FORMER Hereford woman Tiffany Murray saw her first novel, Happy Accidents, hit the shelves this week.

Crackling with the darkest of dark humour, brimming with crazy ancestors and closely guarded secrets, Happy Accidents is not a novel about pastoral and rural Britain.

It's the early 80s and protagonist Kate Happy is being brought up by her grandparents on their huge, sprawling farm, somewhere between England and Wales...

Tiffany Murray has had short fiction published, as well as a series of first-person articles in The Independent on Sunday.

Having left Hereford Cathedral School she trained as an actress, then moved to New York to study Caribbean and African literature at NYU.

Tiffany is now completing her PhD at the University of East Anglia, where she teaches creative writing.

Her new novel is published by Fourth Estate.