Welcome to Sylvia Murphy's Books

Sylvia Murphy was born in Palestine and brought up in war-torn England and her latest novel Candy’s Children is based on many of the events she and her family lived through in those years. Her early novels (The Complete Knowledge of Sally Fry and The Life and Times of Barly Beach) were wry comedies based on family life but here she draws on a darker side of family relationships to relate what could have happened to a girl deprived of love and thrown out into the world to fend for herself. During the course of the story, Candy (Candice) Hargreaves bears five children to four different fathers, and has a habit of losing control of their lives so that by the time they meet up for her funeral most of them have never met each other. Candy fights her way from being a frightened and abandoned teenager in the fast disintegrating country of Palestine, finds her way to England where she works in an East End sweatshop sewing soldiers’ uniforms, then joins the WAAF from which she is discharged when she becomes an unmarried mother. Her later adventures take her to Hollywood, then back to London, and finally to a stately home in Yorkshire and marriage to a lonely, ageing Earl who doesn’t want to lose his only grandson.

"Candy's Children" the latest novel from Sylvia Murphy

Candy’s Children

A wealthy Palestinian businessman, a middle-aged rock star, an Australian university lecturer, a nun, and an English aristocrat – why are these five ill-assorted people meeting up in a stately home in Yorkshire?

They are the children of Candy Price, one time film star and recently dowager Countess of Penmore. She has been murdered by an assassin’s bomb on a mysterious visit to Tel Aviv and they are gathering for her funeral - an event that will change all their lives one way or another.

ISBN 978-0-9550512–1-0

RRP £10.95 + £2.00 p&p

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