Over My Dead Body

Carole Beacham is in her mid-sixties and planning to leave her husband. Before she can do so her daughter, Elvira, and two little granddaughters are involved in a fatal road traffic accident.

Then a stranger appears in the Intensive Care Unit claiming to be Elvira’s boyfriend, insisting Elvira wanted to donate her organs. But Carole has her own reasons for rejecting such a possibility: a dark family secret which has been hidden for thirty years.

She’s torn in two, but gradually her need to respect Elvira’s wishes overcomes her fear, and the transplants go ahead. Letters from grateful recipients bring comfort and Carole’s dread recedes.

Then the barriers created to safeguard anonymity start to slip. A troubling communication from a publishing firm … a moving poem from a teenager … an ambitious would-be journalist … and the family’s peace is in grave dange

Hazel McHaffie has worked in clinical practice and academia, and brings both experiences together in her series of novels set in the world of medical ethics. She is the author of almost a hundred published articles and books. In 2002 she won the British Medical Association's Medical Book of the Year, and in 2008 she was shortlisted for the BMA Popular Medicine Award. 'Over My Dead Body' is her eighth published novel.