Mischief-Maker, or the Loathsome History of a Malcontent

A swooping, evocative tale spanning nearly fifty years, The Mischief-Maker is a story of ambition, hubris and retribution. From the sixties to the present, from England and Ireland to Italy and the United States, we follow the lives of a diverse group of people whose fates are inextricably caught up, whether they know it or not. No-one - not the government minister, the cabaret artist, the television personality, the forgotten pop star or the academic's widow - is immune from a certain malign influence. Secrets long hidden come back to destroy them. Someone who remembers all too well has known them all. The Mischief-Maker is a subtle, noirish tragicomedy, one which sweeps the reader along and creates an intense interest in what happens next, and to whom, and why. JULIA LACEY BROOKE read English Literature and Renaissance History at the University of East Anglia, later taking an MLitt at the University of Birmingham's Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. Now based in rural Tuscany, she is a freelance editor, teacher and lecturer. Her The Stoic, the Weal & the Malcontent, a fascinating study of the malcontent on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, was published by Tiger of the Stripe in 2013.