About Plotting for Beginners

'Women reach fifty and think they're on the verge of liberation and excitement, and their broken-down men just want to stay home and fart. Or in my case, go and live in a cabin in the Rockies and fart.' Sally Howe plans to spend her husband-free year trying her hand at becoming a wildly successful author. But she's beset by distractions - the first being a queue of local lotharios, led by young Billy Bathgate, village postmaster with a tartan trouser habit and an obsession with drain rods. Warm, wise and funny, Plotting for Beginners offers a wry evaluation of long-haul marriages, plus a lesson on how to hit the menopause running and seize your freedom when the family has gone.

About Sue Hepworth

Sue Hepworth was born in rural Lincolnshire and now lives in the Derbyshire Peak District with her husband and her younger son. She has worked as a research psychologist, a social researcher, a full time mother and various combinations of these. She has been a frequent contributor to The Times, and she wrote the comic novel Plotting for Beginners with Jane Linfoot. Sue is addicted to sweet peas and romantic comedies, but no longer thinks that everything in life has a happy ending. www.suehepworth.com more

Charming, intelligent and side-splittingly funny. -- Lynne Barrett-Lee

Witty and astute. I loved it. -- Chloe Ashcroft

"dangerously addictive" BBC Radio "funny, quirky…different, refreshing, and spot-on with its observations" The Guardian "wonderfully funny...enormously satisfying, well-written and perfectly-plotted" Trashionista "buoyant and charming...hilarious bursts of verve and wit" E! Online "amusing and unpretentious" The Times