A SAUCY novel set in Bridgwater has erotica fans from the UK to the US forgetting Fifty Shades of Grey.

Sarah Darling, a former Wembdon resident who loved nothing more than going dancing at The Palace, is making waves on the spicy fiction scene with her funny book, ‘Pure Filth – Diary of a 40 year-old married woman’.

Sarah told the Mercury: “I self-published in August 2013 and six weeks later sales had gone through the roof.

“In one five-day period there were 1,857 downloads, over 1,000 of which were in America.”

The author, who has six children and six grandchildren, is a psychotherapist by day, and it’s the first book she’s written.

Celebrity biographer Nigel Goodall is said to have dubbed it “the best book he’s read in 20 years”.

So why does The Palace play such a key part?

“Bridgwater is quite a small town and 14 years’ ago, when I first came to Bridgwater, The Palace was the only nightclub.

“I love dancing – I’ve actually danced on the stage before – and it was the place I could go, so I became quite a regular there.”

Pure Filth is the first in a three-part series, telling Sarah’s journey from being an overweight, middle-aged and fed-up wife and sex therapist to slim, divorced and “sexually adventurous”.

It merges threads of Fifty Shades with Sex And The City and Shirley Valentine, says Sarah, who paid a visit to The Palace over the weekend for a book signing session.

‘Pure Filth’ is available in paperback and e-book on amazon.co.uk