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SEX, DRUGS, GLAMOUR, DANGER
AND MADNESS-- The Big Sur coast is one of the wildest places on earth. On the breathtaking vertical edge of California, for decades it has attracted artists, bohemians, and libertines, including Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, Robinson Jeffers, and William Randolph Hearst. It is the land of Nepenthe, the San Simeon Castle, and Esalen. Abandon complacence, ye who enter here. This is the setting of Theodora Overton's brave new novel, Loose Diamonds. The novel is also set in the 1960s, a time of upheaval, with well-to-do young people discovering an array of dubious, dangerous, irresistible new pleasures, from cocaine to gun-running to nude hot-tubbing to group sex. Into this wonderland breezes Alice, a sweet nineteen-year-old college girl from West Los Angeles, whose antics have never gotten wilder than doing the twist at a sorority party. Imagine Alice's surprise! She comes to Big Sur with Tom Rhodes, her new boyfriend, who loves fast cars. Tom introduces her to his friends, a fast-driving, high-rolling crowd who live in a villa named Casa Dañada, high on a dangerous mountaintop. Suddenly the sixties begin for Alice--full throttle. Casa Dañada is the domain of a glamorous Italian named Pirrone Rivelli, who very well may be the devil incarnate. Alice is repelled by all he represents--his dissolute life style, his promiscuous disregard for his wife, his autocratic control over the household, his gangster cronies, his illegal schemes, his handsome arrogance--and yet she is so attracted to the man that she can hardly keep her hands off his body or her clothes on her own. The more she finds out about Pirrone, the more there is to fear--and want. Loose Diamonds is a wild novel about a wild time and a wild place. Full of suspense and intrigue, it is a roller-coaster ride through sweet dreams and nightmares. Anyone who reads this novel and shares her adventures will be, like Alice herself, changed forever. Theodora Overton is retired from a career as an art teacher and interior designer. She lives and writes in Pebble Beach, California. |
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Loose Diamonds 264 pages, paperback, $14.95 For ordering information, click
here or phone (800) 662-8351 |