THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT by Barbara Vine

It's late spring of 1990 and a love affair is flourishing between Ivor Tesham, a 33-year-old rising star of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, and Hebe Furnal, a stunning North London housewife stuck in a dull marriage.  What excitement Hebe lacks at home, however, is amply compensated for by the well-bred and intensely attractive Tesham - an ardent womanizer and ambitious politician.  On the eve of her 28th birthday Tesham decides to give Hebe a present to remember: something more memorable than, say, the costly string of pearls he's already lavished on her; involving a fashionable new practise known as ''adventure sex''.  A man arranges for his unsuspecting but otherwise willing girlfriend to be snatched from the street, bound and gagged, and delivered to him at a mutually agreed venue...

Set amidst an age of IRA bombings, the first Gulf War and sleazy politics, the Birthday Present is the gripping story of a fall from grace, and of a man who carries within him all the hypocrisy, greed and self-obsession of a troubled era.

Soft cover, good condition.  274 pages.