The poison tree
(Book)

Includes the first chapter of The dark rose.

"It should have been an idyllic summer for Karen Clarke. Having just finished university, Karen is at loose ends while she tries to figure out what she wants from life. Her gift for languages brings her into contact with free-spirited Biba, who lives in a crumbling London mansion with her brother Rex and an assortment of other bohemian characters. Karen is happy at last to be experiencing some of the craziness she thought college would bring, but as the summer progresses she realizes Biba and Rex have their own issues. First novelist Kelly intersperses the events of that long-ago summer when everything changed with Karen's present-day life as the mother of nine-year-old Alice as she brings Rex home from a ten-year stint in prison" --Library Journal.