Marriage and Other Games is the fourth stand-alone novel by English author Veronica Henry. Sebastian Turner, bad boy of the British art scene, in the throes of artistic block, under pressure from his wife, TVs agony sister Catkin Turner, to produce work to maintain their image, is holed up in his family home, Withybrook House, drinking the local pub dry. Charlotte Briggs, home renovator for the rich and famous, finds herself suddenly homeless, jobless, and friendless when her husband Ed embezzles the funds from a charity fund raiser and lands in jail. Gussie, the only friend who has stuck by her, suggests she renovate a family cottage in the Exmoor village of Withybrook. Local Withybrook stonemason, Fitch fears for his marriage to Hayley, the beautiful daughter of the oldest Withybrook family, the Politmores, when she takes up with the obscenely rich ex-boxer and thug, Kirk Lambert, citing a need to escape, but Fitch is determined to save his young daughters, Jade and Amber, from their mothers excesses. Penny Silver, divorced mother of teenaged Tom and Megan and GP in a nearby village, hopes to find someone to share her life after Bill. What do these four rather different people have in common? Veronica Henry throws this unlikely crew together in a remote village and lets the chips fall where they may. This novel has an original plot with quite a few twists and completely unpredictable outcomes. Henry crafts her characters carefully, with enough detail to give even some of the lesser characters depth and complexity. The dialogue is authentic and the village atmosphere is well conveyed. This is probably Henrys best yet.