penelope evans books

	Books By Penelope Evans, Author
	After her husband faces a crisis on the underground, Sara Ravenscroft finds herself moving to Devon to start a life away from the city. But it is here in the country that the haunting dream which has plagued her since childhood starts to creep into the everyday. A small girl in a white dress and red shoes starts to appear along the river bank at the edge of her idyllic house - is this just a vision or is there something else to connect them? Sara’s new village is cold and unwelcoming, its resident community weary of outsiders. The imposing Victorian asylum and the old church with its crowded graveyard only emphasise the unease she already feels. When a movement draws her towards a headstone covered in moss, Sara is compelled to look further, only to uncover a shocking revelation. Events start to unfold, drawing Sara into a tumbling downward spiral. Does the past hold the key to her dream or is it the present she needs to be wary of? READ THE WEIGHT OF WATER
	He seemed like a creature of her own making, a dream of words, telling her what she needed to hear. She was not quite formed, not the way she should be. Not yet. Reeling from husband’s betrayal and struggling to rebuild her marriage when he comes back to her, Grace finds her protective fantasy that life has returned to normal is unravelling. Soon, however, she finds another being woven around her. A book enters her life, one unlike any she has read, and after that, the man who wrote it, Richard Ortega, a man unlike any she has ever known. One shows her all that is truly important in her life. The other threatens to take it away. As she increasingly seeks strength and comfort not in Richard’s books but his words, Grace finds herself becoming his muse. However, once the line between fiction and truth has blurred, she will find that his imagination can never let her go. READ SAVING GRACE
	Nobody ever suggested that four year old Rosie meant to kill her baby brother and she can remember nothing about it. All she knows is that she has grown up in the aftermath. In the life that comes after, only Max stays the same - beautiful Max, her big brother, putting himself like a wall between Rosie and a world that threatens to turn against her. READ MY PERFECT SILENCE
	" Hey you! After all these years." Only one person used to write to her like this. And she fell for it. And kept on falling, deeper and deeper, until there was nothing there to catch her. Except me. I picked her up and put her together. Held her together like glue that takes an age to bind. Fifteen years we've been married. But now he's back. A Blast from the Past. Guy Latimer and his wife Carlie have made a life and a child together. But there's always been someone else haunting their past - Magnus, snake-hipped and darkly sexual. Years ago, he took Carlie and brought her to the brink of suicide. Now Blast From the Past - the website that reunites friends and lovers - brings Magnus back into the present. Their present. And this time, resisting him could be murder... READ A FATAL REUNION
	Kate Carr is such a lucky teenager. Although her mother has left, she is far from neglected at home. The girls at school envy her because her father is such a charmer, the most mesmerizing minister in Edinburgh. The clever new girl, Lydia, envies her most of all. Sometimes, Kate wonders what it would be like to have a mother like Lydia's, or even a doting grandmother like stupid Moira's, but she knows what she has is better. She is special; she is Keith Carr's first fruit, his offering. He is training her up in his image, to have It - his special power, the ability to manipulate people. She practices what he's taught her with devastating effect. But a recurrent dream tantalizes Kate. On the night she hosts a sleepover, it comes to her once more and a truth which has long eluded her is revealed. Then nothing can cleanse her world but fire and death READ FIRST FRUITS
	When a nameless girl is brought in, drowned, to the mortuary where Stewart Park works as a photographer, he becomes obsessed with her frozen beauty. Stewarts domestic life is more than a little unsettling: Dad, who's given to consuming but short-lived crazes, has recently installed Lucy the pit-bull terrier as part of his home-security campaign, and Stewarts small nephews, Lee and Lenny, are constantly dumped on him by his evasive sister Mary. Lee and Lenny are behaving in an inexplicably withdrawn fashion, Mary appears to be keeping dubious company, and Stewart cant help worrying that destructive Dad will one day break into his bedroom and take apart his precious computer. Small wonder, then, that Stewart devotes himself to finding out all he can about the drowned girl. His enquiries - and their consequences - begin to take over his life. Advancing into a dark and vicious world he's never even dreamt of, he realises, belatedly, that he's a hopelessly ill-equipped player in a very sinister game...
	Larry Mann, lonely and neglected in his rooms on the top floor of a north London house, is delighted when pale, quiet Amanda, a young student, moves in below him. Anxious to make her feel at home, he brings her presents, prepares meals for her, and is always ready for a cozy chat and a drink in the evening. Amanda's arrival makes a world of difference to Larry, abandoned long since by his wife and daughter. He is happy to spend time serving her any way he can. Amanda, shy and kind-hearted, doesn't want to hurt Larry's feelings, but she's not always as grateful as she might be for his attentions. And Larry, uneasy at the weekend visits of her male friend and fearful that he may supplant him in Amanda's affections, broods darkly on the past. Told throughout in Larry's voice, this extra-ordinarily eerie tale builds to a dreadful and unexpected climax. Penelope Evans, in her remarkable first novel, winds up the psychological tension to an almost unbearable degree.