IVY AND JOE

JANE SCHORAH

If Victoria Wood had written Vanity Fair….

IVY AND JOE by Jane Schorah is a darkly comic commercial debut set in Manchester in the 1980s. It features the wonderfully monstrous and charismatic main character, Ivy, who like that modern-day Becky Sharp, ruthlessly bulldozes her way to wealth and success with an unapologetic ferocity and a surprisingly high body count. But beneath the tenacious social climbing, beats a tender heart….

Resigned to a life packing boxes, belligerent factory worker IVY CROSS visits a fortune teller, desperate for comfort a better future is on the cards. Despite his promise of a mysterious stranger, when her husband is killed in an absurdly gruesome accident just days later, it seems the only thing on Ivy’s cards, is death.
 
The accident compensation provides Ivy with a leg-up the social ladder: she buys a faux diamond necklace, some shares in her factory on the promise of a back-office promotion, and a tiny two-up-two-down to share with Ritchie, her odd, loner son, unaware of the terrible secrets he keeps in the shed. She aspires to have Laura Ashely blinds, like the snooty office secretary, but has to settle for Barbara's constant put-downs that make Ivy feel shop-soiled. 

 
It’s not long before the mysterious stranger arrives in Ivy’s life, in the form of GIUSEPPE ZANICHELLI (JOE), who has fled his native Italy, leaving behind a loveless marriage and the horrific memories of the bombing he was caught up in that blew both his city and his world apart. All he wants a fresh start and to give his son, whom he left back home in Bologna, more opportunities than Joe inherited. 
 
Ivy sees Joe as her happy ever after, but women like her aren’t meant to have it easy. If Ivy is to have the life she craves, she’s going to have to take fate into her own hands, and before you know it, one murder leads to another. But as the fortune teller warned, destiny is always skulking in the shadows waiting to ruin Ivy’s happy ending …

Originally from Lancashire, Jane Schorah has lived in Italy for over 23 years where she is a dual-qualified solicitor/avvocato in the corporate M&A team of an international law firm.

Jane has a long list of accomplishments under her belt: first published in the local newspaper at the age of 8, her poem about oranges won top prize - (she was gutted to learn it was a year’s supply of oranges); at 11 she accidently came first in the neat dive during an inter-county swimming contest (must be all that vitamin C). At 21 she hitch-hiked through Europe for six weeks on just £100, living on french fries and skirting death at least twice. As a student, she did  stints in a factory in NW England, as a nanny in Germany and as a tour guide in Greece, Italy and Tunisia. She has also co-authored a legal dictionary.  

Having decided stand-up comedy is out of the question on grounds she'll never have comic timing in the Italian language, she dedicated herself to writing Ivy and Joe, her debut novel. She is currently working on the sequel.

Jane enjoys reading and writing, loves animals and sneaks Oxo cubes into classic Italian dishes.