MARGARET YORKE

When Alan Parker is suddenly made redundant, he can't bring himself to tell his wife. With time on his hands while secretly and desperately looking for a job, he meets a waif-like little girl, Tessa, and her lonely, widowed mother. Alan discovers he can confide in Louise, and feels protective towards her and her daughter. But then Tessa disappears. Alan, once utterly respectable, is now unemployed and living a life of deception and adultery. To the police, he is the prime suspect of a hideous and sordid crime.

The daughter of a well-to-do family and recovering from a hopeless love affair, Louise Vaughan vanishes one night while returning home from a choir practice. Her car is discovered, together with her handbag, but no trace of Louise is found. Her family are forced to accept that she is dead. Twelve years later David Marsh, who worked on the original investigation, returns to the area as its Chief Superintendent. He'd never forgotten the case and decides to have a fresh look at the facts and the people involved. He learns that Louise's parents and their adopted son are still in the area - the ...

A chance encounter with a stranger, Priscilla Blunt, seems to offer Nina Crowther an escape from her problems. Middle-aged, struggling to recover from the shock of her husband divorcing her to marry a younger (and pregnant) woman, Nina happily falls in with Priscilla's idea to house-sit for her while she and her husband visit South Africa. When the phone rings on her first night in the Blunts' Berkshire manor house she expects it to be one of her duaghters, but when she lifts the receiver no-one speaks. All Nina hears is a shuddering sigh. As the calls persist Nina fears she has attracted an ...

When her goddaughter is arrested during an environmentalist protest, Isabel Vernon is startled to discover that the fair-haired child of her memory has become an overweight skinhead activist and that Isabel herself is now regarded as Emily Frost's next of kin. Emily, released on bail to the Vernons at their home in the London suburb of Fordswick, meets a middle-aged drifter who encourages her to take a babysitting job at the home of a local family. Emily forms an instant attachment to Rowena, the four-year-old girl in her charge and, missing her campaigning friends, is eager to make a success of her new position. Emily's unconventional presence in the Vernons' house proves troubling, and is deepening the profound tensions within Isabel's marriage. Meanwhile, the arrival of someone else in Fordswick threatens the safety of Emily and Rowena, as well as the security of many of the town's long-buried secrets. Dissecting the fragile state of ordinary lives with chilling clarity, False Pretenses reveals Margaret Yorke at her atmospheric, suspenseful best.

Susan Trent is in her sixties, the owner of a good- sized house in a prosperous village. Her job in the estate agent of the nearby town keeps her active, as does her garden. She ought to be well-satisfied with her lot. Instead she lives in terror of her semi- employed, abusive, middle-aged son. Her friends and neighbours suspects her cuts and bruises are caused by his fists, not by her clumsy falls as she claims, but no-one voices their fears to her. They keep a wary eye on the situation and wonder between themselves why she doesn''t bar him from the house. Then a stranger comes to lodge in the village and his arrival triggers a series of events which eventually reveal why Susan has been so protective of her son, but not until more of her blood is spilled.