ARABESQUE
by M G da Mota
GENRE: historical psychological drama
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BLURB:
A woman living alone in a coastal Sussex town in 1998 plants a copper beech sapling at 3 a.m. on a dark, cold night. Why?
A ballet dancer in 1960s East Germany is oppressed, longs for escaping with his little daughter but not his wife. Why? Will he make it?
In 2022 Karsten von Stein, widower and principal of the Royal Ballet, with two young children, meets Ivone Benjamim, a Portuguese, newly-arrived principal dancer. They discover a magical chemistry when dancing and soon it transfers to their private lives.
Against the background of ballet and its dancers, a woman called Grace tells her story from a rehab centre. Obsessive, delusional she begins believing Ivone robbed her of the man of her dreams—Karsten. And then a skeleton is found in a garden...What connects all these people and their stories?
You’ll be the audience facing the stage of this balletic novel.
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EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT
I alighted from the bus at the stop in front of the Strand Palace Hotel and couldn’t help but glance back toward Trafalgar. The elegant stranger was nowhere to be seen. I tightened the scarf around my neck; it was cold, an icy wind making things worse as I slowly walked to the Novello Theatre to meet my friend Lacey. The image of the exquisite stranger still filling my head.
I was taking Lacey to see the musical Mamma Mia and we were having dinner first. It wasn’t really my thing, the musical I mean, but Lacey loved ABBA and my birthday present to her were the tickets. Expensive gift for my modest income but Lacey was (still is?) my best friend, always doing a lot for me though I think she often meddled in things that didn’t concern her. Nevertheless, I felt I owed her. I prefer opera and ballet. I try to visit Covent Garden at least once a year, sometimes more if I receive a bonus at work and normally purchase seats high in the Amphitheatre. It is all I can afford. But it doesn’t matter. The music sounds fabulous and I can see the people on stage well enough though it is impossible to distinguish their faces. From those heights they appear like dolls that happen to be alive.
I lived in Shoreham-by-Sea, a small, once fishing town on the Sussex coast. At the time this story began to roll I lived together with two other women, sharing a flat in a pretty development by the water. The rent wasn’t cheap but, divided by three, affordable. Bev, one of my flatmates, was employed in Brighton by an insurance company. The other, Glenda, had an admin job in a local medical practice and I worked as an assistant to a legal team in one of the town’s solicitors’ firms. I didn’t earn a high salary but it was enough to share the flat with the other two, travel to London to meet Lacey, visit Covent Garden for a performance once a year and spend two weeks holiday in Portugal with my brother Ryan who, having married a Portuguese woman, had moved to the country.
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M G da Mota is Margarida Mota-Bull’s pen name for fiction. She is a Portuguese-British novelist with a love for classical music, ballet and opera. Under her real name she also writes reviews of live concerts, CDs, DVDs and books for two classical music magazines on the web: MusicWeb International and Seen and Heard International. She is a member of the UK Society of Authors, speaks four languages and lives in Sussex with her husband. Her website, called flowingprose.com, contains photos and information.
LINK WHERE BOOK IS SOLD:
Amazon UK : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Arabesque-M-G-Mota-ebook/dp/B0D7CMSD5F/
Amazon.com: https://www.amazon.com/Arabesque-M-G-Mota-ebook/dp/B0D7CMSD5F/
Website: https://www.flowingprose.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/m.g.da.mota
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mgdamota/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margarida-mota-bull/
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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and CODE
The author will be awarding a $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner.
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