Departure Lounge

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Mark Chamberlain is a man who has everything: a job he loves; the criminal record to prove it; a cop on his trail and a houseful of stolen goods. All he’s missing is Caroline May, and she’s been gone for more than twenty years. Nobody knows what happened to Caroline. One afternoon her parents came home and she just wasn’t there. She had been seen alone, with a stranger, on the ferry, on a plane. She was never seen again. Mark knows all the stories about Caroline. Stealing memories is how he makes a living. Each time he breaks into a house he sees Caroline in his head. But he knows she isn’t there. Until one night when he walks into a room and discovers a collection of photographs, the blonde girl he remembers, looking back at him – smiling. And he realises suddenly, that the secret of Caroline is still alive. Mark may have been abandoned, but he is no longer alone.

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Chad Taylor lives and works in New Zealand. He is the author of four novels – Pack of Lies, Heaven, Shirker and Electric – and one collection of short stories, The Man Who Wasn’t Feeling Himself. In 2001 he was awarded a Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship for literature, and in 2003 he was the Auckland University Literary Fellow.