John A. Scott

Shorter Lives' histories of notable creators (and notable enablers of the creative) drift away from conventional tellings to offer alternative facts and believable untruths. No small part of the author's extensive research, however, has been the trawling of existing biographies for unrepresentative, yet documented, instances of the bizarre. In our post-truth world of fake news and mythmaking, Scott's revised biographies...

An abduction... a series of interviews... an investigation with unthinkable outcomes. Contemporary Gothic at its most inventive: at times, a psychological drama; at times, a tragedy embodying the grotesque and the horrific. The Boy Who Loved Dolls is set in 1987 Australia, mainly at the renowned (and reclusive) French film director, Jean-Jacques Baille’s secluded country residence. Susan Vaughan, an eccentric...