A Summerstoke Affair

A TALE OF PASSION, POWER AND DIRTY PARSNIPS 'A light and humorous look at village life.' - The Herald As autumn beckons for the village of Summerstoke, it seems the fireworks party is not the only thing set to go with a bang. Juliet Peters - soap star, publicity junkie and all-round flirt - and Isabelle Garnett - ex-artist, neglected housewife and mother of two - seem to have nothing in common. But when both women try to build new lives in the country, they soon discover that in a small village there are no such things as secrets. Their husbands seem to be a collision course, too. One, the new MP returned to the rural vale where he grew up; the other the local paper editor ever on the lookout for scandal, and the story that could help him make it big. Add to the mix a wild-child teenager, a reformed rogue, a social-climbing couple who'll stop at nothing, and four old ladies with a manor house and an ear for gossip, and you've got a recipe for trouble. As the days grow colder, passions only grow warmer. Before the year is out Juliet, Isabelle, and their new neighbours must discover if their hearts really are in the country, and in the right hands. Packed with intrigue, humour and spirit, Caroline Kington's delightful novel serves up an affair to remember. A Summerstoke Affair is the second in the bestselling Summerstoke Trilogy.

Caroline Kington spent most of her working life in theatre and television, as a director, producer and founder of the fringe theatre company Antidote Theatre. She was the first, and perhaps still the only, woman to play Othello in a production in the US Midwest. Since the death of her husband Miles Kington, the columnist and broadcaster, she has posthumously published three of his books: a humorous memoir of his illness, called How Shall I Tell the Dog?; a collection of his columns and other writings, The Best By Miles; and a collection of his celebrated 'Franglais' columns that had not appeared in book form before, Le Bumper Book of Franglais. In her own right, she is the author of the Summerstoke trilogy of rural comedies. She insists that no character in the series is based on anybody from the small village near Bath where she has lived for many years. Nobody believes her. More recently she has written A Long Shadow, a novel which had its origins in a feature she made for Channel 4 News at the turn of this century about the pressures on farmers as a result of BSE and foot-and-mouth disease.