Book Club Chat plus signed Book by Jacquie Byron

ABOUT HAPPY HOUR

A love story between one woman, two dogs and the family next door, Happy Hour centres on Franny Calderwood, a flamboyant and fabulously prickly widow who loves her dogs, her privacy and her cocktail hour in equal measure.

Having lost her husband Frank in tragic circumstances three years earlier, sixty-five-year-old Franny copes the only way she knows how, by removing herself completely from the life she had before.

Her world of decadent seclusion is upended, however, when a troubled family moves in next door. Against her better judgement she is seduced into the lives of the Salernos – single mother, teenage daughter and eight-year-old son – and the trio falls hard for her in return. But Franny’s wise-cracking and worldly veneer hides considerable trauma and pain.

When her eccentric behaviour has life-threatening consequences, Franny must face a reckoning of sorts. Yes, Frank is dead, but did the woman he loved have to die with him?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jacquie Byron was born in Melbourne and, in this post-pandemic, travel-restricted world, she will most likely die there. Her home includes treasured items, including her Irish dancing costume and her Scottish whisky collection.

A journalism graduate from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Byron’s work has taken her from the world of pop divas and jewellery designers to light commercial vehicles and Ugandan IDP camps. In 2015 she was awarded a Glenfern Fellowship and in 2016 her work, Trouble Sleeping, received a Highly Commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript.

Happy Hour is her debut novel. Whisky is her first cairn terrier.