Paradise Lodge (27 page)

I would like to thank my brilliant editor, Mary Mount, for being a total joy to work with—since the beginning (and without whom etc.).

Thanks also to Jo Unwin—my top-notch agent and minder—constant source of fun and sage advice.

I'm happy and proud that once again Reagan Arthur is my
US
publisher. Thanks also to Matt Carlini, Lisa Erickson, Julianna Lee, Giraud Lorber, Katharine Myers, Alyssa Persons, and Jayne Yaffe Kemp.

Thanks to Stella Heath and Jon Reed for utter marvellousness, enthusiasm and wise words.

Thanks to my family, especially my fantastic mum, Elspeth Allison, and A. J. Allison, John Allison, Victoria Goldberg, Alfred Nunney, Eva Nunney, Jeremy Stibbe, Tom Stibbe.

Thanks to Shân Morley Jones, Chantal Noel, Poppy North, Sarah Scarlett, Keith Taylor and Isabel Wall at Penguin Books.

I remember with great affection my time working at The Grange Nursing Home in Saddington, Leicestershire, in the 1970s. Though it was nothing like Paradise Lodge, happy times there—under the leadership of the wonderful Meena Ackbarally and Rafick Ackbarally—inspired me to write this novel. I'm indebted also to Victoria Goldberg and Fiona Holman for sharing memories with me and for their nursing expertise.

Finally, huge thanks and love to Mark Nunney.

Nina Stibbe was born in Leicester, England, and is the author of the highly acclaimed memoir
Love, Nina
and the novel
Man at the Helm,
which was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction. She now lives in Cornwall with her partner and their two children.

Man at the Helm

Love, Nina

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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Copyright © 2016 by Nina Stibbe

Cover design by Julianna Lee

Cover illustration by Sam Chung and Lucia Kim

Author photograph by Rebecca Dawe

Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author's intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author's rights.

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First United States ebook edition: July 2016

Originally published in Great Britain by the Penguin Group, July 2016

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Excerpt taken from
The World Is Full of Married Men
by Jackie Collins

Copyright © 1968 by Chances, Inc.

Reprinted by permission of the author's estate

ISBN 978-0-316-30933-2

E3-20160521-JV-PC