THE PHOENIX LOTTERY is a comic novel about the nature of art, God, family and revenge. It follows the lives of three sets of interconnected characters whose struggles whirl them from postwar Italy, to revolutionary Cuba, to a shamanic seance on Baffin Island, to an S&M Bed and Breakfast in rural Canada, to post-millennial Vatican intrigue and across the paths of Meyer Lansky, Castro, Pope Paul VI, and Irenee duPont.

Booze tycoon Edgar Beamish dies in unusual circumstances, leaving his corporation to his estranged son Junior, a well-meaning if emotionally unbalanced dilettante. Junior decides to play philanthropist with corporate assets, a move which brings him to the brink of bankruptcy.

Desperate for cash, he creates The Phoenix Lottery. The scheme offers its winner instant Celebrity and Wealth: celebrity by publicly immolating a priceless van Gogh in a live event beamed by satellite to stadiums around the world; wealth by selling the story to T.V., tabloids and Hollywood.

Junior has an ally in lottery winner Lydia Spark, a rural teen runaway turned Goth performance artist with parent problems of her own. Arrayed against him are his father Edgar, continuing the battle with his son from beyond the grave, and backroom Vatican operator Cardinal Giuseppe Wichita, on a mission from new Pope Innocent to defend the interests of Western civilization.

But this Prince of the Church has secrets. A one-time Mafia errand boy who disappeared with a basket of money and body parts, Wichita is the illegitimate son of a failed novitiate who martyred herself to save him from the wrath of the mob. Now canonized, the lunatic Saint Maria Carlotta Castelli delle Grotte di Castellana is on the warpath against any and all who stand in the way of her belovèd son.

THE PHOENIX LOTTERY is published by The Riverbank Press, Toronto, Canada.  It is currently in print with Cormorant Books.  Film and television rights are currently optioned by Shaftesbury Films.  An acclaimed stage version also exists;  please see Plays.

For other rights please contact Allan Stratton

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