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John Purcell

Goodreads Author


Born
Sydney, Australia
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June 2010

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John Purcell is the author of six novels, three published by Penguin under the pseudonym, Natasha Walker. His novels The Girl on the Page and The Lessons are published by Fourth Estate. And The Amateur's Guide to Killing Bad Guys is published by Larrikin House. ...more

Everything I have done up till now has been research for The Girl on the Page.

The Girl On The Page by John Purcell As we near publication of my new novel, The Girl on the Page, I cannot but stop to wonder where the book came from. I wrote the novel so quickly. It just fell onto the page. Almost as if I had been researching it for years. But I hadn’t. I had just been working away at my day job selling books.

Then it hit me. Rather belatedly, I’ll admit – everything I had done up till now had been research fo Read more of this blog post »
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Published on June 01, 2018 23:05 • Tags: books
Average rating: 3.67 · 1,882 ratings · 308 reviews · 3 distinct works • Similar authors
The Girl on the Page

3.62 avg rating — 1,474 ratings — published 2018 — 12 editions
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The Lessons

3.84 avg rating — 408 ratings — 4 editions
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The Amateur's Guide to Kill...

0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings
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* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more, click here.

In Spite of Time
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Dangerous Pilgrim...
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The Rash Act
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In Spite of Time by Ben Cooke
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Dangerous Pilgrimages by Malcolm Bradbury
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Full Circle by Chris Hammer
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Dangerous Pilgrimages by Malcolm Bradbury
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The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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King's Ransom by Matthew Reilly
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Sam Speedman and a mystery in a New York skyscraper.
Mathew Reilly’s new hero, private detective Sam Speedman, is a cross between Sheldon from Big Bang Theory and John McClane from Die Hard, with a sprinkle of Ethan Hunt from Mission: Impossible (one
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Harvest by Jean Giono
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Some novels feel as though they have always existed. They are solid, rooted to the earth, have a life of their own even if they sit unopened for years. Harvest is such a novel. A tale of rejuvenation in the heart of rural France. It reminded me a lit ...more
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Brawler by Lauren Groff
Brawler
by Lauren Groff (Goodreads Author)
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Quotes by John Purcell  (?)
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“He must fly regularly. I don’t. Not any more. So I have been watching everything with interest. I love to watch people and eavesdrop. I can’t help myself. This scene, with passengers taking their seats and struggling with hand luggage, everyone at cross purposes, is repeated all day on dozens of flights at hundreds of airports and must seem commonplace to those working, but this moment won’t happen again. Not just to me, but to all of us. Life is like that.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“I have everything written down somewhere. That’s all I have ever done. I record. I take notes. And now, as memory fades, that’s all I have left. I hate growing old. I hate this longing to be something I’m not. The desire to be young again. To relive those years, to do things differently, to write differently. To make amends. I would like never to look back. But it is all I seem capable of doing these days.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

“Of course I adopted a positive outlook. When in Rome. Besides, pessimism made one a pariah. Sarcasm was outlawed, irony unknown. If one couldn’t afford two cars, a pool, three bathrooms, and a television in every room, at least one could have an indefatigably positive outlook. It was a free country, after all. But somehow my optimism always struck the
wrong note.”
― John Purcell, The Lessons

Topics Mentioning This Author

“What do we usually mean by "literature"? A world of rhetoric, triteness, rounded phrases and respectable names, of people who have looked at life when they were young but who, once they have achieved fame, confine themselves to abstractions, to rehashing & to cautious common sense.”
― Boris Pasternak, An Essay in Autobioghaphy

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message 1: by Tim

Tim Armstrong you back in Oz ya old bugger? where's the next book? and I hope you're well - in that order! T


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