The Little Old Lady Who Struck Lucky Again! (42 page)

My thanks go also to Mika Larsson for all your wise, professional views and when you have openly criticized and praised with the same joyful verve; Isabella Ingelman-Sundberg for your NICE AND
FRIENDLY support and all the times you have read the manuscript and given me your quick and insightful comments; Gunnar Ingelman who has been there and supported me while I’ve been writing
this book; and Henrik Ingelman-Sundberg for your always unsentimental, critical and direct comments which have been worth their weight in gold.

Thanks also to Magnus Nyberg for reading, reflecting and commenting. Your laughter and views often influenced how I then worked on the manuscript! And my thanks to Kerstin Fägerblad for yet
again reading from the very first version to the final book, and, together with Marike Ollner, for helping with research out at Solvalla race course. I would also like to thank Solbritt Benneth,
Bengt Björkstén and Karin Sparring Björkstén for your invaluable help. I have also benefited from quick and inspiring opinions from Ingegerd Jons, Anna Rask and Agneta
Lundström, comments that I greatly value. Thanks also to Peter Östman and Malin Elgborn who have given me valuable feedback.

Last but not least I would like to thank Maria Enberg, Lena Stjernström, Peter Stjernström, Lotta Jämtsved Millsberg and Umberto Ghidoni at Grand Agency. Thanks for all your help
with selling
The Little Old Lady Who Broke all the Rules
to more than twenty countries.

Back in 1991, when I wrote my first book (
The Battle against the Breakers
), I dreamt of having it published in the UK. I have always been a fan of the English and the
English sense of humour, and the UK publishing industry just has something special about it. Authors all over the world want to be published there. Traditionally, for Swedish authors it has been
very difficult and not many have succeded in translation. I have seventeen other books published in Sweden but I had no luck getting these published in the UK.

Then, to my delight,
The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules
finally got me the UK publishing deal that I have always wanted. When I was writing the novel I thought about films such
as
Ladykillers
and
Whisky Galore
and realized that my book was similar in tone. So I hoped that the British public might like
The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules.

I dug deep down in my purse and paid for a couple of chapters to be translated into English. I then gave the translation to my agent at the Grand Agency and waited with my fingers crossed. I
couldn’t believe my ears when I heard that Pan Macmillan had bought World English rights. Since then I have been a very happy woman.

Not only have my agents managed to sell
The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules
to so many countries that I have lost count, but I really feel that my English editor, Natasha Harding,
has been great and done everything right. Just look at the English title: isn’t it wonderful? And they have let me take part in their work with the book – the translation, the cover,
the marketing etc. – in such a nice way. And I’m very grateful to Rod Bradbury, my translator, who has done such a fantastic job on the English translation.

As an author you are always worried about what is going to happen to your book. It is not easy to give your ‘baby’ away. Will it be taken care of ? What about the distribution? Are
you going to find it in the bookshops? What about PR, marketing and all that? In this case it did not take long untiI I realized
I did not have to worry
. I could sit back and relax on the
sofa and just see everything happen the way I wanted. Ah, that’s smart, I thought to myself, ah, that’s good, ah, that’s just the way I wanted it to be and so on. And when I joked
with my editor as we exchanged e-mails, my humour was immediately understood. In fact, my editor and publicist at Pan Macmillan even replied with jokes themselves.

At present
The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules
is being read all over the world. The Kindle ebook kicked off the success to begin with and now the paperback has sold over 100,000
copies. I am not saying this to be polite; I am saying this because I am really happy with the way the book has been taken care of in the English-speaking market. I love to work with professionals
and I feel that with Pan Macmillan my dream of being published in the English language has been fulfilled beyond my highest hopes.

Martha Andersson, 79
– A former PE teacher from Österlen in the south of Sweden. In later years she moved to Stockholm and lived in the Södermalm
district. She is a keen advocate of health foods and exercise but is, nevertheless, slightly plump. This might have something to do with her love of pastries and cakes. She chooses her clothes with
care but also has a belt bag because it’s so practical.

Oscar ‘Brains’ Krupp, 78
– A former electrical engineer, who is also an inventor. He comes from Sundbyberg, a suburb just north of Stockholm, which is
where he had his workshop. He knows five languages, but is not an experienced traveller. Brains has a big belly and a jolly nature to go with it.

Anna-Greta Bielke, 81
– A former bank official, she grew up in the very posh district of Djursholm near Stockholm. Anna is the wealthiest of all her friends. She
is methodical and likes to be in control. She studied art history and is very interested in culture.

Christina Åkerblom, 77
– Christina grew up in Jönköping, in the religious south-west of Sweden and, as a mother of two, she was a housewife for a
long time. But after her divorce she opened a hat shop. Her greatest wish was to become a librarian. She devours books and loves literary classics.

Bertil ‘Rake’ Engström, 82
– Once a seaman and a market gardener. He has a son who followed in his footsteps and is now at sea too. Rake
experiments with growing various seeds and plants, and dreams about the Seven Seas and the old sailing ships. He tends to be a bit moody at times, especially if his blood sugar level is low. He
speaks Finnish and cheats at cards.

If you enjoyed reading

The Little Old Lady Who Struck Lucky Again!

then you might like to read the following books too . . .

79-year-old Martha Andersson dreams of escaping her care home and robbing a bank.

She has no intention of spending the rest of her days in an armchair and is determined to fund her way to a much more exciting lifestyle. Along with her four oldest friends – otherwise
known as the League of Pensioners – Martha decides to rebel against all of the regulations imposed upon them. Together, they cause uproar: protesting against early bedtimes and plasticky
meals.

As the elderly friends become more daring, they hatch a cunning plan to break out of the dreary care home and land themselves in a far more attractive Stockholm establishment. With the aid of
their Zimmer frames, they resolve to stand up for old-aged pensioners everywhere. And that’s when the adventure really takes off . . .

The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules
is an incredibly quirky, humorous and warm-hearted story about growing old disgracefully – and breaking all the rules along the way!

‘A good-natured, humorous crime caper’

Independent on Sunday

Frank Derrick is eighty-one. And he’s just been run over by a milk float.

It was tough enough to fill the hours of the day when he was active. But now he’s broken his arm and fractured his foot, it looks set to be a very long few weeks ahead. Frank lives with
his cat Bill (which made more sense before Ben died) in the typically British town of Fullwind-on-Sea. He watches DVDs, spends his money frivolously at the local charity shop and desperately tries
to avoid cold-callers continually knocking on his door.

Then a breath of fresh air comes into his life in the form of Kelly Christmas, home help. With her cheerful resilience and ability to laugh at his jokes, Kelly changes Frank’s extra
ordinary life. She reminds him that there is a world beyond the four walls of his flat and that adventures, however small, come to people of all ages.

Frank and Kelly’s story is sad, funny, moving, familiar and uplifting. For fans of
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
this is a quirky, life-affirming story that has enormous
appeal. And it’s guaranteed to make you laugh.

‘Quirky, funny and uplifting’

Candis Magazine

The must-read novel for anyone who wasn’t born yesterday . . .

Each month best friends Claudia, Sal, Ella and Laura meet for drinks, celebrating over forty years of friendship. They know each other inside out. Their ambitions, careers,
husbands, lovers, children, hopes, fears, the paths taken and not taken . . .

Sal had spent a lifetime building a career as a magazine editor but she hadn’t banked on a nasty surprise from the one area of her life over which she had no control.

Claudia loved her urban existence – the thought of the country sent shivers down her spine. But, as many women will know, other people’s needs always seem to come first . . .

Ella is ready to try something different. But she hadn’t bargained on quite such a radical change . . .

Laura succumbed to the oldest cliché in the book. But it didn’t make it any easier to accept.

Outside of the supportive world of their friendships, they find their lives are far from what they expected – the generation that wanted to change the world didn’t bargain on getting
old.

Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg is a Swedish author who has written seventeen books in several genres, including popular science, cartoon, children’s and historical fiction.

Her individual writing style, with its depth of insight and sense of surprise and humour, gives her books a special appeal. So much so that in 1999 she won the prestigious
Widding Prize as the best writer of popular history and historical novels.

The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules
is an international bestseller and was Catharina’s first book to be published in the UK. In English translation it has
sold over 100,000 copies to date and was a top ten ebook bestseller.

Also by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg

The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules

First published in 2014 by Bokförlaget Forum, Sweden, under the title
Låna är silver, Råna är Guld

This electronic edition published 2015 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-4472-7491-9

Copyright © Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg 2014 by agreement with Barbara J. Zitwer Agency in cooperation with Grand Agency

Translation copyright © Rod Bradbury 2014

The right of Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations
and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for,
any author or third party websites referred to in or on this book.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital,
optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.