Book excerpt: A bad penny always turns up, so the saying goes. A Bad Penny is the third book in a series by Pat McDonald. In her first book, A Penny for Them, Benjamin Matthews (nee Pollock), discovers after several startling revelations that he isn’t who he thought he was, which stops him from leaving with his wife and children for the United Arab Emirates. Determined to join them, Ben manages to escape the clutches of Sergeant Daphne Johnson, when in book two, The Penny Drops, he sneaks out of the UK to “live the dream” in the desert country’s opulent culture. Feeling sheer relief upon arrival, and lured by his new exotic surroundings and the mysteries of the desert, Ben sees no point in telling his wife who he really is. Believing him to be an orphan, she remains blissfully ignorant of both his families, until his two mothers show up together, complete with suitcases. This sparks the beginning of another inevitable run of bad luck for Ben. Just when things seem to be going okay, something always turns up to spoil it! In A Bad Penny, Ben’s easy escape to United Arab Emirates is short lived, when, like a bad penny, everyone turns up!