The Household Guide to Dying Debra Adelaide 9780007281114

Desperate Housewives meets Six Feet Under in this brilliantly moving and darkly comic novel, which charts the attempts of dying heroine Delia - a modern day Mrs Beeton - to prepare her family for the future and lay to rest a ghost from her past.

Delia Bennet has made a living writing a series of hugely successful modern household guides, with advice on everything from laundry to lovers.

The one thing she hasn't ever given advice on is her own situation: barely forty but dying.

To prepare her family, she tries everything from writing lists to teaching her daughters to make the perfect cup of tea. What she really needs is a household guide: the kind she is expert at writing. She sets to work.

But the writing forces Delia to confront painful ghosts from her past. there is a journey she needs to make, and one last vital thing she must do...

Debra Adelaide is the author of two novels which were published in Australia and four themed collections of fiction and memoirs. She has worked as a researcher, editor and book reviewer, and has a PhD from the University of Sydney. She is now a senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Technology, Sydney. She has three children and several chickens.

'Darkly comic novel with a tone that is Desperate Housewives meets Six Feet Under...this is caustic and hilarious, as well as heart-warming. A clever read that stays with you for a long time' Red

'Adelaide's moving novel captures both the hope and sadness of Delia's plight' Daily Mail

'A novel about loving and grieving...filled with humour, warmth and sadness - just like life' Good Reading

'I found this novel entrancing. The Household guide to Dying is a joyous, irreverent romp of a book that resonates deep inside long after you finish. Delia's magical, crystalline voice made me fervently wish that she was real and that I knew her.' PATRICIA WOOD, Lottery