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 iAAnd is a seething pit of incest, sexual jealousy, paganism, exploitation, sharp business practices, feudalism and murder. 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.

Rob Stuart was born in Germany where his father was a UK Ministry of Defence ofï¬cer on the East German frontier. Rob has been a bookseller, civil servant, wine bar owner and EFL teacher. He is now retired.