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Playing With Fire
Playing With Fire
Jan 15, 2026 9:03 AM

Author:Diana Appleyard

Playing With Fire

Three couples, friends and neighbours... Tom, lazy and charming, looks after the children and thinks about writing a novel while his ambitious wife Sarah pursues her career as a journalist.Nat is married to the unstylish Cassie, who spends her life in jodhpurs, but although an ill-matched couple they have a strong and enduring marriage. Laure, the beautiful half-French wife of Gerard, is being shut out of his life because of financial worries.

One winter's evening, Laure and Tom dance together at a local ball, and suddenly a world of possibilities opens up between them. Can they can forget the troubles of their own home lives and find a new excitement, a new solace? It's only a game, after all, not for real...But playing with fire can hurt, as they both find out.

Reviews

This neatly woven story has three friends-and-neighbours couples at its heart...the scene is set for some passionate fallout

—— Good Housekeeping

These musical, deftly patterned poems are the products of a determined intelligence. They make for a convincing and sustained debut

—— Adam Foulds

This collection does not read like a debut. It has an established feel - as if Adam O'Riordan, who is in his mid-20s, had been around for decades. Only that makes him sound dusty, and he isn't. The unfashionable beauty of this collection - shining, musical, aloof - is that it is intimate without being confessional... This collection is a most finished beginning

—— Kate Kellaway , Observer

Adam O'Riordan brings an understated music to poems of birth, death and love, proving that novelty needn't be ostentatious. His poem on 'The Leverets', "Clawed from its nest into the cold world / sudden and bright and, in an instant, over", stopped me in my tracks.

—— Sarah Crown , Guardian

In the Flesh is an auspicious debut, full of unforgettable lines and hard-won insights. Adam O'Riordan is the real thing

—— Hugo Williams

Easily one of the best poetry collections in the past decade

—— Herald

Shifts in focus and perspective allow for a fresh and engaging exploration of time-honoured themes. This descriptive and imaginative daring makes In the Flesh a persuasive debut

—— Ben Wilkinson , Times Literary Supplement

The pace and balance of the book make it as enjoyable as Chocolat

—— France In Print

The author of the Whitbread-shortlisted Chocolat must win more plaudits for this elegant and epicurean novel permeated with the tantalizing flavours of rustic France

—— Publishing News

If you enjoyed Chocolat and Blackberry Wine, you are certainly ready to embark on this journey back to war-torn France, an unresolved past and a fraught future

—— Oxford Times

Evocative descriptions of food and rural France are what we have come to expect from the best-selling author of Chocolat. With recipes and luscious depictions of food, this is the perfect book for a gastronome

—— Eve Magazine

Harris's prose is deeply evocative - the scent of freshly baked bread, fruit and wine and oranges rises off the pages. Darker than her other novels and less sentimental, this is a wonderful book; don't miss out

—— Image Magazine

Harris presents a complicated but beautiful tale involving misfortune, mystery and intense family relations ... This intense work brims with sensuality and sensitivity

—— Publishers Weekly

Rich in detail, engaging all the senses and drawing one compulsively on to the unexpected climax

—— Time Out

As lyrically succulent as Chocolat and Blackberry Wine, this book probes darker corners of loss, enmity and betrayal

—— P S Magazine

Hugely enjoyable

—— Sunday Mirror

Vastly enjoyable, utterly gripping

—— The Times

A dark, gripping tale of how smell leads to tragedy and murder. Harris's vividly sensual account of a nine-year-olds loves, loyalties and misunderstandings is a powerful and haunting story of childhood betrayal

—— Good Housekeeping

Five Quarters of the Orange completes a hat-trick of food-titled tales with a riveting story about a young girl brought up in occupied France who's now an old woman harbouring a terrible secret. Harris is light-years ahead of her contemporaries. She teases you with snippets of a bigger story, gently pulling you in with her vivid descriptions of rural France until you can actually smell the oranges. Read it

—— Now Magazine

Beautifully told, it's a haunting and tantalizing tale that stays with you long after turning the last page

—— Mirror

The luscious prose, abounding in culinary metaphors and similes, which made Chocolat so readable, is once more in evidence ... a satisfying page-turner

—— Irish Examiner

This shape-shifting drama switches easily between Occupied France and the present day. Recipes for luscious meals and homebrewed liqueurs interlace a storyline that spoons suspense and black humour into the blender in equal measure

—— Irish Independent

Harris is an acute observer of the lush French countryside, and her descriptions of it are a delight ... A luscious feast of a book

—— Literary Review

Joanne Harris's rather brilliant Five Quarters of the Orange is a fascinating page-turner with a compelling climax ... This is an absolutely remarkable book that deserves to be read over and over again

—— Punch

Harris' love affair with food and France continues. Savour it

—— Family Circle

Harris evocatively balances the young Framboise's perspectives on life against grown-up truths with compelling, zestful flair

—— Elle

The dreamy and almost fair-tale narrative remains undisturbed by the spectre of the Occupation, as Harris avoids moral or historical themes, to ponder on the internal and social turmoil of the protagonists ... Harris seduces her readers with culinary delights, through suggestive textures and smells which indulge the senses

—— What's On In London

Harris has a gift for injecting magic into the everyday ... She is an old-fashioned writer in the finest sense, believing in a strong narrative, fully rounded characters, a complex plot, even a moral

—— Daily Telegraph

Gripping ... Harris is on assured form

—— The Sunday Times
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