A big thank you to Kath – and Squizzey – for inviting me onto the blog today to mark the publication of my fifth book, A Wedding on the Riviera. One of my trademarks as a writer is my fondness for glamorous locations. Kath suggested I might talk about the complexities of researching locations when in lockdown – so that’s…
If you follow me on social media or have ever read this blog before, you’ll know that books, chocolate and adventures with squirrels (and yes, Squizzey, especially one in particular) are three of my favourite things. Luckily, I caught a Facebook post by Evonne Wareham earlier last week advertising an event that combined all three. On Thursday lunchtime, Squizzey and I ventured over to…
The Penny Bangle is the last in a trilogy of books following the lives and loves of various members of the Denham family. It’s a series I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading and a family who I’m sorry to have to leave behind, no matter how fitting an end The Penny Bangle is to the series. In The Penny Bangle, it’s the turn…
I must admit to having a bit of an aversion to pink. With the notable exception of the singer, P!NK, I try and avoid the colour, especially when it liberally covers a book. But I was only too happy to overcome this irrational dislike if it meant I could read another Kate Johnson novel. I read and thoroughly enjoyed Kate’s…
The house was in a kind of mews, not directly on the river. Compact, made of old brick. It was a world away from the backstreets of Hackney where he’d grown up. That was an even longer time ago. Yet another name, and another life. He frowned. He didn’t need stuff like that surfacing. He was American, nowadays – it said so on…
Having already read and enjoyed Christina Courtenay’s previous two novels, Trade Winds and The Scarlet Kimono, you’d think that I would have learned my lesson and left Highland Storms for a weekend when I had some uninterrupted reading time. But no, despite knowing that I find it incredibly hard to put one of her books down, I picked it up on…
Betrayed by his brother and his childhood love, Brice Kinross needs a fresh start. So he welcomes the opportunity to leave Sweden for the Scottish Highlands to take over the family estate. But there’s trouble afoot at Rosyth in 1754 and Brice finds himself unwelcome. The estate’s in ruin and money is disappearing. He discovers an ally in Marsaili Buchanan,…
If I tell you that Jane Austen is one of my favourite authors and has been since I was a teenager; that Persuasion is not only my favourite of all her books but one of my all-time favourite books; and that Captain Wentworth is my favourite literary hero, then you’ll probably understand why I might have been slow to flick open…
Hello. It’s me again, I’m afraid. Budge up a bit, chaps, and… IS that an acorn? Ow. Really Squizz, have some decorum, I thought I’d got another boil on my bum for a minute. Now. Where was I? Ah yes. The reason that the gorgeous Squizzey has allowed me access to this page (apart from the fact that I have in my possession one or two
When I began writing Love & Freedom I decided that American Honor Sontag had come to Brighton, England, searching for her English mother who had left when Honor was a baby.
I didn’t immediately realise that it would represent a new start – like her, I believed she was just taking time out, a four-month odyssey that would allow her a break from a bad situation in her Connecticut home town of Hamilton Drives. Although, I suppose, having taken such a radical step as to take off without even telling her family where she was going, it was logical that she was ripe for change.
