, black hair, black eyes, their shining teeth, their rounded necks and limbs, and then their voices in my head, this is better than letters, this is better, and laughing, cracked male laughter, and Dura's recital of ugly words and deaths and hells, and then my father's voice tamed by the soft Saiga vowels, those gently aspirated sounds that blow in and out of your mouth, which became the red-haired driver singing to the swaying cart as I came to Merle. A lesbian and gay fantasy novel, 19th century in style and set in an alternative universe on a continent which is a blend of Britain, Africa and North America. Allis, a young disabled woman is suddenly returned to Merle House, the family home in the country, after a childhood largely spent in sanatoria. On this isolated estate dominated by her autocratic father and with a mother who has withdrawn from her husband's tyranny, Allis is reintroduced to her older siblings and cousins, gradually becoming aware of their sexuality and her own, of the haunting of their uncle and of internal hatreds. Merle's only link with the outside world, where insurrections have begun against an authoritarian empire is the Saigas, the vestige of a semi-nomadic tribe of horse people. Resilient and vulnerable by turns, Allis attempts, not always successfully, to control her own life and make her own choices, discovering she is not the person she had thought she was. ISBN: 978 1 904585 04 6 500 pages paperback; £8.99 OUT OF PRINT

Elsa Wallace grew up in Central Africa and came to London in 1969 to live with the partner with whom she still shares her life. She works with voluntary organisations concerned with human and animal welfare. Elsa Wallace's short stories have been widely published and broadcast. Lord Hyaena is her first novella. Also by Elsa Wallace from Paradise Press: The Monkey Mirror A Short History of Lord Hyaena