Drowning Rose - Marika Cobbold

It is winter in London. Eliza Cummings, a ceramics restorer at the V&A Museum, is leaving work when she receives an unexpected phone call. Standing in the haze of the Christmas lights she hears a voice which draws her back twenty-five years - to the tragic death of her best friend.

But why does Rose's father want her to visit him? Why now? And why is he killing her with kindness when they both know that he blames her for what happened to his daughter?

Grief and guilt cast terrible shadows, but as this beautifully wrought story unfolds and the scene shifts from London to the fairy tale landscape of the Swedish countryside - and back in time to Eliza's school days - we learn that generosity, humour and friendship can smooth over and restore even the most broken lives, and that some secrets just can't be kept hidden...

Marika Cobbold was born in Sweden and is the author of six previous novels: Guppies for Tea, selected for the WH Smith First Novels Promotion and shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award; The Purveyor of Enchantment; A Rival Creation; Frozen Music, Shooting Butterflies and, most recently, Aphrodite's Workshop for Reluctant Lovers. Marika Cobbold lives in London.

No one writes about life quite like Marika Cobbold; no one combines light and dark, humorous and profound, joyous and sorrowful quite so expertly
Guardian - Readers' Books of the Year

This wonderful Swedish novelist weaves tales of intellectual and emotional subtlety with her uniquely mischievous wit ... Characteristically, Cobbold handles profound and delicate themes with a ceramicist's lightness of touch
Daily Mail

Romance flirts with dark depths ... Since her popular debut, Guppies for Tea, Swedish-born Marika Cobbold has established a reputation for astute and acerbic romances. In her seventh novel, she examines the consequences of a girlhood tragedy. If the subject matter is not cheery, it is lit up by offbeat wit and charm
Independent

I can't recommend it enough
The Lady