Past Mischief — Victoria Clayton

Miranda Stowe seems to have everything â€" looks, brains, three children and a beautiful manor house in Kent. When she finds her husband dead, shot in the chest, her friends' verdict is that Fortune has turned against one of her darlings.

But throughout their marriage Jack had been constantly unfaithful, and his death forces Miranda to look anew at her life. She decides to take in paying guests. Among them are a dashing young Hungarian pianist and an elderly painter. Then there is her ‘family': her childhood nurse, the acerbic Rose; Ivor, the poet gardener; and her three children, who react with alarming unpredictability to their father's death.

‘Past Mischief' is Victoria Clayton's second novel (after ‘Out of Love'). It is being republished through the Kindle Store in Autumn 2012, followed by ‘Dance With Me' and ‘Running Wild'.