Angel Puss

In this exhilarating novel, Colleen McCullough takes us back to 1960 and Sydney's Kings Cross, and the story of a young woman determined to defy convention.

Twenty-one-year-old Harriet, a newly qualified X-ray technician earning a coveted male wage, ignores her father's warning that 'only fools, Bohemians and tarts live at Kings Cross' and moves into Mrs Delvecchio Schwartz's rooming house.

There she discovers that Mrs Delvecchio Schwartz has more sources of income than rents. She casts horoscopes, reads tarot cards, and gazes into her crystal ball. But it's mute four-year-old Flo, her mother's medium and beloved angel puss, who captures Harriet's heart.

As she learns about men, love, and tarot cards, Harriet finds that following your heart is not always easy. And protecting those you care for most can be hardest of all.

Angel Puss vividly evokes the dynamism and passions of a Kings Cross that has gone: a world of artists, gays, intellectuals, transvestites and eccentrics, where everyone knew the Vice Squad, loathed wowsers and drank three-star brandy. But most of all, Angel Puss is the story of women's love for children, and the sacrifices a woman will make to protect and nurture a beloved child.

More books by Colleen McCullough