Coming soon....

There are some delicious new titles coming to print this autumn....

here are a few that I am looking forward to....

• Publisher: Avon (13 Sep 2012)
• ISBN-13: 978-0007480821

• Publisher: Avon (27 Sep 2012)
• ISBN-13: 978-1847562722

• Publisher: Avon (25 Oct 2012)
• ISBN-13: 978-1847560896

• Publisher: Avon (8 Nov 2012)
• ISBN-13: 978-1847562364

Plus.....

Ravenscliffe by Jane Sanderson

• Publisher: Sphere (27 Sep 2012)
• ISBN-13: 978-0751547689

From Notting Hill to New York by Ali McNamara 

• Publisher: Sphere (22 Nov 2012)
• ISBN-13: 978-0751547450

Who needs Mr Darcy? by Jean Burnett

• Publisher: Sphere (27 Sep 2012)
• ISBN-13: 978-0751547047

What are you looking forward to this autumn?

DizzyC

FREEBIES for the bank holiday weekend

Two of the authors that I have reviewed for this year, have FREEBIES available this weekend

With the re-vamped cover
Photo courtesy of the author

Reaching for the Stars by Janice Horton is FREE this weekend 25th/26th/27th August

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Reaching-for-the-Stars-ebook/dp/B006ICFIZG/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1345910698&sr=1-2

I read and reviewed this one and can highly recommend

and

Photo courtesy of the author

All TODAY, TOMORROW and MONDAY you can get Excess all Areas by Mandy Baggot

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Excess-All-Areas-ebook/dp/B00688OZ0Y/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_4

I have not read this one but have downloaded my copy as I have read and reviewed two other titles by Mandy Baggot and can highly recommend her writing.

As always please do check price before you click!

DizzyC

Review - The Runaway Actress - Victoria Connelly

• Publisher: Avon (12 April 2012)
• ISBN-13: 978-1847562760
• Also on Kindle

The blurb

Connie Gordon is looking to escape.....

Escape from endless diets, cheating boyfriends and fame-hungry friends. So she accepts and invitation to visit her No. 1 fan club in the small Scottish village of Lochnabrae.

Yet instead of a peaceful retreat, she's thrown in amongst the locals' love lives, gossipy rumours and even the am-dram society.  There she meets her biggest fan Maggie, a host of new friends and reclusive writer Alistair, who is running away from his own troubles in London.

But there's no escaping some secrets and soon Connie's are going to catch up with her....

Victoria Connelly has written an engaging and funny Chick-lit just as a chick-lit should be with a heroine trying to escape the bright lights of Hollywood and find some peace, a handsome stranger with his own story to tell,  and a cast of eccentric village members to be expected in a small community.  

Connie Gordon is a Hollywood actress with links to a small village in deepest Scotland.  Not only did her mother originate from the village but her No. 1 fan club is based there. 

This in itself brings about questions as to how did Connie get to Hollywood if her mother was from a small Scottish village and why is her fan club based there? All will be revealed as Connie's story unfolds.

Connie is stressed with her fast paced Hollywood lifestyle and never ending glare of the limelight, so when she receives an invite to visit Lochnabrae she books a flight - much to the complete surprise of the locals.  

Connie will not get the peace she expects as the locals can be just as full on as the journalists back in Hollywood. Everyone knows everything about everyone else.

Alistair is also escaping to the village but for different reasons.  A playwright in London, he is seeking a quieter lifestyle and seeks this in a crofter's cottage.

The locals are friendly to the point of intrusion at times and Maggie, who is Connie's biggest fan did have me worried as she was almost on the verge of obsessive.

This ticks all the chick-lit boxes with a Hollywood style ending. Fabulous!

5 out of 5 for me!

review copy

Guest Author - Donna Douglas

Today I have the honour and pleasure of introducing Donna Douglas, author of THE NIGHTINGALE GIRLS

Happy publication day!

Photos courtesy of the author

• Publisher: Arrow (16 Aug 2012)
• ISBN-13: 978-0099569350

Donna tells us about her research for her latest novel.

Hello, and thanks for inviting me to appear on your fab site. I’m Donna Douglas, author of The Nightingale Girls, the first in a series (I hope!) of novels set in an East End hospital in the 1930s.

One of my favourite parts of writing a novel is the research. And there was certainly a lot to be done for The Nightingale Girls. It’s my first foray into historical fiction, so I had to research the period. I don’t know about you, but I hate it when an author gets a historical detail wrong. I once read a book set in the Middle Ages, where the lady of the manor was peeling potatoes for dinner when the hero burst in through the patio doors. I kid you not…

Anyway, luckily there’s plenty of material available on the 1930s. I read some brilliant social history books on the interwar years, but to get a real flavour of how people lived, I had to literally go back in time. I spent days in the Bethnal Green Local History archive, reading the local newspapers of that time. Just looking at the photographs and browsing through the articles or even the ads gives you an amazing picture of people’s attitudes of the time. For instance, I noticed there were dozens of accounts of road accidents in the local paper.  I wondered why, until it dawned on me that motor cars would have been a fairly new sight on the streets of the East End at that time, and people weren’t expecting to meet them! It’s little details like that you don’t get from the history books.

I also had to do a lot of research into hospitals and nursing for The Nightingale Girls. I read all the nursing accounts I could lay my hands on, and spoke to lots of retired nurses about their experience. I spent one particularly fun afternoon having tea with about half a dozen ladies, who kindly brought photos and memorabilia to show me. There was tea and cake a lots of laughter as they shared their stories of life on the wards (many of which were too shocking to print, unfortunately!). 

I also visited the Royal College of Nursing archive, which is a brilliant source of nurses’ personal stories going right back to when Florence Nightingale herself was alive. And now, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I also now have an extensive collection of old medical books of that period. My husband reckons I must be the only woman in the world whose bedside reading consists of old illustrations of bedpans!

That may be so, but I reckon I may also be the only woman in the world who knows what to do with a Paterson’s Irrigator…

Anyway, thanks for listening. I really hope you enjoy reading The Nightingale Girls. If you want to find out more, you can visit my website – www.donnadouglas.co.uk – or my blog – donadouglasauthor.wordpress.com. I’m also on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/donnadouglasauthor. Come and talk to me!

The lovely publishers, Arrow, have generously offered 5 copies of THE NIGHTINGALE GIRLS to UK readers.

Please fill in the form below 

(no need to leave your email in the comment section as Rafflecopter already asks for this)

Please see Giveaway policy

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Guest Author - Hazel Osmond

• Publisher: Quercus (16 Aug 2012)
• ISBN-13: 978-1849164191

Hazel Osmond has been guest before sharing her WIP.  Now Hazel is celebrating the release of FIRST TIME I SAW YOUR FACE.

Photos courtesy of the author

Please tell us a little about your latest novel THE FIRST TIME I SAW YOUR FACE

It’s about Mack, who is an ex tabloid journalist who has tried to leave his muck-raking past behind him and Jennifer Roseby who has returned home to Northumberland after an accident. Their two paths would probably never have crossed if Jennifer did not have a famous cousin, Cressida, who is on the verge of making it big in Hollywood and Mack did not have a mother with an explosive secret past. To protect that past, Mack is blackmailed into travelling north and posing as a harmless travel writer in order to win Jennifer’s confidence so that he’ll get all the dirt on her cousin’s love life.

It’s a horrible job and when Mack arrives he discovers something about Jennifer which makes what has to do even more difficult.

The story has my trademark humour in it – a lot of the action involves an amateur dramatic group trying to put on a production of ‘Twelfth Night’ and southerner Mack’s struggles with the north– but those who like their romances with a fair bit of angst won’t be disappointed either.

What research did you have to do for this novel?

Lots!! I don’t want to give too much away, but that research has involved sheep, libraries, working with hot metal, alcoholism, ‘Twelfth Night’ and car accidents.

Did you know the characters before you started writing or did they evolve during the writing?

I knew them pretty well before I started, particularly Jennifer, and I was a bit stunned when Quercus showed me the proposed image of her on the front cover because it was as if they’d peered into my brain and got her exactly right. With Mack, although I knew how he would behave right from the beginning, as I wrote he morphed in my mind from Jake Gyllenhaal into David Tennant. I needed someone with that slight edge to them… who can seem to be one thing, but turn out to be another.

What is next from you?

Book 3 –  ‘Grace Under Pressure’ – set in London in the world of art gallery tours and the story of what happens when someone who seems very proper and under control, has a younger, rebellious man explode into her quiet life.

What are you reading at the moment?

I usually have a few books on the go. So I’ve got Talli Roland’s ‘Build a Man’ which I downloaded straight after reading ‘Watching Willow Watts’; non-fiction ‘Bad Science’ by Ben Goldacre and an anthology of the best short stories of 2011. Then it’s on to ‘Me Before You’ by JoJo Moyes… I’ve been saving it for my holidays so I can sob behind my sunglasses.

The lovely publishers are offering the chance to win one of 3 copies of this novel.


Please complete the form
Please read giveaway policy



a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review - Surfing in Stilettos - Carol E Wyer

Woohoo!  Amanda is having another adventure courtesy of the lovely Carol E Wyer

• Publisher: FeedARead.com (17 Jun 2012)
• ISBN-13: 978-1781764886
• 
  

Amanda is back for a welcome sequel to Mini Skirts and Laughter Lines.

She is still writing her blog about life after retirement with her ever happy husband, and a mother who refuses to grow old gracefully. 

Amanda and her husband are in France with Bertie, their campervan,  on a leisurely tour taking in the sights and flavours en route.  That is until Bertie breaks down in rural France, disaster strikes back home and hubby has to leave Amanda in France and return to England.

Todd Bradshaw is also back.  Is it really over between him and Amanda?

With old friends from Mini Skirts.. and new colourful characters, there are misunderstandings,  cases of mistaken identities and unexpected events. Amanda’s leisurely tour in Bertie is about to get turbo-charged!

Can be read as a sequel to Mini skirts, or as a stand alone as the author, Carol, does bring readers up to speed on what has happened before.  With a mixture of narrative and blog posts, with bloggers’ comments, the adventures keep the reader entertained and laughing out loud.

I even have a cameo role in this sequel.

5 stars!

Review copy – I received a review copy for an honest review, and having a cameo role did not influence my review in any way 


Carol is offering one copy of Mini Skirts and one copy of Surfing in Stilettos to lucky readers. UK Only


Please complete the form below
Please read the giveaway policy



a Rafflecopter giveaway

Guest Author - Carol E Wyer

Today I am delighted and honoured to have Carol E Wyer joining me again. Happy publication day, Carol!  

I offered Carol a guest post to celebrate the launch of her latest novel Surfing in Stilettos and I was overwhelmed when I read her post.  I am delighted and honoured to have found such a friend online.

Over the last two years I have discovered a magical world, not Disneyland, this world is the World Wide Web – the internet. I used to be a Luddite when it came to the internet. I wrote my books out by hand into notebooks. Before I began writing seriously I had no idea what a blog was, how to use Word or indeed anything about social media. I had a Facebook account only so I could keep tabs on my son and I had six friends, three of whom were my son’s friends who decided I was worth befriending for some unfathomable reason.

Two and a half years later and I now know so many wonderful people; I have a blossoming blog that is followed by hundreds of followers. I have a lively Facebook page and a personal page. I have a Twitter account. I belong to so many sites I can’t remember all my passwords and I now can type my novels directly onto the screen. I even write for other websites and give writers tutorials on how to make book trailers or use various sites.

This has all happened thanks to research for my novels. My first book, Mini Skirts and Laughter Lines, is about a woman facing 50 who is struggling with life. She is friendless and the only way she can cope with the madness around her is to blog about it. To become the character of Amanda Wilson, the protagonist of the novel, I too had to learn how to blog. Amanda’s life blossoms the more she is on-line as does her love life which takes on a new dimension when she rekindles a relationship on Facebook with an old flame. The novel is about relationships and friendships as well as about getting older. I too have found very good friends thanks to the internet. (But maybe not an ex-boyfriend on Facebook!)

My latest novel is again humorous but this one also hints at the dark side of the internet. Amanda finds herself in danger when an on-line stalker mistakes her for another person.

You may be detecting a trend here. Yes, I am becoming seriously interested in the on-line world, the blogging community and the social networks that are available to us. Once the domain if the young, many of us older people are using Twitter, Facebook and other sites to chat, make friends and more!

For the last two years I have really enjoyed being Amanda Wilson, getting into character and working out how she would behave in any situation. Being light-hearted and amused by most things in life she has made me view my own life through refreshed eyes. I now appreciate my family and my time here more than ever. I am also grateful to her for my wonderful internet life which would not have existed without her.

Surfing in Stilettos will be the last novel about Amanda Wilson, her grumpy husband Phil and the incredibly popular mother, Grace. It is time for me to draw a line under Amanda and move onto my next novel which is still humorous but a departure from her.

Thanks to writing I have not only been enjoying something I am passionate about but I have found a whole new way to enjoy life and have made some very valuable friendships en route.

So, I’d like to use my opportunity here to thank one of those who wonderful people, Dizzy C who has followed me all the time I have been blogging and writing and who has offered me endless help, encouragement and support. Thank heavens for the internet!


Surfing in Stilettos is out in paperback and 
an EBook to be published by ThornBerry Publishing out late September/early October 

Please do pop over and join the celebrations with Carol today at Facing50withhumour   There is a lot more going on over there. 


Look out for my review and a giveaway in the next post!

Scene of the blog

The mystery has been solved.  I am guest over at Cathy's place today

kittling Books

Please pop over and join me there.

Scene of the blog - DizzyC

DizzyC

Dream Lake - Lisa Kleypas UK Giveaway

I have my copy of this waiting to for me patiently

• Publisher: Piatkus (7 Aug 2012)
• ISBN-13: 978-0749953980
• 
  

The blurb

Zoë Hoffman is as gentle and romantic as they come, and when she meets the startlingly handsome Alex Nolan, all her instincts tell her to run. But something about him intrigues Zoë, so she attempts to make Alex open his mind to the possibility that love isn't for the foolish.

Alex Nolan is about as bitter and cynical as they come, battling his demons with the help of a whiskey bottle, until he is visited by a mysterious ghost. Has Alex finally crossed over the threshold to insanity?

The ghost doesn't know who he is, or why he is stuck in the Nolans' Victorian house. All he knows is that he loved a girl once. And Alex and Zoë hold the key to unlocking the mystery that keeps him trapped there.

To celebrate publication day the lovely publishers have been kind enough to offer 5 copies of this novel to UK readers

Please complete the form to be entered into the draw

UK addresses only

Please see Giveaway Policy

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review - To Turn Full Circle - Linda Mitchelmore

Another winner from ChocLit publishers

• Publisher: Choc Lit (7 Jun 2012)
• ISBN-13: 978-1906931728
• • Kindle edition from Publisher: Choc Lit (3 May 2012)
  • ASIN: B0080HDVO2

The blurb

Life in Devon in 1909 is hard and unforgiving, especially for young Emma Le Goff, whose mother and brother die in curious circumstances, leaving her totally alone in the world. While she grieves, her callous landlord Reuben Jago claims her home and belongings.
His son Seth is deeply attracted to Emma and sympathises with her desperate need to find out what really happened, but all his attempts to help only incur his father’s wrath. 
When mysterious fisherman Matthew Caunter comes to Emma’s rescue, Seth is jealous at what he sees and seeks solace in another woman. However, he finds that forgetting Emma is not as easy as he hoped.
Matthew is kind and charismatic, but handsome Seth is never far from Emma’s mind. Whatever twists and turns her life takes, it seems there is always something – or someone – missing.

Emma has fallen on tragic times, losing both her family and her childhood home.  Taken in by a neighbour who is not as trustworthy as the local doctor would expect, Emma flees as soon as she is strong enough to venture out on her own.


Emma makes her way back to the tied cottage she shared with her family to find that it is now being rented to a fisherman by the name of Matthew who is working for her father's former employer, Reuben Jago. 


So begins the moving story of Emma's struggle to come to terms with the loss of her family and be seen as a girl on verge of womanhood who can and will pick herself up and make a life for herself.


Emma is a strong willed character but her naivety as a young girl not quite 16 can and  gets her into situations she would prefer not to be.
   
Seth is sweet on Emma but he is from the wrong family, The Jago family. 
Matthew is the new fisherman who helps Emma, much to the jealousy of Seth.  Matthew is a mysterious character with some secrets. I do not want to say more on the characters for fear of spoiling it for others to get to know them, suffice to say I loved all three of these characters.


Oh, I loved this tale set in a fishing village in Devon in the early 1900's. I felt empathy for Emma as a young girl and admiration at her determination to survive and make a new life for herself. 


I was so engrossed in the novel  that I was worried the storyline would take the characters in directions I did not want to see them go. 


The storyline flowed easily and the writing was superb, one of those novels that makes me wish I could write.


This story would appeal to historical romance and saga fans.


5 out of 5 for me!


Review copy from ChocLit

New Talent Thurs with Cesca Martin

Today I welcome to the blog Cesca Martin, some of you may know her as a reviewer at Novelicious.

Photo courtesy of Ceasa

Cesca is working on her first novel and tells me that  The Silent Hours, an Historical fiction novel is inspired by real events.  She shares the first chapter with us......


 

1952, Abbey of Saint Cecilia, Landes, France

I can hear them talking in hushed voices through the grille in the door. Sister Marguerite has a distinctive southern accent and, even when she is trying to speak quietly, her words seem to echo off the thick stone of the corridor walls with an energy that she is often chastised for. 
“She said something,” she insisted, pleading with her listener. 
“Marguerite we have discussed this before...” the voice sighed. 
I tilt my head a little to catch a glimpse of its owner, Sister Constance. Although her voice is strong and firm it does not fit her face. The woman seems to have aged twenty years in a fraction of that time. Her watery eyes are practically hidden in the folds of her face, her lips are thin and cracked. Even from this distance I can see the veins in her hands, the large blue lines protruding from her skin look like great rivers on a map of France.
“She was muttering something, I’m sure I heard some distinct words, I’m sure I heard her speak,” she persisted.
“Don’t excite yourself child,” said Sister Constance, “If the Lord has made this woman mute then it is not for us to question why, or try to change her predicament, we can only wait and...”
“But don’t you think, if we could make some progress, encourage and...” the younger nun trailed off as she caught sight of Sister Constance’s expression, “Forgive me for interrupting,” she said quietly, dropping her head.
“Get along Sister Marguerite,” Sister Constance said, not unkindly, “No more of this.”
“I... I... Yes, Sister Constance,” came the defeated reply, and with one last look back at me I watched her turn and walk away. 
Sister Constance stayed there watching her go before looking through the grille at me lying in my bed. I looked off into the distance. Then making the sign of the cross at my door she turned away, her steady steps echoing rhythmically down the stone corridor to Vespers.
A mute I thought. Is that what I am?  A nameless mute in a nunnery.  It’s been this way for years.  I close my eyes and pray the same prayer to whoever is listening, “God, make it black.” I open my eyes again and see the crucifix hanging on the wall opposite me.  Jesus is staring at me and I stare back obstinately. He is always staring at me. God, make it black.

twitter  - @CescaReviews - Reviewer for Novelicious
facebook Cescareviews