April In Paris, 1921

(Paperback)

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Meet the glamorous, witty and charming Kiki Button: socialite, private detective and spy. We all have secrets - it's just that Kiki has more than most ... Sparkling, witty and engaging crime fiction - one for fans of Phryne Fisher and Julian Fellowes

It's 1921, and after two years at home in Australia, Katherine King Button has had enough. Her rich parents have ordered her to get married, but after serving as a nurse during the horrors of the Great War, she has vowed never to take orders again. She flees her parents and the prison of their expectations for the place of friendship and freedom: Paris.

Paris in 1921 is the city of freedom, the place where she can remake herself as Kiki Button, gossip columnist extraordinaire, partying with the rich and famous, the bohemian and bold, the suspicious and strange.

But on the modelling dais, Picasso gives her a job: to find his wife's portrait, which has gone mysteriously missing. That same night, her old spymaster from the war contacts her - she has to find a double agent or face jail. Through parties, whisky and informants, Kiki has to use every ounce of her determination, her wit and her wiles to save herself, the man she adores, and the life she has come to love - in just one week.

Playful, charming, witty and very, very entertaining, Kiki Button - the fearless, beautiful and blonde-bobbed Australienne - is a heroine to win hearts.

'Button is naughtier than Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher, as strong as Suzanne Arruda's Jade del Cameron, and every bit as clever as Susan Elia MacNeal's Maggie Hope. This thoroughly entertaining, delightfully witty debut is imbued with Paris' unique ambiance and will have readers eagerly awaiting Button's next adventure.' Booklist (starred)

'Lunney's vibrant picture of Paris, chock-full of flapper fashion and cameos of the Lost Generation, will leave readers eager for more.' Publishers Weekly

'Kikki Button lives by her wits, her style and an irrepressible joie de vivre' Sulari Gentill, author, A Few Right Thinking Men

Reviews

"This thoroughly entertaining, delightfully witty debut is imbued with Paris' unique ambiance and will have readers eagerly awaiting Button's next adventure." --Booklist (starred)

"Exhilarating and atmospheric. If you like unusual heroines that are the perfect mix of moxie and vulnerability, you can't go wrong with this one." --Criminal Element

"Lunney's vibrant picture of Paris, chock-full of flapper fashion and cameos of the Lost Generation, will leave readers eager for more." --Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Tessa Lunney is a novelist, poet, and occasional academic. In 2016 she won the prestigious Griffith University Josephine Ulrick Prize for Literature for 'Chess and Dragonflies' and the A Room Of Her Own Foundation Orlando Prize for Fiction for her story 'Those Ebola Burners Them'. She was also the recipient of a Varuna Fellowship. In 2013, she graduated from Western Sydney University with a Doctorate of Creative Arts that explored silence in Australian war fiction. In 2014 she was awarded an Australia Council ArtStart grant for literature. Her poetry, short fiction, and reviews have been published in Best Australian Poems 2014, Southerly, Cordite,Griffith Review, and the Australian Book Review, among others. https://tessalunney.com/