Winter breaks - Joseph Connolly

All those things of last summer have changed everyone - heartbreaks, jealousies and various alarming pressures. For John Powers it means squaring up to the reality of losing his beautiful wife Lulu, simply because of his pathological and totally unfounded sexual paranoia and subsequent homicidal delusions. Brian and Dotty Morgan, uncomfortably squatting in a caravan in well-to-do ex-neighbours Howard and Elizabeth Street's driveway, are learning how to live with not having it all, none of it in fact - although that doesn't stop Dotty conspiring to secure for herself Dawn, uncared-for baby of Melody.Meanwhile their fifteen-year-old son Colin has fallen in love with the fabulous Carol, but her unforgiving brother Terry would preferto see Colin dead. Winter is also being unkind to Norman Furnish who lost his job working for Howard and with it Howard's beloved daughter Katie, who herself is hitched up with a neanderthal gun-toting romancer from Chicago, Rick, as well as Melody's former squeeze Miles McInerney, an amoral, cocky salesman. And what of Howard and Elizabeth - can his new love Laa-Laa and her current fling Zoo-Zoo (Howard's ex - don't ask) help them find peace, contentment and sexual nirvana this Christmas? Winter Breaks is a seriously funny sequel to Connolly's best-selling Summer Things.