The Control Freak Chronicles

Aug 11, 2025 1:32 AM

Author:Sarah Tucker

At forty-four, Helena Treadwell thought she had everything sorted. After divorcing her control freak ex, Leonard Wallis, she and her nine-year-old son, Freddie, relocated to her home town of Castleford. She's made a happy home for them and has a successful career as a radio presenter. Finally she feels she's clawing back the control and confidence she lost to Leonard. But life is never simple for long ...

Helena unexpectedly loses her job and Leonard announces that not only does he want Freddie to attend a private boarding school, he's also decided to move to Castleford to set up home with 'the other woman'. Suddenly Helena's losing control again, as her past comes back to unravel her future.

Reviews

Scandal, backstabbing, illicit affairs ... a fab, girlie read!

—— New Woman

Mums will be able to see the truth behind this fun novel

—— In The Know

A real laugh-out-loud tale

—— OK! Magazine

Fab and funny'

—— Closer

An excellent read

—— Professor Edward de Bono

P.G. Wodehouse remains the greatest chronicler of a certain kind of Englishness, that no one else has ever captured quite so sharply or with quite so much wit and affection.

—— Julian Fellowes

Wodehouse is a comic master.

—— David Walliams

For as long as I'm immersed in a P. G. Wodehouse book, it's possible to keep the real world at bay and live in a far, far nicer, funnier one where happy endings are the order of the day.

—— Marian Keyes

I'm a huge fan. Wodehouse writes proper jokes.

—— Jennifer Saunders

To dive into a Wodehouse novel is to swim in some of the most elegantly turned phrases in the English language.

—— Ben Schott

One jaw-droppingly powerful, courageous and original fiction debut...As a 10th work of fiction this would be impressive; as a debut, it is remarkable

—— Sunday Telegraph

Hands down the best fictional debut we have read this year

—— Dazed & Confused

For the imagery alone and for the sentences, the book would be a treasure, but the story it tells - the story of the suicide of the author's father - has an immediacy and sharpness made all the more special by the tone of distance in the narrative and the beauty of the writing

—— Colm Toibin, Observer books of the year

David Vann's Legend of a Suicide is brave, fantastically well written, and completely defies categorisation

—— Julie Myerson, Daily Telegraph books of the year

From the shores of Vann's Alaska one can see the Russia of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons ... 'A father, after all,' Vann writes, 'is a lot for a thing to be.' A son is also a lot for a thing to be; so is an artist. With Legend of a Suicide David Vann proves himself a fine example of both

—— New York Times

...a gripping fantasy thriller that will please all the older Harry Potter fans out there

—— Yours Magazine

Jonathan Littell veers between brilliance and bathos...

—— Sally Cousins , The Telegraph

Grotesque, dismaying, chilling in its focus on the fine detail of barbarism, this epic of evil is also addictively readable

—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent on Sunday

Compelling... utterly engaging... for anyone whose interest in his subjects is great to enough to bear their unflinching portrayal The Kindly Ones is an essential novel

—— Chris Power , The Times

It's an amazing picture of evil, wonderfully written (and very well translated from the original French by Charlotte Mandell), and left me feeling as though I had supped with the damned

—— Jane Knight , The Times

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