Book Signing - Europia by Anthony Etherington

Description

Come in store at WH Smith Derbion and meet author Anthony Etherington who will be signing copies of his novel Europia.

Award-winning writer Anthony Etherington releases a gripping thriller set in an alternative Europe that has chilling parallels with our world today.

Caradea, Eastern Europe, Spring 2030. Marta Ionescu, thirty-four and single, lives alone on the run-down Goval estate. She has good friends, a secure job and runs a popular youth club. But with her elderly mother growing increasingly fragile and her boyfriend, Arpad, frequently absent and drinking heavily, Marta’s optimism is fading fast. Worse, she has discovered a series of photographs that suggest Arpad might be involved in sex-trafficking.

Her dream of settling down and having children in limbo, Marta decides to look elsewhere for the husband of her dreams. But Arpad does not take his rejection kindly and when Marta agrees to help newly widowed Michael Brancusi with his troubled teenage daughter Steffi, she sets off a chain of events that threatens the people and things she loves and, ultimately, her own life.

A former shop manager, mental nurse, recruitment & development specialist and drummer, Anthony Etherington has written several teleplay pilots and audio plays as well as three feature length dramas. One of these, Yellow Dragon and the Red Fox, won Best Screenplay awards at the European Independent Film Festival and The International Film Festival of Wales in 2014. Two of his short scripts – Flotsam and Gemma’s War – have been filmed and are available to view on YouTube (see hyperlinks). Europia is his debut novel.

Anthony says, “Europia was originally inspired by friends’ experiences of internet dating. Most made light of the challenges and risks involved, stressing the steps they took to ensure their safety. That said, despite some enjoyable and fun-filled encounters, few relationships that went beyond a first meeting survived more than a few months. Throw in the sexting that sometimes occurred and the process often sounded depressingly tacky and fraught…I decided to set the tale in the near future in order to explore, through the main character Marta’s eyes, where we may be heading. Three trends, in particular, play a part in her story: technology and its impact on relationships; globalisation and its impact on family life; and the debate around the future of the EU and its impact on people’s identity and sense of belonging, their hopes and fears for the future… With that little lot to contend with, it’s a good job Marta turns out to be a pretty tough individual!”