Back of Book Blurb:
The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solution is about a couple experiencing a crisis. The husband, Lyndon, loses his job as editor of a financial magazine. Neither are happy with aging. Lyndon has gotten by with charm and frozen emotions.
The wife, Margaux, has no idea how angry she is with him for his detachment. It is her idea to sell the house and just travel. But he is not coping well with retirement, so he simply walks off a ferry in Australia and leaves her. He steals a cat (well, he steals an expensive SUV that happens to have a cat onboard) and he flees Sydney, ending up in Apollo Bay, a few hours south-west of Melbourne, where he falls in with a group of anarchists and punk rockers in a tattoo parlour, planning revolution.
Meanwhile, Margaux sits tight in Sydney with no idea of where her husband might be or what happened. She moves into the red-light Kings Cross area, befriending the owner of the hostel, a seventy-year-old ex-cop drag queen from Saint John, New Brunswick, and waits to hear from her husband.
When she learns that her husband is fine, she is consumed by wrath and she invokes the angry spirit of an evil nurse, a key player in the terrible Chelmsworth sleep therapy in which many patients died (historical fact). While Lyndon gets in touch with his original career ambition to become an artist and wrestles with anarchism versus capitalism, Margaux learns to deal with her rage.
A serio-comedic thriller about a couple who embark on an unintentionally life-changing around-the-world adventure, The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solution is about the meaning of life, healing from old wounds, romantic love at all ages, and how love and passion can make a difference, at any age.
About the author:
Lisa de Nikolits is the international award-winning author of nine novels (all Inanna Publications). No Fury Like Thatwas published in Italian in 2019 by Edizione Le Assassine as Una furia dell’altro mondo.Her short fiction and poetry have also been published in various anthologies and journals internationally. She is a member of the Mesdames of Mayhem, the Crime Writers of Canada, Sisters in Crime, The Australian Crime Writers, The Short Fiction Mystery Association and the International Thriller Writers. Originally from South Africa, Lisa de Nikolits came to Canada in 2000. She lives and writes in Toronto.
Praise for The Occult Persuasion and The Anarchist’s Solution:
After being abruptly fired from his job, sixty-one year old Lyndon fakes his own death and he and Margaux, his wife of 35 years, finally begin to really live.
Before they can come together though, they must fall apart first. Readers will thrill to Margaux and Lyndon’s respective adventures which include run-ins with Viagra pushing, cupcake chewing anarchists; a haunted tea party hosted by the demonic ghost of a sadistic nurse; wild nights at the glamorous drag bar Dames and through it all, the love of one very special kitty.
The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solutionis a very adult Alice in Wonderland with a dash of The Conjuring: readers will be smiling one moment and breaking out in goose bumps the next. As one character succinctly points out, “Things come to light in the darkness.”
Warm, witty, wildly imaginative and inspiring, The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solutionputs the “joy” in joyride!
Lisa de Nikolits is one of the most exciting authors in CanLit today and this funny, fearless new novel will not disappoint her fans. –Heather Babcock, author of Filthy Sugar (Inanna 2020)
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Her creative powers at a peak, in The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solution, Lisa de Nikolits, a sage wrapped in a cloak of language, offers us a crystal ball to gaze upon ourselves. With Lisa’s brand of camp and mysticism, the story zig zags, spirals with vortices, depths and explosive happenings as she weaves a story of magnitude - a disappearance and a demonic spirit to a punk rock tattoo parlour and a protest of such vision it plays on the world’s stage. You come to love the characters, you want to remain in the book, which seems to read the reader on the inside. We become part of its structure. The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solutionwill haunt and guide you long after you finish it. Lisa has written a masterpiece that firmly places her as one of the best Canadian writers of our time. –Brenda Clews, author of A Fugue in Green
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This cathartic and ultimately healing book conjures paranormal horror from historic events our collective consciousness would seek to gloss over, punk rock and rolling readers into a tumble of lapsed and bizarre behaviour that breaks a conventional marriage in two. As both players swirl into deep self-discovery, a supporting cast of eccentrics, gurus, bikers and a spirit medium guide the unceremoniously separated pair toward an intense crescendo where the forces of witchery are called into battle and freedom-loving values are jerryrigged to outlive life. –SK Dyment, author of Steel Animals
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Lisa de Nikolits’ imagination has a seemingly unlimited cast of colourful characters and she uses several of them to full effect in this, her latest look into her wonderous mind.
Like rows of dolls on a shelf, Ms. de Nikolits picks a few at random, dresses them up and builds a fantastic story around them. Less rotten than Rotten Peaches, less furious than No Fury Like That,The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solutionhas more fun than No Fury Like That, but has it's serious, introspective moments as well.
An Oakville couple having a mid-life crisis in Australia is the stepping off point of another off Ms. de Nikolits’ imaginative adventures, full of colourful characters and witty, but realistic dialogues about life, anarchy, capitalism and tattoos.
–James Fisher, The Miramichi Reader
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Lisa de Nikolits has written another page turner—this time a novel of transformation—with especially captivating secondary characters, including a large affectionate Maine Coon cat. Addictive—and a joy to read. –Elizabeth Greene, author of A Season Among Psychics
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“Lisa de Nikolits has penned a taut, tight thriller involving domestic disputes, death and a wonderfully jarring book title. Along the way there’s a stolen cat, a suspicious boating accident in Sydney Harbour, Australia, assorted crimes and a slew of quirky, compelling characters that will keep you reading. If you’re a fan of off-beat mysteries with a dash of dark humour, this novel is for you.”
-Nate Hendley, True-Crime Writer, Author ofThe Boy on the Bicycle: A Forgotten Case of Wrongful Conviction in Toronto
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Lisa de Nikolits sets readers on a rollercoaster ride of clever twists and unexpected turns. The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solution is a lot of fun and filled with some believable, yet zany characters. It bounces between the viewpoints of Lyndon and Margaux, a retired couple whose marriage speeds steadily downhill after Lyndon decides to call it quits and runs off. It’s the ultimate story of marriage meltdown told in a style all Lisa’s own, and this one should be on everybody’s must-read list. –Dietrich Kalteis, author of Zero Avenue
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Be Your Own Revolution and steal back your world! Live your life to the fullest and be the person you want to be, not what others want! The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solution offers characters that are realistic, flawed and yet have redeeming qualities as, once again, author Lisa de Nikolits, gives us a novel that is unique, has many powerful messages and makes everyone wonder which way would they align? Some endings are beginnings and others are transformations as the journey for this husband and wife may just be beginning, if they see the sunshine and the light and let it shine in their direction together.
Freedom comes in many forms. Author Lisa de Nikolits takes us inside the mind of Lyndon whose ideals and viewpoints transform from capitalistic to anarchistic as he travels down many paths to find where he wants to be. The novel is presented from two viewpoints on opposite sides of this politically challenging spectrum. While searching his soul and living a carefree life, his wife, Margaux enters new realms hoping to reignite her own spark of life through spiritual enlightenment and tarot. A story defining family relationships, struggles, sexual orientation and acceptance. Would you trade rules and regulations for freedoms that have no constraints? Would you compromise your ethics and values to fit into a world that is foreign yet limitless?
With the final scenes, as you witness the protest and see and feel the silence that surrounds those involved as they created something peaceful, innovative and definitely making a statement, whether positive or negative depending on your viewpoint, Lisa de Nikolits makes readers think
about the many options we have to focus on, in our lives, how one man's actions changed the lives of so many others.
The final pages will either enlighten Lyndon and make him whole and part of his family or forever take him on further journeys to find the real him. Margaux too has to decide where she wants to be and if they can both forgive each other and themselves for their past transgressions and renew their hopes for their children and themselves.
Anger and resentment overtook both Margaux and Lyndon causing them to take divergent paths. The spiritual world in the form of evil nurse Nancy reminds Margaux that anger, when overwhelming, can block the true forces of salvation. When the same overtakes Lyndon, a protest rewires him as resentment fades and reality sets in. Anarchy/occult beliefs: changes with both, leaving them to decide on their final paths or journeys.
Take all these pieces and place them in a blender to create a smoothie filled with suspense, action, intrigue, deceptions, betrayals, unknown answers, family love, discord and change, plus an anarchist’s occult beliefs, and what you have is the perfect blend and recipe for a noir novel, a serio-comic thriller with five-star flavor.
Thought-provoking, this novel has a story that will interest discussion groups and create quite interesting and unique questions and answers. – Fran Lewis, Just Reviews
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Lisa de Nikolits takes you on a wild ride through the disintegrating lives of a husband and wife who are lost, figuratively and literally, in Sydney, Australia. Told from the alternating points of view of Margaux and Lyndon, the narrative rolls out in a kind of stream-of-consciousness that grabs at your heart. On their volatile journeys, they each encounter people who change their lives. Lyndon meets an aging anarchist who tries to save the world; a woman’s tortured soul reaches out to Margaux in repeated visions. In this unique novel, de Nikolits explores the lives of desperate people struggling to find meaning in the modern world. –Sylvia Maultash Warsh writes the award-winning Dr. Rebecca Temple mystery series and author of The Queen of Unforgetting.
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What a fabulous, gripping story The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist's Solution is. A hugely consequential and restorative story, written with an unerring ability to draw the reader so completely into the riveting landscape teeming with unanticipated and suspense-filled consequences. –Shirley McDaniel, www.artexplorations.
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Lisa De Nikolits’ The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solutiongallops off to a frantic start with a drowning off Sydney Harbour and a jeep and cat theft in Kirribilli. Margaux and Lyndon, a previously happy bourgeois couple from Oakville, Toronto, have embarked on an “Around-the-World-For-However-
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Prepare for a wild and wondrous ride! The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solution is a page-turner like only Lisa de Nikolits can deliver. Featuring a cast of memorable characters—including a functionally dysfunctional family of four; a Maine Coon cat named Queenie; a former punk-hacker-turned-anarchist barber; an olive-eyed albino cross-dresser; and the malevolent ghost of a former psychiatric nurse—and set in the picturesque (and sometimes seedy) Australian cityscape, The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist’s Solution gives fans something to truly sink their teeth into, from start to surprising ending. Mark my words: After reading de Nikolits’ latest tour de force, you’ll never look at familial relationships the same way again. –Ruth Zuchter, author of The Mother Suite
The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist's Solution
Thank you so much for having me as a guest today! I really hope your readers will enjoy the post and like the book!
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