The Cartoon Life and Loves of a Stupid Man

<p><strong style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED <em>HANGDOG SOULS</em></strong></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>As an independent comic book store owner and the heir to a pharmaceutical fortune Philippe Favrier lives a life that straddles the real world and the realm of fiction. Struggling with mental illness Philippe relies on his wife Marilyne - a successful surgeon with her own haunting secrets - and a groundbreaking drug his father developed. Bound by their shared pain they navigate their haunted lives forever shadowed by the heart-rending loss of their baby Antoine.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Their fragile world begins to crumble when Philippe catches a disturbing glimpse of an unfamiliar profile in the mirror. And his uneasiness is further fueled by an anonymous comic strip that arrives at his store featuring a character bearing an eerie resemblance to him.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Is Marilyne hiding an affair? Is she connected to the comic strip that's tormenting him? As he probes deeper Philippe is drawn into a web of deception where the lines between reality and imagination blur - until his investigations into Marilyne and the malicious comic artist at last reveal the tragic truth.</span></p><p><br></p><p><strong style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>PRAISE FOR MARC JOAN</strong></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>'The absorbing winter escape of a read that I had been seeking'</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Prashanth Gopalan </span><em style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Strange Horizons</em></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>'Riddled with mysteries the darkest of human emotions and it is a book that will instigate curiosity yet send a shiver down your spine each moment you turn a page'</span></p><p><em style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>India Today</em></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>'I find the astonishing stories collected -- and arranged chronologically by historical era -- to be consistently enthralling amazing and powerful. They are beautifully written and filled with both sharp characterizations of conflicted complicated people and rich multi-layered detail about the states landscapes history and lingering myths of southern India. . . . I recommend Hangdog Souls heartily to all thoughtful readers who long to be immersed in a fulsomely realized world that skillfully combines very old mythologies and phenomenally new reflections on what they can still mean'</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Jerrold E. Hogle Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of English University of Arizona</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>'A complex and wildly ambitious novel which makes no apologies for bringing together contrasting genres and influences - from historical fiction to the Gothic from intergenerational family drama to realist fiction from supernatural horror to sci-fi all infused with elements of philosophy myth and spiritualism and conveyed in rich and beautiful prose'</span></p><p><em style=color: rgba(15 17 17 1)>Ends of the World</em></p>