Anaïs Spencer travels the world lying to men. As an imperilled Mossad agent, an international aid worker, a Venetian countess dispossessed—for seven years her first-class flights and hotel suites have been paid for by the hapless men upon whom she subsists. But Exquisite Hours is a novel about a beautiful young woman who is tired of wandering. Confessions of love are becoming chronic. Anaïs is too often having to resort to her last line of defence—the rufie. In a matter of days she flees from Hong Kong to New York to Missouri to Bangladesh to Bangkok, at last to Venice, where she falls in love with her false-speaking match, a handsome young liar who survives by giving very fanciful city tours to very credulous tourists. But will her deceitful past allow Anaïs a happy future? Joshua Humphreys was born in Melbourne in 1985. He was miseducated at La Trobe University where he read Modern and Ancient History. He spent two years writing and performing in comedy plays and doing stand-up before deciding that he should be writing novels.  So he has spent the last few years gallivanting around Europe and Southeast Asia.  In 2015 he published his first novel, Waxed Exceeding Mighty. For 6 weeks he smuggled copies of it into London bookstores and exhorted his readers to steal them. In 2016 he dressed up as a mermaid and published Exquisite Hours. That novel sold out 6 print-runs in 7 weeks and allowed him to gallivant with especial vigour.  In April of that year, Humphreys travelled through the former Yugoslavia in search of a magical sword. He was arrested in Serbia for bedding a shepherdess and subjected to 48 hours of onion torture. He suffers still from an irrationally specific fear of Serbian onions. He introduced adult colouring books to the pencil-despising mountain people of north-eastern Albania and in Kosovo ate yoghurt with three heads of state and a goat who owned a tractor. He did not find the magical sword.  For most of October his best friend was a treasure-hunting squirrel called Alexandrina. His hair is not his own. He wears a toupee made from goblins' beards that is said to ward off the bull crap of moon-hugging yoga instructors. Then it was his birthday. His efforts have been integral to the conservation of the Californian Stink Badger. He is the 'other brother' to whom Beyoncé refers in Single Ladies. He is very happily banned from France. And despite his own frequent assertions he is neither the rightful King of Thailand nor the long-lost Doge of Venice. He is currently writing with his uncle, Mel Gibson, an opera based on his gallivanting. He divides his year between Bangkok, Italy, and London. He would divide it between his heirs, but he has none. Grieve is his eleventy-first--no! Grieve is his third novel.