NICE GIRLS DON’T
BySue Barnard
Who knows what secrets lie hidden in your family’s past?
Southern England, 1982.
At 25, single, and under threat of redundancy from her job in a local library, Emily feels as though her life is going nowhere – until the day when Carl comes into the library asking for books about tracing family history.
Carl is baffled by a mystery about his late grandfather: why is the name by which Carl had always known him different from the name on his old passport?
Fascinated as much by Carl himself as by the puzzle he wants to solve, Emily tries to help him find the answers. As their relationship develops, their quest for the truth takes them along a complicated paper-trail which leads, eventually, to the battlefields of the Great War.
In the meantime, Emily discovers that her own family also has its fair share of secrets and lies. And old sins can still cast long shadows…
Can Emily finally lay the ghosts of the past to rest and look forward to a brighter future?
A tale of discovery, love and fate.
SUE
BARNARD
Sue
was born in Wales some time during the last millennium.
After
graduating from Durham University with a degree in French, she
returned to Manchester (where she had spent her formative years) and
got married, then had a variety of office jobs before leaving the
world of paid employment to become a full-time parent. If she had
her way, the phrase “non-working mother” would be banned from the
English language.
Sue
has dabbled with writing for most of her life. Her first success was
at primary school, where she won a competition run by Cadbury’s
which involved writing an essay about chocolate. Her prize was a tin
containing a selection of Cadbury’s products. She still has the
tin to this day, and keeps it as a reminder of her humble writing
origins. The chocolate is long since gone, but the tin is now home
to her supply of pens and pencils. In recent years she began to take
writing more seriously and studied a series of writing courses with
the Open University. As well as having work published in Best
of Manchester Poets (Volumes
2 and 3), her achievements have included winning a T-shirt for
writing a limerick (which summed up the plot of Macbeth
in five lines) and winning first prize in Writing
Magazine’s
2013 poetry competition for new subscribers. In 2013 she joined the
editorial team of Crooked
Cat Publishing,
who also published her debut novel The
Ghostly Father
(a new interpretation of the Romeo & Juliet story) in February
2014, and her second novel Nice
Girls Don’t
(a romantic intrigue set in 1982) in July 2014.
Sue’s
mind is sufficiently warped that she has also worked as a
question-setter for BBC Radio 4’s fiendishly difficult Round
Britain Quiz
– a phase of her life which caused one of her sons to describe her
as “professionally weird.” She lives in Cheshire and Anglesey
(thought not at the same time – she isn’t THAT weird) with her
husband and a large collection of unfinished scribblings.
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