Mad Cows

by Kathy Lette

Overview

Washed up in London and trying her best to raise her new-born son alone, Madeleine Wolfe is looking forward to taking her mind off things with some retail therapy – even if her budget stretches to prunes rather than Prada. But her day out takes an unexpected turn for the worse when she is mistakenly arrested in Harrods for shoplifting…

Detained with baby Jack in Holloway Prison's Mother and Baby Unit, there's only one man Maddy can turn to for help clearing her name: the father of her baby and ex-lover Alex.

Things have been bumpy between Maddy and Alex to say the least – there's the wife and children he omitted to mention for starters. He's also in the middle of launching his political career and needs to protect his wholesome image.

But he won't let Maddy down when she needs him most… will he?

Praise for Kathy Lette:
'Fabulous, fast-paced, funny&unapologetically female. Nobody does it better.' DEBORAH FRANCES-WHITE, THE GUILTY FEMINIST
'Deliciously rude and darkly funny, but with compassion and humanity at its heart. Read with relish.' NICOLE KIDMAN
'Kathy Lette can turn from raunchy farce to the most tender emotion in a trice.' STEPHEN FRY

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781035901944
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	08/29/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400

About the Author

Kathy Lette first achieved success as a teenager with the novel Puberty Blues, which was made into a major film and a TV mini-series. Since then, her novels have been published in seventeen languages around the world. Kathy appears regularly as a guest on the BBC and Sky News. She is also an ambassador for Women and Children First, Plan International and the White Ribbon Alliance. In 2004 she was the London Savoy Hotel's Writer in Residence where a cocktail named after her can still be ordered. Kathy is an autodidact (a word she obviously taught herself) but in 2010, received an honorary doctorate from Southampton Solent University. Kathy lives in London with her husband and two children. She cites her career highlights as once teaching Stephen Fry a word, Salman Rushdie, the limbo and scripting Julian Assange's cameo in the Simpsons 500th episode.
Kathy Lette first achieved succès de scandale as a teenager with the novel Puberty Blues, which was made into a major film and a TV mini-series. She has written 20 books which have been translated into 19 languages. Kathy has two children and divides her time between Sydney and London. Kathy is an autodidact (a word she taught herself) but has three honorary doctorates. She is a TV presenter, newspaper and magazine columnist and also an ambassador for Their World, the National Autistic Society and Ambitious About Autism. Kathy recently completed a tour of her one-woman show, "Girls Night Out", and is pleased to report that she didn't fall out with the cast.

Visit her website at www.kathylette.com and find her on Twitter @KathyLette, Facebook/KathyLetteAuthor and Instagram @kathy.lette

Editorial Reviews

The irreverent author of Foetal Attraction returns with a raucous comic ode to the joys of motherhood, composed of equal parts male-bashing and bons mots. Framed by a thief in a London department store, Aussie Madeline Wolfe, a constipated, breast milk-sodden "mad cow" (single mother), is arrested with her one-month-old son, Jack, and sent to prison as an example of the British welfare state gone wrong. Guilty of nothing more than loving a womanizing louse, Maddy becomes embroiled in a series of misadventures that snowball from one outrageous incident to the next, from smuggling Jack out of jail in a handbag to a daring escape before a live TV audience, and stealing her son back from the clutches of an unscrupulous social worker. The victim of bad circumstances made worse by her own bad judgment, Maddy is a likable, if incessantly smart-mouthed woman with a fierce love for her offspring. She is also the only character who comes close to having "a full load of nappies" in a cast that includes Jack's father (a shallow, amoral TV star), Maddy's best friend (an oversexed upper-crust gold-digger with her own "Absolutely Fabulous" approach to motherhood) and a smattering of other half-baked (and half-witted) villains and heroes. Though the shock value of Lette's wisecracking wit is considerable (Maddy is "as culturally refined as a turd in a cocktail"), Lette's overindulgence in fresh talk becomes tiresome. But she gives new meaning to the phrase "mad cow disease" with this off-the-wall slice of maternal life that won't be found in any parenting book. $25,000 ad/promo; simultaneous Dove audio. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

On an outing with her one-month-old son, aching and lactating Maddy Wolfe is falsely accused of shoplifting in Harrod’s. While not guilty as charged, she HAS stuffed some frozen peas down her blouse to soothe her aching mammaries, an act that causes her to become a victim of the British penal system. Fiona Macleod does a deadpan reading, allowing Kathy Lette’s sardonic take on bureaucracy its full-frontal insanity. As Maddy sinks deeper and deeper into the morass of moronic prison officials, lascivious legal advisors, and an unscrupulous psychologist-in-training, Macleod keeps it all entertaining. Although the situation is Kafka-esque, that’s where the resemblance ends. Characters are stereotypes and caricatures. Fluffy stuff at best, depending more on wisecracks than wit, MAD COWS is good for a giggle when mindlessness is the best medicine. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

AUG/SEP 05 - AudioFile