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Provocative Publishing
featuring the work of Carole Hayman
Causing controversy
Hard Choices
A scientist they want dead. A minister they want silenced. A conspiracy they want covered up. A spin machine out of control.
When Grace Fry, Minister for Women, receives her 'Woman of the Decade' award at the party conference, she expects to be promoted to the heart of government. On a sudden visit to her local constituency she is forced to discover where the truth starts and the lies end.
As the body count rises - is it suicide or murder?
And who can she trust?
A wickedly subversive tale of Good and Evil, Hard Choices gives us a hugely entertaining vision of the society we may yet become.
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"Carole Hayman's Hard Choices has become the most reviewed unpublished novel in the history of English fiction." The Observer
"Hayman gets pretty close to the bone." New Statesman
"No wonder No. 10 never wanted you to read this funny, clever, angry and frightening book." Sunday Express
"Hard Choices is the kind of satirical fantasy that prolonged exposure to New Labour can inspire. New Labour, New Orwell, indeed." Rory Bremner
"Hard Choices is so frightening and such fun , it’s hard to put down" Fay Weldon
"An amazingly prophetic dystopian nightmare, with a heroine who has more balls than Blair" Sue Townsend
"Be afraid, be very, very afraid". Helen Clark MP
A little from the Ladies
Ladies of Letters Go Green
by Carole Hayman and Lou Wakefield
Audiobook of the month, April 2008
The ninth series of barking mad misadventures for those two elderly ladies behaving badly. The caustic correspondence between Irene Spencer and Vera Small is always richly entertaining, and these latest letters are no exception.
The Ladies start to look beyond themselves at the future of the planet at large and soon become eco-enthusiasts: tying bricks to ballcocks, running cars on chip fat, and even emailing Al Gore to update him on the state of the local bottle bank.
Read from Ladies of Letters Go Green
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Ladies of Letters
BBC Radio 4 The Woman's Hour Serial
By Carole Hayman and Lou Wakefield
Forewords by Sue Townsend (books), starring Patricia Routledge as Vera Small and Prunella Scales as Irene Spencer (radio).
Vera Small and her friend (or maybe enemy) Irene Spencer pass their time in regular correspondence and not an event goes by that is left unrecorded by the ladies of letters. Always polite but not always nice, the two ladies' letters are often acerbic, one might even say bitchy, yet their subtle put downs create wonderful letters full of humour and insight into the ups and downs of family life.
Ladies of Letters paperbacks and audiobooks
For the latest news, views and scandal visit the official Ladies of Letters website
For a little of Vera's expert advice, click here
The Warfleet Chronicles
original fiction by Carole Hayman
Warfleet: a charming seaside town, nestling against the south English coast. Warfleet: a hot-bed of intrigue, wicked scandal and bad behaviour.
Missing
When Caroline Radcliffe's husband Sebastian goes missing, it's not just her life that's thrown into turmoil. It seems all of Warfleet - and those drawn to it - goes through some kind of transformation. There's Jade, her daughter: from diligent student to addict of estate-dwelling Warren's lithe body. Or Delia, a publisher desperately-seeking Sebastian: from hard-nosed career woman to scrubbed-pine mum. And Zo, Delia's assistant: catalyst of change in Caro, mesmerising in leather or in bed.
And Caro? Caro's life changes most of all.
"A fabulous read, seriously below the belt" Fay Weldon
Greed, Crime, Sudden Death
Book Two of the Warfleet Chronicles.
After years as an Aga-tending, dog-walking, jam-making, drain-clearing, one-woman services industry, Caro Radcliffe has found something new to challenge her. Her editor and lesbian lover, Zo, has rejected Caro's new novel. Greed, crime, sudden death, she tells Caro, that's what the readers want.
"At last, an irresistable new genre: aga-eroticism" Sue Townsend
Connections
Those familiar with the Warfleet Chronicles will be happy to know the wicked little town of Warfleet is alive and, if not exactly well, as full of intrigue and naughty deeds as ever.
Connections, the latest novel in the sequence, revisits Warfleet, now basking in relative prosperity. All the usual suspects are there – apart from one or two who’ve met untimely deaths, and a couple who’re in prison– but there is a new one, a mysterious benefactor who has taken the town under his – or her - wing.
Who is responsible for the anonymous donations to Four Trees, The Quest and the Tolleymarsh Estate? It’s a mystery.
Read an exclusive extract from the novel
All the best, Kim
A comic novel
Prison View
Lambeth
It has rained every day for a week. Can't go out as it makes me Mohican go all limp. What's happening with you? Are you still going out with Naff Nigel? Best-looking I've seen down here was in the waxworks at Madame Tussaud's. He was a mass murderer.
I am going out with a community worker called Jake. His real name is Jason Hope-Lesley but he doesn't tell anyone. He says its because 'hyphenated names produce class alienation', but I reckon its because he doesn't want people to laugh. He told me I should raise my consciousness as he was pulling my drainpipes down.
Nan's conversation would kill Einstein's brain cells. If she's not on about soccer thugs, its the Royal family or the vicar being gay. Did meet two girls in the street the other day. They are my last hope of staying sane cooped up with an eighty-two-year-old loony with angina and corns! Please write soon.
All the best,
Kim
PS The chip shops are rotten down here. They don't do mushy peas or curry sauce!