BOOKS

Dancing in the Moonlight

This is the novella that changed my writing life. Chosen as runner-up for the 1995 Romantic Novelists' Association New Writers' Award, it is a short and sweet love story. I used my twin passions of horse racing and the island of Jersey as the background for Kit and Rosa's romance. Although at 40,000 words it is little more than a long short story, it will always hold a special place in my heart. 

Available from Amazon.co.uk [Large Print Edition] and Amazon.com [Large Print Edition]

Going the Distance

My first full-length novel, and chosen for the WH Smith Fresh Talent Promotion in 1997. Maddy and Drew's forbidden romance in Going the Distance has probably brought me more lovely letters than anything in any other book. I wanted to create a heroine who was like me - slightly chaotic, overweight, shy, and always trying to please everyone. I made Maddy a cleaner because I'd been one, and as such became invisible in people's homes. It was ideal for Maddy, as she swept in and out of the houses in Milton St John not noticed, and unintentionally discovered the secrets in her employers' lives. Having her falling in love with Drew Fitzgerald, a very married man, was a bit of a gamble - but one that seemed to strike a chord with a lot of readers. Again, with a horse racing background, because my granddad was a jockey, Kit and Rosa from Dancing in the Moonlight make a guest appearance in this book. 

Available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com [Large Print Edition]

Running the Risk

An easy novel to write, being married to the Toyboy Trucker. Having a haulage company run by women - Georgia and her man-mad grandmother, Cecilia - and lorries driven by women, caused a bit of a flutter on the publishing front, but Running the Risk has done very well and has been reprinted six times. Maddy and Drew guest in this one as their story moves on, and the on-off relationship between Georgia and Rory has an element of mystery-thriller about it. The research for this one was great - travelling across Britain in the cab of whichever lorry came to hand with some of the hunkiest men it has ever been my good fortune to meet. Bliss. 

Available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com [Large Print Edition]

Stealing the Show

A very personal book. When my Dad gave up clowning, he travelled with fairs, taking me with him during school holidays. I worked on hoopla stalls and dodgems, dished out candy floss, and played the organ on the gallopers. While Dad was away on these jaunts, my Mum, still very posh, used to tell people that he was in prison as she felt this was more socially acceptable than being a showman. However, I loved - and still do! - the fair, the people, the itinerant life, the music, the noise, the smell, the colour - everything about it. Fairs are villages on the move and an important part of the tradition of this country. I wanted to write a book about fairs from the inside, as in fiction, fairgrounds are usually portrayed as the place where something nasty happens. Nell, the heroine, is without doubt the woman I long to be, while Jack, the hero, is probably my wildest dream! 

Available from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com [Large Print Edition]

Jumping to Conclusions

The sequel to Going the Distance, although it also stands alone, this novel returns to Milton St John, and tells the story of Jemima, who moves into the village to open a book shop, and her very good reasons for disliking everything to do with racing and gambling. I wanted not only to introduce new blood to the village, and continue Maddy and Drew's story, but to also expand on the lives of some of the characters who had appeared in Going the Distance and Running the Risk, including Georgia and Rory. Oh, and Kit and Rosa pop up here again, too! Vincent was modelled on my Dad, Gillian, the vicar's wife, has been the subject of some very amusing letters, and Bathsheba Cox - village battle-axe - is just like my ex-headmistress. Charlie Somerset, jump jockey and lady-killer, had been a minor character in previous books and everyone loved him (including me!) so he takes a starring role here. 

Available from Amazon.co.uk

Walking on Air

The up-in-the-air story of taxi-driver Billie Pascoe who is running away from everything in her past, and pilot Jonah Sullivan, a man with an obsessive dream for the future. Walking on Air involves yet another close-knit community - this time a group of people running small businesses from dilapidated warehouses on the edge of a ramshackle airfield. While the Toyboy Trucker was learning to fly, I'd got hooked on all things aeronautical. I'd also watched aerobatic displays and wingwalking at airshows, and having made friends with the stunt flyers, was amazed at the barnstorming bravery of the pilots and the women who perform amazing acrobatics on the wings of the planes. It just seemed a perfect and unusual background for a novel. Billie being an aerophobe adds to the tension, and Jonah's tangled personal and financial life doesn't help the story to run smoothly - naturally. Again this book involves all ages, classes and genders, not to mention blackmail, hairdressers and footballers, the nosiest mother ever created, and a whole host of eccentric supporting characters who are never quite what they seem.   

Currently out of print and awaiting reissue. Used copies available on Amazon.

Available from Amazon.co.uk

Nothing to Lose

A real feel-good novel - and almost a tale of two cities. It has two heroines, two heroes, two entire sets of characters and two very different settings, with both stories running in parallel. Two books in one - or at least until the lives of the characters become inextricably entwined. Another one of my passions, greyhound racing, is the background for Nothing to Lose. Jasmine, mourning the death of her beloved grandfather in the old-fashioned Dorset seaside village of Ampney Crucis, and April, a single mum living in the East London suburb of Bixford and taking any job that comes along to support her child, would at first seem to have nothing in common. However, two unrelated - or are they? - life-changing events, mean that nothing will ever be the same for either of them again. And Jasmine and April - not to mention the full contingent of Ampney Crucis and Bixford characters - when their paths eventually cross, really do have nothing to lose in trying to fulfil their dreams.   

Nothing to Lose was shortlisted for the Thumping Good Read Award and has had film and television rights optioned.

Available from Amazon.co.uk

Tickled Pink

Available from Amazon.co.uk

In Tickled Pink, there is a slight shift away from romance, (but only "slight" I hasten to add. In fact I think chapter 31 is one of the most romantic chapters I've ever written in any of my books! Let me know what you think...) and more emphasis on the Comic Novel, Bucolic Frolic, Rural Community in Permanent Mayhem element of my writing. It's been described as "Miss Read With Attitude" and "Christina Jones is the feisty fictional love-child of Miss Read and H.E. Bates". Love it!

Tickled Pink is not only humorous but also about unusual friendships. Especially the friendship between very young Posy and not-so-very-young Lola. In fact it's about friendships full-stop. It's about friendships which cross generations and class and gender. And it's dedicated to my best friend forever, Pat Powell.

Pat and I met on New Year's Eve 1967 (I gate-crashed a party at her parents' house as I fancied her brother). We were 16. For 34 years we enjoyed a mutually-exclusive, unbelievably close friendship - working together, taking holidays together, socialising together, and just being there for one another - all the time. If we didn't meet up, we spoke on the phone daily. We were amazingly alike in some ways - sharing the same likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, and the same sense of humour; and wildly different in others. She was Miss Neat and Tidy. Miss Elegant. Miss Organised. Miss Shop-til-You-Drop. I wasn't. She was also fiercely loyal, always supportive, nothing was too much trouble, she made me very, very happy. Pat never stopped laughing.

Pat died suddenly on 30 June 2001. Her death changed my life. I had never contemplated a life without her in it. I still can't. I wrote Tickled Pink while grieving for her, and the grief is still painfully raw and my life pitifully empty. I hope that in some way Tickled Pink shows how much I loved her.

My favourite photo of Pat laughing and being a "grown-up". I still hear her laugh every day.

Hubble Bubble

[Trade Paperback July 2004 - Mass Market Paperback October 2004]

The delay between books has been because I’ve changed publishers. I’m now with wonderful, wonderful Piatkus - and Hubble Bubble is the first of a new series of books I’m writing for them. These will cover the villages of Hazy Hassocks, Winterbrook, Fiddlesticks and Bagley-cum-Russett. The characters will pop in and out of all the books but each story will stand alone. And yes, we’ll eventually also be catching up on what’s happening in Milton St John etc too.

Hubble Bubble was inspired by my Nan who used to cook some very dubious herbal concoctions using “natural” ingredients. These had the most amazing effects on the unwary. Not for nothing was she known as “the herbal poisoner of Wessex Road”.

Katie Fforde kindly says Hubble Bubble is “H.E. Bates for the 21st Century” - wow!

I wrote it as another feel-good bucolic frolic, but there are three romances in there too. Mitzi Blessing has a happily ordered life in Hazy Hassocks with her ex-husband Lance, her two daughters Lulu and Doll, and her cats Richard and Judy. Then suddenly she finds herself on the scrap-heap and is determined not to fade into greyness. Her decision to not only revitalise her life but also that of the village leads to all number of confusing and manic situations. She manages, with the recipes from Granny Westward’s herbal cookery book, to create mayhem throughout Hazy Hassocks, several star-crossed lovers, and a lot of nudity in the village hall. I had a lot of fun writing it - and hope you’ll enjoy reading it and meeting these new characters too. Please let me know.

Order from Amazon - Trade Paperback or Mass Market Paperback

Seeing Stars

[Hardback August 2005; Paperback October 2005]

I wrote SEEING STARS as another trademark feel-good bucolic frolic with a touch of practical magic, but it’s also very romantic...

When city-girl Amber arrives to spend the summer in the village of Fiddlesticks, the only stars she recognises are the ones she reads about in her glossy celeb magazines. So she is stunned to find herself surrounded by a collection of nice-but-barking retro village eccentrics who organise their entire lives around constellation customs and the astral calendar. Moon myths abound, and the stars are regarded as harbingers of both good and bad fortune. In Fiddlesticks, every wax and wane of the moon seems to be an excuse for a village knees-up, each appearance of Cassiopeia or Pegasus in the summer skies results in someone throwing a party and making bizarre wishes. More scarily, Amber finds that the villagers actually believe that the stars and moon can work magic. However, when Amber starts working for Mitzi Blessing’s Hubble Bubble country cooking outlet as a waitress, Mitzi gently explains that there’s a place for many kinds of magic even in the 21st century - and that her own recipes all have a touch of herbal witchery about them. Convinced that she’s stumbled into Berkshire's answer to Salem, Amber remains loudly sceptical, but as she’s grown very fond of her new friends - especially the gorgeously enigmatic Lewis - and assuming that it’s all a bit of harmless fun, she hurls herself into the star-ceremonies and moon-myths on the grounds that if you can't beat ‘em, join ‘em and any excuse for a party. But when, as result of one of Amber’s half-hearted celestial incantations, something totally inexplicable happens, she begins to wonder if maybe, just maybe, there’s more to Fiddlesticks’ astral-magic than meets the eye...

Order from Amazon - Hardback or Paperback

Love Potions

[Hardback 24 August 2006 - Paperback 5 October 2006]

LOVE POTIONS, another trademark feel-good bucolic frolic with a touch of practical magic,

is my third book in a series for Piatkus, my lovely publishers. It is a sort of follow-up to HUBBLE BUBBLE and SEEING STARS in as much as various characters from the previous books make guest appearances, although LOVE POTIONS also stands very much alone. LOVE POTIONS is set in the village of Bagley-cum-Russet but makes occasional mad dashes into the neighbouring villages of Fiddlesticks, Hazy Hassocks and Winterbrook as well.

Sukie Ambrose shares her cottage in the strangely time-warped and maybe-magical Berkshire village of Bagley-cum-Russet with glamorous city-slicker Milla; works as an aromatherapist at Jennifer Blessings beauty salon in Hazy Hassocks; enjoys her single social life with her best mate Chelsea; and spends her leisure time kicking and screaming with the Bagley-cum-Russet can-can troupe.

This happy, if humdrum, lifestyle falls spectacularly apart when Sukie discovers the gorgeous Derry Kavanagh naked in her bed; finds her entire expensive aromatherapy stocks are on their way to the Maldives; and that using extracts from her cottage garden plants for massaging the frankly odd Bagley residents causes the most unsuitable couplings. Suddenly solely responsible for turning a small Berkshire village into Sodom and Gomorra overnight, Sukie’s attempts to right wrongs simply results in further mayhem.

Can she possibly risk using earth magic to sort out Milla’s love triangle? Reunite the unhappy Joss Benson with her husband? Find Chelsea’s runaway childhood sweetheart? Unravel the geriatric love-tangles at the local pub? And what about her own love-life? Should she even contemplate using a home-made love potion on Derry Kavanagh? No, of course she shouldn’t...

Order from Amazon - Hardback or Paperback

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