Truth Games by Bobbie Darbyshire
Extract (Download)
After the hippies and before the yuppies, between the advent of The Pill and the onset of AIDS, between the ‘summer of love’ and the ‘winter of discontent’, the newest game in town was sex.
In mid-seventies London a group of friends play a dangerous game of open marriages, secrets and lies. “It’s only sex, Ann. It won’t hurt us,” claims Lois, beautiful, talented and determined to get whatever or whoever she wants without being held back by her long-suffering, academic husband, Hugh. In homes and offices, at parties, on holidays, wherever they are, sex is there for the taking. But bed-hopping carries a price. Can love be free? Truth Games bares all. It’s fast, funny and sexy, but as the summer heat increases, stakes are raised and consequences have to be faced…
Bobbie Darbyshire’s new novel Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones is available from Sandstone Press.
An innocent meeting of a reading group sparks a series of bizarre events. Three troubled people, driven by loneliness, vanity and revenge, hurl themselves on Inverness public library to find that nothing is as they expect. Henry, Peter and Elena. Each agitated. Each seeking release. We’ve all done it – gone haring off after one thing and found entirely another – but never as surprisingly as these three. It’s Friday evening, 18th February 2000, and we’re in for an unsettling weekend among the bookstacks of the library, on the blizzard-bound streets, in the recesses of the Loch Craggan Hotel and on the treacherous mountain above.
Bobbie Darbyshire’s debut novel Truth Games was published in 2009, followed by Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones in 2010. She won the 2008 Fiction Prize at the National Academy of Writing, and her story Something Missing can be found in their anthology Finding a Voice. Her piece Beads on a String won the New Delta Review Creative Nonfiction Prize 2010. Bobbie has worked as barmaid, mushroom picker, film extra, maths coach, cabinet minister’s private secretary, and as a care assistant, as well as in social research and policy. She hosts a writers’ group and is a volunteer adult-literacy teacher. Bobbie lives in Clapham, London and is happy to visit reading groups or give talks. Contact her on Facebook or at bobbie.darbyshire@ntlworld.com or follow her on Twitter @bobbiedar