A Price for Everything

Mary Sheepshanks

Feb 2012 · Random House

About this ebook

Sonia, Lady Duntan, loves the family seat rather more than she does her husband. The demands of marriage and four small children have conspired to over shadow her sense of self-esteem and the huge, crumbling white elephant of a house represents the rebellious freedom she craves. Archie, however is adamant: their lifestyle must be preserved and the house must go. When Archie - who has got both more and less from his marriage than he bargained for - embarks on an affair with the pneumatic Rosie Bartlett, Sonia is even more determined to thwait his plans. But as her conspiracy widens to include her glamorous but unreliable mother-in-law, a rather sinister Buddhist monk and the urban Mr Hadleigh-Turner from the company Heritage at Risk, things begin to spiral out of control.

About the author

Born and brought up at Eton where her father was a housemaster, Mary Sheepshanks began writing as a child and has her first poem published in the Sunday Times at the age of seventeen. She married the headmaster of Sunningdale school while still a very young woman and they ran the school together until 1967 when she and her husband moved up to take over his family estate in Yorkshire. Mary Sheepshanks has three children and a host of grandchildren - one of whom refers to her as his 'wild writing Granny'.

A Price for Everything is Mary Sheepshanks's remarkable debut novel.