This is the tale of three women one witch, one mermaid and one missing and how Ruby was caught up in between. hen Isa Fly appears in the doorway of Captin Len s Fried Fish Shop, fourteen-year-old Ruby is entranced. Isa comes from the coast where the air is fresh; unlike Ruby s home in Cradle Cross, its factory furnaces pumping and filthy slits of canal water sending up a stink. sa is on the hunt for a missing person, and Ruby is eager to help, convinced she will be repaid with an adventure at sea. But some of the townsfolk are instantly suspicious of the outsider with her shock of white hair and glinting mirrored skirts. They have their own lost relatives to mourn, and don t take kindly to Isa s ability to leave their Ruby spellbound. ndaunted, Ruby introduces Isa to Truda Blick, the bluestocking graduate who has just inherited the town s button factory. Blickses is on the verge of collapse, and Truda needs to save the business before she can help solve Isa s mystery. Ruby is desperate to assist both women but her alliance with Truda and Isa is pushing the town to the brink of riot. All the trouble began, it seems, when Isa Fly arrived in Cradle Cross... nd only Ruby know

Author Biography

Anna Lawrence Pietroni was born and brought up in the Black Country. She gained a First Class degree in English from Oxford University. She worked in the prison service and was training to be a prison governor before she turned to writing full-time. Ruby's Spoon is her first novel. Anna Lawrence Pietroni lives in Oxford.