‘Jaw-droppingly amazing’ DAILY MAIL

WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARD
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

Born in 1900 to a promiscuous American oil heiress and a British army captain, Marion Barbara Carstairs realised very early on that she was not like most girls. Liberated by war work in the First World War, Marion reinvented herself as ‘Joe’. She dressed in men’s clothes, smoked cigars and cheroots, tattooed her arms and became Britain’s most celebrated female speed-boat racer – the ‘fastest woman on water’.

Yet Joe tired of the limelight in 1934 and retired to the Bahamian island of Whale Cay. There she fashioned her own kingdom, where she threw riotous parties at which Hollywood actresses and British royalty were among the guests. Although her lovers included screen sirens such as Marlene Dietrich,
the real love of Joe’s life was a small boy-doll named Lord Tod Wadley, to whom she remained devoted throughout her remarkable life. She died, aged 93, in 1993

‘A small jewel of a biography’ NEW YORKER

‘Fascinating, hilarious and deliciously subversive’ LITERARY REVIEW

‘A biography that sparkles with enthusiastic research and empathetic writing’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘A wonderful account of a truly extraordinary life’ MAIL ON SUNDAY

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Author Biography

KATE SUMMERSCALE is the author of the number one bestselling The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2008, a Richard & Judy Book Club pick and adapted into a major ITV drama. Her first book, the bestselling The Queen of Whale Cay, won a Somerset Maugham award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread biography award. Her most recent book is Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace. Kate Summerscale has also judged various literary competitions including the Booker Prize. She lives in London.

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