Brendan has always lived a careful, constrained life. A salesman who never liked the work, he’s a man who has stayed in his marriage and his faith because it was what was expected of him. But now, having lost his job after corporate downsizing and on the cusp of sixty, he finds himself scrambling to somehow stay afloat in the only Los Angeles work on offer to a man his age – driving for Uber.

When one of his rides, a retired professor named Elise, asks to be dropped off outside an abortion clinic where she now volunteers, Brendan finds himself literally driving right into the virulent epicentre of one of the major issues of our time, engulfing his life in the process.

A novel of high suspense and considerable moral complexity, Afraid of the Light is a tough, affecting social thriller that speaks volumes about the corrosive divisions of our troubled times.
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‘Kennedy is skilled at zigzag plotting, blending domestic twists with turns created by global affairs’ OBSERVER

Brendan has always lived a careful, constrained life. A salesman who never liked the work, he’s a man who has stayed in his marriage and his faith because it was what was expected of him. But now, having lost his job after corporate downsizing and on the cusp of sixty, he finds himself scrambling to somehow stay afloat in the only Los Angeles work on offer to a man his age – driving for Uber.

When one of his rides, a retired professor named Elise, asks to be dropped off outside an abortion clinic where she now volunteers, Brendan finds himself literally driving right into the virulent epicentre of one of the major issues of our time, engulfing his life in the process.

A novel of high suspense and considerable moral complexity, Afraid of the Light is a tough, affecting social thriller that speaks volumes about the corrosive divisions of our troubled times.
__________________________
‘Kennedy is skilled at zigzag plotting, blending domestic twists with turns created by global affairs’ OBSERVER

Paris in the early Seventies. Sam, an American student, meets a woman in a bookshop. Isabelle is enigmatic, beautiful, older and, unlike Sam, experienced in love’s many contradictions. Sam is instantly smitten – but wary of the wedding ring on her finger.

What begins as a regular arrangement in Isabelle’s tiny Parisian apartment transforms into a true affair of the heart, and one which lasts for decades to come.

Isabelle in the Afternoon is a novel that questions what we seek, what we find, what we settle for – and shows how love, when not lived day in, day out, can become the passion of a lifetime.

Praise for Douglas Kennedy

‘The absolute master of love stories with heart-stopping twists’ THE TIMES

‘Kennedy is skilled at zigzag plotting, blending domestic twists with turns created by global
affairs’ OBSERVER