Jane Shemilt’s The Playground brings rising suspense to a hot London summer with unexpected consequences.

Three very different couples with children converge w hen their children join Eve’s tutoring classes. An earth mother, type, she vastly differs from Melissa, an interior designer with an abusive husband, and from Grace, the Zimbabwe wife who keeps her novelist husband and children afloat while her own writing is put on hold.

While the husbands also differ, their relationships with their wives will change and morph.

That summer the couples becomes close–almost too close–and lose sight of how their children are behaving. When tragedy upon tragedy strikes, the couples will turn to each other, wanting to learn the truth behind what happened, but afraid of that very truth.

There’s a destructive force at work, and with harrowing twists, including a surprising courtroom scene, the suspense builds to a shattering climax.