Book Covers As Art – Undressing by Hazel Manuel. #BookCoversAsWorksOfArt

‘If you were able, how would you redesign your life?’ Sian Evans is a feisty yet emotionally aloof divorcee with a secret. When her shrink asks her this question she takes it seriously. Giving up her stable home and job in Wales, Sian travels alone to a forgotten corner of rural France to begin a new life in a borrowed cottage.

Undressing Stone is a mysterious tale which flirts with the gothic as it interweaves Sian’s conversations with her psychiatrist, with her newly reclusive life in France. There she meets an enigmatic sculptor with a penchant for working in the nude. Will their odd encounters encourage Sian to admit a truth she has avoided for years? And what are the consequences if she does?

In a narrative that moves between caustic observation and the richly sensual, this is a novel that challenges many of our taken for granted assumptions about modern-day life, and that celebrates the unconventional.

I’m always amazed by the variety of book covers that Grace the bookshelves of our beloved bookshops! What I love about the cover of Undressing Stone, is the muted tones of the grey, it mirrors the stone of a perfectly worked sculpture. The edges are clear and angular, chiselled and it suits the book perfectly.

You can order the book from Amazon

About the author

Hazel Manuel is a UK born novelist whose writing follows a career in education, first as a teacher/lecturer and after as a business leader within the education sector. Having married a French man she met in India, Hazel now lives and writes in Paris.
Hazel’s route into writing was an unusual one, which draws not only on her experience as a teacher of Philosophy, Sociology and Psychology, but also on her time as CEO and MD of two successful education companies. As such, her history is one which brings to her writing an unusual breadth and richness. Having moved from the corporate world into full-time writing, Hazel is well able to explore and express those deeper aspects of what it means to be living and striving in our modern world. Through themes of uncertainty, loss, obsession, power, change and fear, and of questioning life and the self, the reader travels with her characters through an archetypical inner journey that is fundamentally satisfying because it could equally be their own. ‘It is important to me to explore the issues and questions that modern life raises,’ Hazel says. ‘Questions of identity, equality, the ideas and assumptions that inform the ways we live our lives underpin my stories and the characters that live them.’
Since becoming a full-time writer, Hazel’s books have received international attention. She has given talks and taken part in literary panel discussions, including at the Goa Arts and Literary Festival in India, the London Welsh Literature Festival and Zestfest UK. She has given interviews about her work on BBC Radio Wales, World Radio Paris and Expat-Radio France, and has delivered workshops and author talks at writing retreats, festivals and bookshops in France, the UK and in India. Hazel has been Writer in Residence for Your Writeful Place in France and the UK and at the Sivananda Ashram in Southern India where she was commissioned to write a book about Ashram life.
In addition to writing, Hazel runs literary salons and events in Paris and London as well as writers retreats at her farmhouse in the French Loire Valley. You can find out more about Hazel and her work at http://www.hazelmanuel.net