Salacious means salty: not just the brininess of the sea, but of the spice-of-life-and-sometimes-death kind. It seemed the appropriate word to use for an invigorating gallop alongside the fast-and-loose livers of Sussex-by-the-Sea, past and present. Some people try to claim that the filthing of Sussex is a result if the Brighton effect, the insidious metropolitan stain of London-sur-Mer oozing out over the rest of us, but history proves them wrong. It's not all down to Georgie Peorgie and his naughty puddings, pies and tarts. You would not believe what used to go on in Steyning of all places, who would have thought it. And if you believe that gang violence was something invented by asbo-wielding hoodies, wait until you meet the Hawkhurst tea barons or the Hastings Chopbacks and their spine-splitting cutlasses. In what other county could anyone have pulled off a scam as eccentric as the Piltdown Man? Sussex is just as renowned for its darkside as for its natural sunny beauty, and Salacious Sussex is the book to celebrate it. 

• A scandal for every taste, from ancient history to the modern age (as far as the libel laws will allow).
• Divided into five themed chapters, each covering a different kind of scandal from hanky panky to murder via chicanery and shenanigans, with a detour into lechery and satanism.
• The darkside of the county dragged into the sunshine.

ISBN: 978-1-906022-14-3, 187mm x 115mm, 96 pages, 30,000 words, 5 specially commissioned illustrations plus map, hardback, marker ribbon.

Viv Croot

Viv Croot is a writer who was born and raised in London but has spent much of her adult life in Brighton, the naughty capital of the county. Whether Brighton seduced her into the darker, seamier side of life or whether she was already there is hard to say. She has written many books, most of them under an assumed name, which should tell you something, and researching the murders, financial scandals, sexual shenanigans, scams, cheats, betrayals and dirty deeds that feature in Salacious Sussex did not shock her nearly as much as it should have.