In Cold Domain [Paperback]

A brilliant black comedy of family life. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

This is a darkly comic novel about a family. Four children persist in visiting their mother at Cold Demesnes - much to her irritation. Indeed, whenever any of them cross her, she pulls out yet another plant from the beautiful garden which is the emblem, for them, of their blissful childhood.

Lilith Collett lives in an Eden she is bent on destroying. If her family vex or thwart her in any way, the paradise of a garden that enchanted their childhood suffers for it. The vine, the rockery, the pergola - nothing at Cold Domain is safe from Lilith's ruthless slash-and-burn policy. Enter an archangel: Miguel-Angel Arqueso Algaron Perez de Vega, under whose spell downtrodden Barbara dares defy her mother. And when William's lover Caspar also joins the battle in his own subtle way, the fate of the Colletts and their garden are finally and unexpectedly sealed.

'A fairytale for grown-ups...wittily observed' Sunday Express

'A streamlined, ruthlessly stripped-down psychological family romance with enough plot twists and character revelations to fuel a book three times as long. Wicked and funny. Anne Fine is brilliant' Time Out

'Swooping gracefully from seriousness to farce and back again, Anne Fine succeeds in exposing a whole gamut of hidden emotions in an admirably perceptive novel' Good Housekeeping

'A glorious tirade against the grind of motherhood' Observer

Anne Fine
Anne Fine is also a distinguished writer for young people, and has won the Carnegie Medal twice, the Whitbread Children's Award twice, the Guardian Children's Literature Award and a Smarties Prize. An adaptation of her novel Goggle-Eyes has been shown by the BBC, and Twentieth-Century Fox filmed her novel Madame Doubtfire as Mrs Doubtfire, starring Robin Williams. Her books have been translated into twenty-six languages. Anne Fine has two grown-up daughters and lives in County Durham.