When Kate Lock first met Tim Franklin she was a naive undergraduate, and he was a charismatic mature student. One night in the pub he casually revealed that he was a 'lifer'. A domestic dispute had taken a tragic turn, an accidental death, he said. It was the start of an explosive relationship which began in passionate union and ended in emotional cruelty. But it was only when Kate tried to leave him that she discovered how potentially dangerous he really was. And only when he died, leavin...

Hilda is blind, lives alone, and is visited by a carer once a week. Camelia is a young offender looking for her next mark.A surprising and curious relationship sparks into life between the two very different women, both of them searching for connection and purpose.Kate Lock's charming and insightful play traces the line between friendship and family, between a culture of entitlement and a culture of blame, and between two generations of women, both equally determined to get...

Anna Karenina is beautiful, married to a successful man, and has a son whom she adores. But a chance meeting at a train station in Moscow sets her passionate heart alight, and she is defenceless in the face of Count Vronsky’s adoration. Having defied the rules of nineteenth-century Russian society, Anna is forced to pay a heavy price. Human nature, with all its failings, is the fabric of which this great and intense work is composed. Anna Karenina has been described as the perfect Russian ...

‘I’m so sorry, Casey,’ my link worker John said, sounding weary. ‘I know this is probably the worst time I could ring you, but we desperately need someone to take a child tonight.’It’s the night before Christmas when Casey and Mike get the call. A twelve year old girl, stuck between a rock and a hard place. Her father is on a ventilator, fighting for his life, while her mother is currently on remand in prison. Despite claiming she attacked him in self-defence, she’s been charged wi...

Casey’s Unit is, as ever, full of troubled, disaffected pupils, and new arrival Leo is something of a conundrum.Thirteen year old Leo isn’t a bad lad – in fact, he’s generally polite and helpful, but he’s in danger of permanent exclusion for repeatedly absconding and unauthorised absences. Despite letters being sent home regularly, his mother never turns up for any appointments, and when the school calls home she always seems to have an excuse.Though Casey has her hands ful...

It’s late on Friday night when Casey’s mobile starts to ring. She is expecting it to be her daughter Riley. But it isn’t Riley. It’s a woman from the Emergency Duty Team. So begins Casey and Mike’s latest fostering challenge – a fifteen-year-old girl called Keeley who’s run away from her long-term foster home 25 miles away.The Jonathan Ross Show has just started when Casey gets the call. She thinks it will be Riley – telling her that her favourite actor is going to be on TV. But it...

Rejected by her mother and excluded by her school, Flip is a little girl desperate to be loved.‘Am I ugly, Mummy?’ are the first words that little Phillipa says to Mike and Casey as she stomps into their lives on a hot August afternoon. She has a Barbie doll in one hand and a pink vanity case in the other and the bemused Watsons can only stare in amazement at this tiny eight year old girl who is being guided into the room by her social worker.Phillipa, known as Flip has Foet...

Let Me Go is the powerful new memoir from foster carer and Sunday Times bestselling author Casey Watson.Harley, 13, has been sectioned under the mental health act after attempting suicide. She was spotted climbing the railings on a footbridge that crossed a busy motorway and pulled to safety by a member of the public. After six weeks in hospital, social services are looking for a short-term placement so she can be kept safe while family therapy takes place. Harley...

Bestselling author and foster carer Casey Watson shares the shocking true story of Tyler, an abused eleven-year-old who, after stabbing his step-mother, had nowhere else to go.Knowing a little of Tyler’s past – his biological mother, a heroin addict, died of an overdose when he was three – Casey feels bound to do her best for him. It isn’t easy; Tyler continuously lashes out, even trying to attack Casey herself. Investigation into his earlier childhood reveals why: forced to watch ...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Riot Days by Maria Alyokhina, read by Kate Lock.**From activist, Pussy Riot member and freedom fighter Maria Alyokhina, a raw, hallucinatory, passionate account of her arrest, trial and imprisonment in a penal colony in the Urals for standing up for what she believed in.'One of the most brilliant and inspiring things I've read in years. Couldn't put it down. This book is freedom' Chris Kraus, author of ...

Outline is a novel in ten conversations. Spare and lucid, it follows a novelist teaching a course in creative writing over an oppressively hot summer in Athens. She leads her student in storytelling exercises. She meets other writers for dinner. She goes swimming in the Ionian Sea with her seatmate from the place. The people she encounters speak volubly about themselves, their fantasies, anxieties, pet theories, regrets, and longings. And through these disclosures, a portrait of t...

A BOY WITHOUT HOPE is the heart-breaking story of a boy who didn’t know the meaning of love. A history of abuse and neglect has left Miller destined for life’s scrap heap. But in this turbulent story of conflict and struggle, Casey Watson is determined to help Miller overcome his demons, show him love and give him hope.Casey Watson is back, doing the job she does best – rolling up her sleeves and fostering the children who, on first meeting, seem like hopeless cases. But when she m...