A Place in the Country: A tale of passions, mayhem and pagan rites in the idyllic countryside by Rob Stuart

When yuppies Mitchell and Jocasta Dever move into Yew Tree cottage in the Hampshire village of Itchen Prior they fondly imagine they'll be starting a new life of bucolic bliss in a rural idyll. In fact, things don't exactly turn out like that. What they find is a seething pit of incest, sexual jealousy, paganism, exploitation, sharp business practices, feudalism and murder. _x000D_ A Place in the Country - whose galaxy of characters includes Sherborne St John, the lord of the manor and his scheming wife, Gwendolyn, who keeps her stable hand, Crux Easton, as a sex slave; Jed Smith, exploitative garden centre owner who uses the Bosnian student Jagoda Doboj and her friends as cheap illegal labour, and the deeply dubious Warren family - is a novel that takes a hilarious, jaunty, and also often moving and disturbing look at a rural idyll that is anything but.