An Interview with … Elizabeth Ducie

Today I'm chatting to Elizabeth Ducie about her writing and inspirations. The second novel featuring her heroine Suzanne Jones, Deception! was published in August 2017. Tell us a little about your writing life to date. I spent more than 30 years as a technical writer, producing audit reports, training programs, magazine articles and text books …

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Pam Smy’s Thornhill – brilliantly creepy

From the first pages, festooned with barbed wire, the stage is set for a dark treat in Pam Smy's Thornhill, a hybrid novel/graphic novel which has been shortlisted for Waterstones' Children's Book Prize in the Older Fiction category. The book itself is physically striking - the cover's silhouettes and the black-edged pages create an object …

An Interview with … Tom Williams

Today I'm talking to Tom Williams, the author of six historical novels which are being republished by Endeavour Press this year. Details of release dates follow our chat. Hi, Tom. Tell us a little about your writing to date. I write historical novels. There are two distinct series of books. The first are the John …

Books for a Year, Part 2: Susan Hill’s Jacob’s Room is Full of Books

Hill’s voice is one of wit and verve, punctuated by the occasional grumpiness when faced with attitudes incomprehensible to her. Once again, in the follow-up to her Howard’s End is on the Landing, we’re fully aware of just how full of books this particular ‘room’ is. Hill’s ‘reading jags’ sound fantastically energetic and, once an …

Five ‘significant’ reads in my life

John Hersey's Hiroshima This stands out because it marked my transition from the children's section in our small but lovely local library to a shelf holding books which opened up my world in a heartbeat. In my memory, it held both fiction and non-fiction - knowing how libraries work, I'm doubting this now - and …

Books for a Year, Part 1: Christopher Somerville’s The January Man

Taking its overall structure from the lyrics of Dave Goulder’s folk song, 'The January Man', Christopher Somerville leads his reader on walks through the British Landscape, choosing his locations according to the seasons. Starting in January, ‘Oh the January Man, he walks abroad in woollen coat and boots of leather …’, he reunites with a …

Jane Harper’s Force of Nature – Blog Tour Review

Starting out as a new reviewer last year, it felt as though Jane Harper’s debut novel, The Dry, was the thing on everyone’s lips and blogs. So fulsome was the praise heaped on this thriller set in the arid Australian outback, I leapt at the opportunity to review her second book, Force of Nature, and …

An Interview With … Maggie Christensen

Today's guest is indie author Maggie Christensen. Her new novel, The Good Sister, is published by Cala Publishing. We're discussing her writing, her inspirations, and the joy of revisiting familiar characters. Hi Maggie. Tell us a little about your novels to date. I write what I call mature women’s fiction. My characters are all over 40, …

Jane Robinson’s Hearts and Minds – The Untold Story of the Great Pilgrimage and How Women Won the Vote

I thought I knew how the vote for (some) women had been won in 1918. I had a reasonable working knowledge of what the suffragettes had gone through in their struggle for representation: I knew about the ‘Cat and Mouse’ Act; I had watched newsreels of Emily Davison’s fatal actions at the Derby. But I …

An Interview with … Beth Webb

Hello! Today I'm chatting to Beth Webb, author of Fleabag and the Ring’s End, an updated and newly illustrated MG book from her back catalogue. Beth is represented by Hannah Sheppard of DHH agency, and is published by March Hamilton Media Welcome to Books and Wine Gums, Beth. Tell us a little about your work to …