Martin G. Elster

The Last of Heaven Martin G. Elster

This novel brings together in a single volume the First Edition of The Last of Heaven (2016) and its sequel Future Perfect: A Resurrection (2018), with revisions and new material. The result is a uniquely powerful, haunting tale of doomed lesbian love.

Book One, Miss Perfect, is set in 1979 and takes place at convent school, where Pauline, a lonely and resentful misfit, falls in love with the beautiful and popular Annabel. She succeeds in blackmailing her into a terrifying submission, resulting in a profound self-discovery.

Book Two, Past Perfect, takes place twenty years later when the two meet again, now as successful and independent women. This time they form an erotic and perilous love-triangle with a delinquent girl, Dolly. The story unfolds across Millennium London, via the decadent art world and the menacing underworld, before moving inexorably to its devastating climax. Both Pauline and Annabel achieve the self-realisation they have always craved, but find it comes at a terrible price.

Book Three, Future Perfect, takes place a year later, in the summer of 2000, and revolves around Abigail, an elegant London prostitute recovering from a traumatic injury. She is receiving treatment from sinister therapist Paula Masters while conducting a secret affair with Paula's adopted daughter, Lola, a bisexual art student with a pronounced appetite for sex, drugs and gangsters. Matters are further complicated when Miriam, a senior lecturer at the art college and a famous photographer, seduces Abigail by engineering a mind-altering orgasm, opening her up to a transpersonal connection beyond her comprehension or control. From this point events take a fateful turn and the dark forces surrounding Abigail begin to close in on her. The lines between past and future, dream and reality, love and death become frighteningly blurred and the story culminates in a horrifying, astonishing denouement.

The Last of Heaven: A Sadean Romance is a poignant and disturbing mystery-thriller which defies the clichés of literary genre. It's a bold and fearless exploration of obsession, sex, art, drugs, black magic, sadomasochism, Roman Catholicism, sacrifice, the true nature of love, and the deepest of all desires, the transformation of the Self. A desire so deep that some will stop at nothing to satisfy it...