{"product_id":"the-birthday-present","title":"Barbara Vine: The Birthday Present [2008] hardback","description":"Mention his name and most people will say, 'Who?' while the rest think for a bit and ask if he wasn't the one who got involved in all that sleaze back whenever it was ...? It's late spring of 1990 and a love affair is flourishing: between Ivor Tesham, a thirty-three year old rising star of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, and Hebe Furnal, a stunning North London housewife stuck in a dull marriage. What excitement Hebe lacks at home, however, is amply compensated for by the well-bred and intensely attractive Tesham - an ardent womanizer and ambitious politican. On the eve of her twenty-eighth birthday, Tesham decides to give Hebe a present to remember: something far more memorable than, say, the costly string of pearls he's already lavished upon her. Involving a fashionable new practice known as 'adventure sex', a man arranges for his unsuspecting but otherwise willing girlfriend to be snatched from the street, bound and gagged, and delivered to him at a mutually agreed venue...Set amidst an age of IRA bombings, the first Gulf War, and sleazy politics, \"The Birthday Present\" is the gripping story of a fall from grace, and of a man who carries within him all the hypocrisy, greed and self-obsession of a troubled era.","brand":"Vine, Barbara","offers":[{"title":"Very Good","offer_id":47694674952531,"sku":"XV80670917617","price":12.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0616\/4001\/6057\/files\/vine-barbara-the-birthday-present-xv80670917617-54526857150803.jpg?v=1726341067","url":"https:\/\/theirishbookshop.live\/products\/the-birthday-present","provider":"Chapters Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}