The Half Life of Stars [Paperback]

" 'Great comic characters...and smart one liners' - Observer. 'An uplifting, original tale' - Sunday Mirror. 'A moving, often funny story of high stakes, lost love and finding your place in the world. Louise Wener confirms her successful career change from pop star to novelist with this impressive second novel' - Company. 'The highly entertaining story of Audrey's search for her deserting dad, her torrid affair with gambling and her friendship with Big Louie, an agoraphobic card master. Abandonment issues have never been so funny' - USA Today. 'Brilliant' - OK. 'Combines laugh-out-loud passages with scenes that make you want to cry' - Independent"

'An uplifting, original tale'

'Combines laugh-out-loud passages with scenes that make you want to cry'

Have you ever wished you could walk away from it all? Not for a day, not for a week, but for good. Claire's older brother, Daniel, has disappeared. He leaves work one Friday afternoon, shortly before Christmas, and vanishes into thin air. Married, successful, rich, there seems no reason why he would abandon his life. Has he been killed? Has he been kidnapped? Or has he just had enough? Set between London and Miami, this is the story of a family with ghosts to bury. It opens on the day of the Challenger shuttle explosion at Cape Canaveral; a tragic moment that rips this family apart and sets Daniel's disappearance in motion some 18 years later. In the midst of it all sits Claire - promiscuous, divorced, irresponsible; fluent in six foreign languages, yet hopeless at interpreting life. It is Claire that knows Daniel best. It is Claire who becomes convinced that she knows where her older brother is and sets off on a journey to find him.

Louise Wener was born and raised in Ilford, East London. In the mid nineties, after years of singing into hair brushes and working in dead end jobs, she found fame as lead singer with the pop band Sleeper and went on to record three top ten albums and eight top forty singles. She is now a full time author.