Billie’s Kiss - Elizabeth Knox

In the spring of 1903 a ship explodes as it docks on the island, drowning many of the passengers and crew in the icy waters of Stolnsay harbour. Young, strawberry-blonde-haired Billie Paxton is among the only survivors. Clumsy, illiterate and suddenly alone, Billie will not say why, before the explosion, she jumped from ship to shore, and so falls under the immediate suspicion of her fellow passenger, Murdo Hesketh, and his cousin and employer, Lord Hallowhulme, who owns the island – and has controversial plans for improving the lives of its inhabitants.

Gloriously inventive and vividly atmospheric, Billie’s Kiss conjures up a way of life hurtling towards a brave new world, in an enchanting novel that combines a strange, sexy love story with an Edwardian mystery, bringing together murder and eugenics, progress, prejudice and the loss of innocence.

Shortlisted for the 2002 Montana NZ Book Awards

‘Billie is an appealing character: sensuous, impulsive, and a bit mysterious. Sex and romance are rendered strikingly and erotically.’ The Washington Post

Chatto and Windus Random House, 2002. Trade paperback, 280 pages. 

Condition: secondhand paperback in very good condition. Some browning to paper edges from light exposure but otherwise near new.