Book One
A man travels on a train, he heads west to Bath, England to start a new life after a long-term relationship break-up. He’s heading to take up a position at a letting's agency located in the Georgian city centre. It is there he meets the blonde and beautiful but enigmatic Petra Larson. She has worked there a while, but she is aloof and stand offish and not popular with everyone. She is seen unfriendly, perhaps thinking she is superior to her work colleagues. The newly joined Jerry strikes up an unlikely friendship and it seems romance might flourish too. They meet for an after-work drink and afterwards, quite by chance, Jerry finds she might not be whom she seems? This is brought to startling reality when after not turning up for work the following week, Jerry receives a phone call urgently seeking his help.
Jerry is stunned to find her in a hotel over 50 miles away having been savagely raped and beaten. He collects her and and takes her to his newly rented flat and there the reason for her being in the state he found her becomes clear after a shocking revelation. Petra Larson most certainly isn’t who she likes to appear normally, it soon emerges she has a double life, one which makes any future relationship he might have hoped for now uncertain. What also emerges, is the cause of her injury resulted from a savage attack by someone very close by. Someone she knows.
Petra flees to Boston, USA to recover and heal her physical scars, but her mental scars may take longer to heal. It exposes Petra’s other world and introduces her lifelong friends along the way. Murder and mystery then join forces as revenge is planned and this soon takes centre stage. Will this and its aftermath destroy what seemed a perfect match and love at first sight?
Book Two
Petra is still in Boston recovering. She fled to her sports psychologist; someone Petra knew from when she was an elite athlete who had competed under her national flag. Not for the first time, she puts Petra back together. Before leaving to return home, Petra goes whale watching and it is while out at sea, she has an emotional meltdown, one which brought back starkly memories of the event which took place in the hotel, an experience which has left her permanently scarred. Even so, she returns home and one evening Petra receives a strange phone call from a woman she had previously met in a courtroom. They meet up and the woman makes an astonishing request.
They connect, Petra and Jennifer Wallace or Jen as she preferred, two women troubled by their past, meet for a weekend at Petra’s luxury top floor apartment. Property she owned and paid for by earnings a mere lettings agent could only dream of. Over that weekend, every human emotion is stretched to breaking point as sapphic romance and raw sadism expose their extreme needs graphically, savagely! As a result, a deep, emotional connection is formed, and this continues and builds until weeks later in a moment of religious hatred, a brutal act takes place which destroys Petra and sees her fleeing once again into to arms of the only person who knows how to repair her – again.
Book Three
Once again Petra Larson returns to the UK but this time in secret. She finds a dilapidated blacksmith’s cottage which bears that name just off the North Yorkshire moors. She has it renovated and teases the workmen, exposing her body revealingly. She also meets an older woman who Petra takes to in a way which fulfils a strange need. Following an event where Petra inextricably tries to reenact her rape, the woman intervenes to save her from herself. The woman owns stables and offers Petra a job, and it is there she meets Ella, a pretty teenage girl who has a crush on the older woman.
While Petra is there, she is reunited by Dominique Vasson, a French born opponent in their chosen sport of karate. Dommy as she is called, is accompanied by another friend a black greyhound called Jake who once belonged to her former lover Jen. It is now seeking a new home after the woman who took the dog after the tragic event dies. A home Petra willingly provides. A devastating fire at the stables brings stark reality into play once more and after the death of the stable's owner, Petra is forced to move south and start again.
Petra now has a choice to make. To link up with her sordid past by forming a relationship with a once powerful older man or choosing a young teenager who is seeking a role model in her life and perhaps far more.
Book Four
Jaz Crealey is a freelance counsellor. She has attended a course in the Berkshire town of Reading. Covered on the two-day agenda has been railway suicide and how to recognise it. Later, on a freezing cold day with a biting wind, Jaz sees a lone woman standing at the end of the platform, a solitary figure outside and exposed when everyone else has sheltered from the bitter easterly wind. Alarm bells ring for Jaz with what she had recently learned fresh in her mind.
When the station tannoy announces the imminent arrival of a fast, nonstop freight train Jaz realises why the woman his where she is and what she plans to do. Just in time, Jaz grabs the woman and a fight for both their survival takes place. Later Jaz introduces herself. ‘I’m Jasmine Crealey - everyone calls me Jaz.’ The woman replies, ‘I’m Petra Larson – everyone calls me a bitch!’
Jaz takes Petra home to her apartment in Bristol. There Jaz finds an assortment of letters, each written by Petra to someone special in her life. Jaz takes on the task of helping Petra, using each letter and visiting that person to understand their connection. It is shortly after this Petra is savagely attacked and left for dead while out walking her dog, Jake.
This brings together the personal lives of both woman and exposes the extreme threat someone in Jaz’s life presents and this is brought into stark reality at a huge farewell party held at Petra’s apartment after she recovers. A brutal end and one which still leaves Petra’s future less than certain.
Final Book Five
Petra, still trying to put the pieces of her life back together receives a letter from a firm of solicitors where she learns she has inherited the cottage in which her murdered former lover Jennifer Wallace lived. She dreads being reminded of that brief, but deeply intensive relationship, but even so, decides to visit and see how best to clear Jen’s personal belongings. On arrival at Rose Cottage Petra realises the place has been lived in recently and later, walking along the nearby seashore Petra has a surprise awaiting her of shocking proportion.
As a huge blast from the past overwhelms her, Petra struggles to make sense of what has happened. How, and especially why; in particular why now, after such a long period of time, during which her life became a permanent train wreck. Trying to cope with the loss of Jen her former lover, stabbed to death on a London street simply because she was a Jew.
As Petra returns to her new Oxfordshire home, her apartment having been pulled down to make way for identical pattern housing. She has met a rich and powerful neighbour who she visits regularly in the capacity of a former role she carried out years before. Then, just as Petra doesn’t imagine another seismic shock is remotely possible, one arrives which leaves her reeling.
Following a savage death, there is a final massive choice to make and for both Petra and the recent surprise in her life, only one of them can come out of it unscathed.
The Petra Larson Story - a story of a complex life by Anietta Strong
All five books in one large single volume at a bargain price
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