Pan Macmillan Australia - 2004
ISBN = 0-330-42134-4

I 've always wanted to set a novel in Paris during the French Revolution without the usual cliche of aristocrats tumbriled to the guillotine.

Why did things go wrong, I wondered? After all, when the Bastille prison fell, it must have been a time of great hope (just like when the Berlin Wall came down). So I began the story in 1793 a year before Robespierre's 'reign of terror'.

For my heroine, I chose a young aristocrat in hiding, a resourceful young woman who had acted in lots of plays in her father's chateau. For my hero, I created Raoul, a young man who has become a deputy in the new republic -- a man who sees things starting to go wrong. In the supporting cast is Charlotte Corday (Marie-Anne as she called herself back then) and the infamous Marat, a clever doctor who has learned how to manipulate the mob and turn it on the inexperienced government. Then there's a python called Machiavelli and a very strange lodger! Here's the blurb:

A novel of survival, courage and love in a world turned upside down.

        When Fleur, the hunted daughter of a hated duke, interrupts a murderous attack on an elderly traveller, she doesn't expect the dying man to generously offer her marriage and the chance of a new identity. Famished and weary of hiding from her enemies, she accepts, even if it means risking the dangers of revolutionary Paris to claim her new property -- Le Chat Rouge, a theatre-café in the Marais.

        Intrigued by the lovely new widow and suspicious that he has encountered her before, Raoul de Villaret, a deputy and member of the Committee for General Security, becomes Fleur's greatest danger. Is he determined to destroy every member of her family or will he compromise his loyalty to the Revolution for her sake?

        As political unrest plunges Paris yet more deeply into chaos, Fleur discovers even those she trust have secrets. In a glittering, dangerous world where anything can happen, can love survive?

Continue on to read an extract from this book.