An intelligent, erotically charged thriller with deep moral implicationsYvonne Carmichael, a renowned geneticist, public authority, and happily married mother of two, sits in the witness box. The charge is murder. Across the courtroom, not meeting her eye, sits her alleged accomplice. He wears the beautiful pin-striped suit he wore on their first meeting in the Houses of Parliament, when he put … Parliament, when he put his hand on her elbow and guided her to a deserted chapel, where she began to undress. As the barrister’s voice grows low and sinuous, Yvonne realizes she’s lost herself and the life she’d built so carefully to a man who never existed at all.
After their first liaison, Yvonne’s lover tells her very little about himself, but she comes to suspect his secrecy has an explanation connected with the British government. So thrilled and absorbed is she in her newfound sexual power that she fails to notice the real danger about to blindside her from a seemingly innocuous angle. Then, reeling from an act of violence, Yvonne discovers that her desire for justice and revenge has already been compromised. Everything hinges on one night in a dark little alley called Apple Tree Yard.
Suspenseful, erotically charged, and masterfully paced, Louise Doughty’s Apple Tree Yard is an intelligent psychological thriller about desire and its consequences by a writer of phenomenal gifts.
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I’m a big fan of page-turning suspense novels that are also character driven and intelligently written, and Apple Tree Yard falls into that category. This is a story about a woman in midlife – a successful professional, a wife in a stagnant marriage, a good but imperfect mother of two grown children – who one day starts a passionate affair with a …
Well I thought the book was a decent read even though the characters were shallow and self centred. Yvonne thought she found love in her stranger but turned out more to be stranger / danger and her love through her under the bus. How one should be careful about what they wish for as in the end affairs end and families stay around . The courtroom …
At first I didn’t like this book, but the more I read it the more intriguing it became. Well written in an unusual style.
Great book. I never expected it to end the way it did. I have recommended it to my friends.
The Apple Tree Yard was hard to put down.
So well written. The plot keeps u guessing and has some surprising twists. The characters are well developed also. Loved this book.
Good psychic thrillers are a relatively rare commodity, especially those who dare come out of the fixed boundaries and challenge the reader. The “apple tree yard” is an example of a thriller whose description makes it sound like a story that has already been read in a million other variations, but is much more than that. The book tells a familiar …
Totally enjoyed this original novel
For what I thought was to be a delightful English Mystery, turned out to be bizarre, bordered on Psychotic, tiresome. I did not complete it. Unusual for me
Very interesting book. I found the main character well fleshed out, really seemed genuine. Story line was different but laid out in a way that kept you reading.