Excerpt from Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Somewhere with a sunny microclimate, perhaps?"

"Ha. Funny."  Despite the disappointments of the day so far-none of the  wedding venues  has  lived  up  to  expectation, too  much  over­ priced  chintz-Lorna is quite  happy. There is something exhilarating about  driving through this wild weather with  the man she is to marry, just the two of them  cocooned in their wheezing little  red Fiat. When they're old and  gray they'll remember this  journey,  she thinks. Being young and in love and in a car in the  rain.

"Great." Jon  frowns  at a looming dark  shape  in the mirror. "All  I need  now is a massive bloody tractor up  my backside."  He  stops  at a crossroads, where various signs, bent  by the  wind,  point  in directions that  bear little relation to the angle of the corresponding roads. "Now where?"

"Are we lost?" she teases, enjoying  the idea.

 "The satnav  is lost. We  seem  to have gone off grid.  Only in your beloved Cornwall."
Lorna smiles.  Jon's  is a  boyish,  uncomplicated grumpiness, one that  will evaporate with  the first  sign of the  house, or a cold beer.  He doesn't internalize things, like she does, or make obstacles symbolic  of other stuff.

"Right." He nods at the map on Lorna's lap, which is scattered with biscuit  crumbs and  folded  haphazardly. "How are your  map-reading skills coming along, sweetheart?"

"Well  ..." She scrabbles the  map open, bouncing the crumbs off to join the empty water bottles rolling on the sandy car floor. "According to my rough  cartological calculations, we're currently driving through the Atlantic."

Jon  huffs  back in  his seat,  stretches out  his legs, too  long for  the small car. "Brilliant."
Lorna leans  over, strokes his thigh  where muscle fades the denim. She knows  he's  tired  of driving down  unfamiliar roads  in  the  rain, touring wedding venues, this one, farthest away, hardest to find,  saved for last. They would  be on the Amalfi Coast  if she hadn't insisted that they come  to Cornwall instead. If Jon's  patience  is wearing thin, she can hardly blame him.
Jon proposed back at Christmas, months ago, pine needles crunch­ ing beneath his bended knee.  For a long time,  that  was enough. She loved being engaged,  that state of blissful suspension: they belonged  to each  other, but  they  still  woke  up  every  morning and  chose  to  be
together. She  worried about   jinxing  that   easy  happiness.  Anyway, there  was no mad rush.  They had all the time in the world.

Then they  didn't. When  Lorna's   mother died  unexpectedly in May, grief punched her  back to earth and  the  wedding suddenly felt inescapably, brutally urgent. Her mother's death  was a reminder not to wait. Not  to put things on hold or forget  that  a black date is circled  on everyone's calendar, flipping ever closer.  Disorienting but also oddly life-affirming, it made her want to grab life in her fists, totter through the litter of Bethnal Green Road  on a drizzly Sunday morning in her lucky  red  heels.  This morning she  wiggled  herself  into  a sunshine­ yellow vintage sixties sundress. If she can't  wear it now, when? 

Jon changes gears, yawns. "What's the  place called again, Lorna?" "Pencraw," she says brightly,  trying to keep his spirits up, mindful that  if it were up to Jon  they'd simply stuff his large, sprawling family into a marquee in his parents' Essex garden and  be done with it. Then they'd move down  the road,  near  his adoring sisters-swapping their tiny  city  flat   for  a suburban house   with  a  lawn  sprinkler-so  his mother, Lorraine, could  help with  all  the  babies  that  would  swiftly follow. Thankfully, it is not up to Jon. "Pencraw Hall."

Excerpted from Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase. Copyright © 2016 by Eve Chase. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.