I was delighted when Mark Tilbury got in touch to see if I’d like to participate in the launch celebrations for his latest book, The Last One To See Her as I have found Mark’s writing exceptional. I was hoping to surprise Mark and read for review today as well as share an extract from The Last One To See Her, but sadly I’ve been so overwhelmed by blog requests that I haven’t managed it. I do, however, have a fantastic extract to share with you today.

However, you’ll find my review of Mark’s You Belong To Me here and I have previously reviewed Marks The Abattoir of Dreams here. The Abattoir of Dreams became one of my books of the year in 2017 in a post you can read here. I was lucky enough to interview Mark when The Liar’s Promise was published (here) and Mark stayed in with me here on the blog to chat about The Abattoir of Dreams.

The Last One To See Her is out on 4th June 2020 and is available for purchase here.

The Last One to See Her

He says he is innocent. So why did he lie?

Mathew Hillock was the last person to see eleven-year-old Jodie Willis alive. When her dead body turns up four days later in his garden shed, the police think he’s guilty of her murder. So do most people in the town. But there’s no DNA evidence to link him to the crime.

Battling the weight of public opinion and mental illness due to a childhood head trauma, he sinks into a deep depression.

Can Mathew do what the police failed to do and find evidence linking the real killer to the crime?

The Last One to See Her is a terrifying story of what happens when you’re accused of a crime and no one believes you are innocent.

Doesn’t that sound just brilliant? Let’s read a bit from the book:

An Extract from The Last One to See Her

Prologue

2 a.m. August. 12 years earlier.

The baseball bat is wet and sticky with blood as Paul Whittacker opens the door to the master bedroom. He’s already killed the young boy and the young girl. Sleep tight, little ones. Now it’s the parents’ turn to die.

The landing light, probably left on for the children, casts shadows across the bedroom and turns it into an old black-and-white movie set. Even the blood on the bat appears grey and less indicative of its macabre history.

He stands for a while, catching his breath, observing, listening. His arms are shaking from the exertion of the kill. He needs a fix. To slip into the warm syrupy blanket of oblivion. But there is still much to do before he can allow his body to succumb to the needle.

He takes a few steps into the room and stops. His heartbeat pulsates in his ears. Sweat dribbles down his back. He tells himself to calm down and make ready for the kill.

The man snores and makes a strange gurgling noise in his throat. He smacks his lips and rolls over to face his wife. Hesitancy, that powerful adversary to careful planning, suggests it might be better to use a knife on him, but he doesn’t want to waste time going downstairs to look for one.

He creeps towards the bed, weapon raised, threat-level raised, blood pressure raised. He makes ready to strike. The woman sighs. It’s a seductive sound that arouses him. He considers raping her once he’s finished with hubby, but that means getting into a whole new area of forensic jiggery-pokery.

Sweat dribbles into his eyes. He stops, bat hovering two feet above the man’s face. He wipes an arm across his forehead. He’s seized with an uncontrollable urge to laugh when a bright-pink moth flies across the bedroom and lands on the wall just above the headboard. It’s strikingly beautiful in this black-and-white movie. He knows it’s just a hallucination. Residual imagery from last night’s acid trip.

He raises the bat and brings it crashing down on the side of Hubby’s head. The man responds by pawing his wife’s face as if trying to provoke foreplay. His legs kick out under the duvet.

Whittacker smashes the bat down again, this time eliciting a muffled scream from the victim, who raises his head six inches off the pillow. The bat wastes no time sending that head right back to where it came from. This time he is motionless. Not so much as a whimper.

Whittacker considers checking the man’s pulse, but his wife is now awake and exercising her right to scream. Her arms flail in what appears to be an attempt to defy physics and fly.

Whittacker steadies himself, takes aim, and raises the bat. But he is stopped by a sudden sharp pain between his shoulder blades. At first, he thinks he’s having a seizure. This thought is replaced by a more serious self-diagnosis – a heart attack brought on by stress.

The pain comes again, accompanied by a wet slapping sound. He cries out, blood bubbling on his lips. He drops the bat, legs bucking, spilling him to the floor.

Too many drugs spoil the moth.

He checks above the bed for the bright-pink insect, but the only splash of colour in this black-and-white world has gone. Something warm and sticky runs down his back. Sweat? Too thick. The golden-brown liquid from every needle he’s ever jabbed into his veins? Too painful.

The woman screams again. The sound bounces around the walls and pounds on his eardrums. This can’t be happening. Not now. Not when he is so close to…

The room suddenly goes quiet. Deathly quiet, you might say. Paul Whittacker doesn’t hear the woman wailing like a malfunctioning police siren. He doesn’t feel his body being turned over, or hear a male voice trying to soothe Mrs Wailing Siren with assurances that everything will be all right.

By the time the police arrive twenty minutes later, Paul Whittacker is lying on the bedroom floor in a pool of his own blood. The baseball bat lies next to him, pieces of skull and tufts of hair decorating the wood like ghoulish artwork.

The ceiling light has now switched the room from black and white to high-definition colour. Blood drips onto a white rug next to the bed, and Hubby’s gore saturates the pillows and duvet.

Whittacker doesn’t hear a policeman walk into the room and tell his colleague that there appears to be two child fatalities. One male, one female. He doesn’t hear Mrs Siren sobbing on the deathbed.

The world is now as black and silent as death itself.

Eek! I think that scene is going to stay with me some time…

About Mark Tilbury

Mark lives in a small village in the lovely county of Cumbria, although his books are set in Oxfordshire where he was born and raised.

After being widowed and raising his two daughters, Mark finally took the plunge and self-published two books on Amazon, The Revelation Room and The Eyes of the Accused.

He’s always had a keen interest in writing, and is extremely proud to have had seven novels published by Bloodhound Books. His latest novel, The Last One To See Her will be published 4^th June 2020.

When he’s not writing, Mark can be found playing guitar, reading and walking.

You can follow Mark on Twitter @MTilburyAuthor, visit his website and find him on Facebook.

There’s more with these other bloggers too:

There are some book covers that I absolutely love the moment I see them and Taryn Leigh’s The Secret Letters is absolutely gorgeous. I’m delighted to help reveal it here on Linda’s Book Bag today.

The Secret Letters will be published by Kingsley Publishers on 9th August 2020 in both e-book and paperback. The Secret Letters is available for pre-order on Amazon and all online bookstores, as well as from the Taryn Leigh directly.

Let’s find out more about the book:

The Secret Letters

Rachel, saved from an attack twelve years before by a faceless stranger, never got to thank him, never knew his name.

Despite the devastation she chose to rise above it to help others from their pain by becoming a psychologist… Her only issue now is that she’s an expert at fixing everyone else’s problems, and blind to her own.

After a long relationship with her boyfriend Will starts to go south, she turns to her best friend Amelia for guidance.

Suddenly her world is turned upside down when tragedy strikes and she’s left with no one to comfort her but Will’s rude older brother Ruari.

Paralyzed by fear, she struggles to take grip of her life, until the day when anonymous letters begin to appear from the stranger who saved her twelve years before.

Doesn’t that sound good? Taryn explains a bit more about how the book came about:

The idea for this story, came about one afternoon, when Alshandra Visagie visited our home and shared her harrowing account of being attacked in her home by a stranger.

The way she told that story shook me to the core. Having known of her story my entire life, it was completely different sitting in the room and having a first-hand account of it. Her bravery and courage together with her story of survival was hair raising to say the least, but completely inspirational.

I knew then, that I needed to somehow share her story with the world.

Being a fiction author, I contemplated for months how to tell that story. Whether to tell it like she had, or whether to completely fictionalise it. Eventually, I came to the realisation that I would use this book as an avenue to present the topic of a woman overcoming this horrendous attack, through a work of fiction, and then have her share it with my readers in her own words in live chats. So if you have read this book, look out for those chats on social media, and if you are wondering which part is applicable to her story, it’s found in my own fictitious account in Chapter Fifteen.

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And now, of course, I need to read The Secret Letters as soon as I can!

About Taryn Leigh

Taryn Leigh is a South African Author, who spent her childhood with her nose buried in books. Her love for reading transpired into her ambition to become an Author.

Taryn Leigh’s first book, Perfect Imperfections, is available in Paperback, eBook and AudioBook. She lives in Pretoria with her husband and son.

You can find out more by visiting Taryn’s website, finding her on Instagram and Facebook or following her on Twitter @tarynleighbook. You can also join her fan group on Facebook for giveaways and special news: Taryn Leigh’s Official Fan Group.

Now, if you know me well you’ll know I love Paddington Bear. I used to spend all my pocket money as a child on Michael Bond’s books, once got thrown out of a teachers’ library for laughing too loudly at one of the stories (Paddington Takes the Test) and still have all my childhood copies. My husband can occasionally be tempted to read the books to me, doing different voices for all the characters!

With all of that in mind I couldn’t believe my luck when Rodsanne Tolin got in touch to ask if I would review her debut children’s book More Than Marmalade: Michael Bond and the Story of Paddington Bear and I’m delighted to share my review today.

Published by Chicago Review Press on 3rd March 2020, More Than Marmalade: Michael Bond and the Story of Paddington Bear is available for purchase here.

More Than Marmalade: Michael Bond and the Story of Paddington Bear

Michael Bond never intended to be a children’s writer. Though an avid reader, he was by no means a model student and quit school at 14. He repaired rooftop radio transmitters during the bombing of Britain in World War II and later joined the army. He wrote about the war and more, selling stories here and there.

One day, while searching for inspiration at his typewriter, hoping for a big story that would allow him to write full time, a stuffed bear on top of the shelf–a Christmas present for his wife–suddenly caught his eye. Bond poured his personal feelings about the events of his era–the refugee children his family had hosted in the countryside, a war-torn country in recovery, the bustling immigrant neighborhood where he lived–into the story of a little bear from Peru who tries very, very hard to do things right. The result was A Bear Called Paddington.

An incredible true tale, More than Marmalade: Michael Bond and the Story of Paddington Bear is the first biography about the writer behind the beloved series. Author Rosanne Tolin reveals how world history, Bond’s life, and 1950s immigrant culture were embedded into Paddington’s creation, bringing middle-grade readers a delightful, informative, and engaging book with a timely message of acceptance.

My Review of

More than Marmalade: Michael Bond and the Story of Paddington Bear

A biography of Michael Bond aimed at middle grade readers.

It was a real pleasure to read More Than Marmalade. I’ve loved Paddington stories for over half a century and Rosanne Tolin pays a fond, entertaining and interesting tribute to the man who created the bear – Michael Bond.

Although some of the vocabulary is American in style (such as elevator and sidewalk) it is totally accessible to children on both sides of the Atlantic, affording an opportunity for independent reading as well as sharing with adults. Indeed, adults will enjoy this book just as much as children because it brings back memories and transports them to their initial pleasure of discovering Paddington Bear. I liked the short chapters as I feel a child could easily read one on their own. The tone is light but still manages to impart weighty themes and issues including the treatment of Jews and the effects of the second world war in society, so that reading More Than Marmalade is a treasure trove of factual detail and narrative colour. I liked the added photographs too because they give authenticity to the text.

There’s a super sense of who Michael Bond was and what kind of man he became from that book and train obsessed child. As a lifelong Paddington fan, I didn’t discover new facts but I was reminded of details I had forgotten so that I derived great pleasure from reading More Than Marmalade.

More Than Marmalade is more than a book about Michael Bond. It’s part history, part geography, part comedy and part tragedy as well as a fond and well researched insight into the man behind the bear. I found it very entertaining and really enjoyed it and I think any other Paddington fan of any age would too.

About Rosanne Tolin

I love featuring both adult and children’s books here on Linda’s Book Bag and would like to thank Maverick Ashbrooke for sending me a copy of The Naughty Dog: A Catalogue of Disasters and General Mayhem in return for an honest review.

Published by Austin Macauley on 29th November 2019, The Naughty Dog: A Catalogue of Disasters and General Mayhem is available for purchase in all the usual places including here.

The Naughty Dog: A Catalogue of Disasters and General Mayhem

The Naughty Dog is the story of a very misunderstood Doberman dog.

Naughty dog was found in a junk/scrap yard, living in an old car and lying on rags. He was rescued by a man called Eddy and sent to a family who found it hard to love, but through various accidents and mishaps, naughty dog helps to bring the family closer together and opinions gradually change about naughty dog and how he may not actually be naughty!

It also tells the story of his close friendship with a little boy called Arthur and how they both have fun and grow up together, learning about life and themselves, with further adventures from Arthur’s family, Grandpa Jed, Grandmother Little Bea, Uncle Eddy, his Dad-Peanut the Ice-cream Man, Great Auntie Moria and many more characters who are influenced by the presence of naughty dog.

With short stories about naughty dog and Arthur, such as ‘The Exploding Lighter’, ‘Bonfire Night and the Bully Who Screamed like a Girl’, ‘Arthur’s Dad-Peanut the Ice-cream Man’, ‘The Tortoise That Was Mistaken for a Pie’, ‘The Disappearing Turkey’, ‘The T-Shirt Gas Mask’ and many more, they will make you laugh, cry, shock you and keep you engaged throughout.

For children who want to know about owning a Doberman dog, family life in the 1970s onwards and for adults who want a trip down memory lane, this book won’t disappoint!

My Review of

The Naughty Dog: A Catalogue of Disasters and General Mayhem

A collection of short stories featuring a naughty dog – or two!

I have one slight criticism I’d like to get out of the way before I review The Naughty Dog fully. I found some of the sentences rather lengthy with too many semi-colons to support all children reading independently.

That said, The Naughty Dog is a humorous collection of highly entertaining stories. Children aged 8-11 in particular will love the scrapes that Dog gets into, from pooing in front of Albert’s would be girlfriend to chewing shoes. There’s humour aplenty in these stories so that they are very uplifting and diverting. Lots of weighty themes arise too, that would enable adults sharing The Naughty Dog to explore with youngsters, such as behaviour, swearing, death, friendships and so on. The final story leaves the reader wondering just what will happen next for Dog so that there is ample opportunity for discussion and imagination.

However, whist The Naughty Dog is a book that could perfectly well be shared with children, and I’m sure they’d thoroughly enjoy it, for me it works best as an adult collection. So many elements really bring alive the 1970s from the clothes to the music, television to That’s Life’s talking dog that I was transported back to my youth. I kept thinking, ‘Oh yes. I remember that’ as the references and allusions underpinned the stories so that reading The Naughty Dog brought a smile to my face and memories flooding back.

The Naughty Dog is a fun and entertaining set of stories that remind the reader just what it was like to be a child in the 1970s. I enjoyed it and think it works for children of all ages – even as old as me!

About Maverick Ashbrooke

Maverick Ashbrooke’s has always possessed a creative mind via mediums such as art and craft, also studying and working as an engineer up to his late 20s. He then decided to look at how people’s minds worked and trained as a therapist. For the past 16+ years, he has worked as a therapist in the North East of England, where he also currently resides. However, having an imagination has always meant he wants to do more in his life and this is where his writing came to light over the last few years after losing his father suddenly.

Maverick Ashbrooke is hopeful this first book will lead to more in this area and has many more ideas to take this story forward. He has had dogs throughout his life, and much of this story is from his own childhood, also fiction and from stories he has heard over the years from other dog owners, to combine this first book and coming books in the future.

Maverick Ashbrooke continues to walk his current Doberman and has stories to tell of his antics as a close member of his family unit.

You can follow him on Twitter @MaverickAshbrke. and find him on Facebook.

It’s far too long since Val Penny featured here on Linda’s Book Bag, so what better way to welcome her back than by helping reveal her latest book Let’s Get Published? With so many of us writing and wondering how to take our work to the next stage, I have a feeling Val’s Let’s Get Published might be just what we need. My thanks to Kelly at Love Books Group for inviting me to participate in this cover reveal.

Val was last here with a super guest post celebrating her thriller Hunter’s Chase in a post you can read here.

Let’s Get Published is available for purchase here. Let’s find out more:

Let’s Get Published

At last, a book that is easy to read and tells it how it is!

The book was written to assist authors to maximise their success when submitting work to agents or publishers, to help authors consider their priorities and preferences for getting work into print. To advise authors on how to identify the agents and/or publishers they want to approach.

It should also assist with editing their manuscript fully prior to submission. The book offers advice about how to prepare a submission package to give an author the best chance of success.

The road to becoming a successful author is not easy, but it is rewarding. Let this book take you on the journey.

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I rather think I just might Val. Sounds exactly what I need!

About Val Penny

Val Penny is an American author living in SW Scotland. She has two adult daughters of whom she is justly proud and lives with her husband and two cats. She has a Law degree from Edinburgh University and her MSc from Napier University. She has had many jobs including hairdresser, waitress, lawyer, banker, azalea farmer and lecturer. However, she has not yet achieved either of her childhood dreams of being a ballerina or owning a candy store. Until those dreams come true, she has turned her hand to writing poetry, short stories and novels.

Her crime novels, Hunter’s Chase, Hunter’s Revenge, Hunter’s Force and Hunter’s Blood form the bestselling series The Edinburgh Crime Mysteries. They are set in Edinburgh, Scotland, published by Crooked Cat Books. The fifth novel in the series, Hunter’s Secret, is published by darkstroke. Her first non-fiction book, Let’s Get Published is available now.

Val Penny has a smashing blog of her own here. You can find more information by following Val on Twitter @valeriepenny and finding her on Facebook.

It was back in February when I last welcomed lovely Isabelle Broom to Linda’s Book Bag in an interview as part of the Romantic Novelists Association 60th birthday celebrations. You can read that interview here. Regular blog readers will know how much I love Isabelle Broom’s writing so when the e-book publication of her latest novel Hello, again was brought forward I set aside my self-imposed Netgalley ban and requested it. My enormous thanks to the team at Hodder for approving that request!

You can read my review of Isabelle’s book One Winter Morning here, my review of My Map of You here, A Year and a Day here and The Place We Met here. I still haven’t read my cherished personally signed copy of One Thousand Stars and You, but I intend to as soon as I can!

Hello, again will be published by Hodder in ebook on 4th June and paperback on 9th July 2020 and is available for pre-order here.

Hello, again

Philippa Taylor (Pepper to her friends) has big dreams. When she closes her eyes, she can picture exactly who she ought to be. The problem is, it’s about as far away from her real life in a small coastal town in Suffolk as she can imagine.

So when her elderly friend Josephine persuades Pepper to accompany her on a trip to Europe, she jumps at the chance to change her routine. And when Pepper bumps (literally) into the handsome Finn in Lisbon, it seems as though she might have finally found what she’s been looking for.

But Pepper know all too well things are rarely as they seem. Her own quiet life hides a dark secret from the past. And even though she and Finn may have been destined to find each other, Pepper suspects life may have other plans as to how the story should end.

A romantic and sweeping story about friendship, love and realising that sometimes it’s about the journey, not the destination.

My Review of Hello, Again

Pepper has never left the country and it’s about time she did.

I always have incredibly high expectations of Isabelle Broom’s writing and once again she didn’t disappoint. From the very first page I was completely enchanted by the romantic, descriptive and emotional writing so that Hello, again made me smile, weep and gladdened my heart. I thought it was wonderful.

As I expected, I was completely transported to the settings of the book through the painterly attention to detail, the weather, the colours, sights and textures that Isabelle Broom always manages to meld into evocative pictures in the reader’s mind. Aldburgh, Lisbon and Barcelona are very familiar to me and in Hello, again they are so vividly presented that I found myself transported out of lockdown and back to glorious streets, making me feel as if I had had a city break and had even visited Hamburg where I’ve never actually been. I found this element of Hello, again completely distracting so that all the cares of the real world vanished.

I thought the story in Hello, again was so romantic without being remotely saccharine. There’s a realism too that is incredibly satisfying because I believed completely in the outcomes. There’s palpable, vibrant life here that makes the reader feel as if they are part of the action. It might sound mad to say so, but I felt as if I somehow ‘belonged’ with Hello, again; as if I had found my place in the world.

I loved Pepper. I loved her dress sense (or lack of it) her self-deprecating personality, her creativity and her relationships, but above all I loved the way she developed as an individual through the narrative, teaching herself and the reader that although our past may help shape who we are today, it doesn’t have to constrain who we might become in the future. This was such a heartwarming theme that it makes me feel emotional just thinking about it after I’ve finished the read. Although this is a romance and Jorge and Finn help drive the action with Otto providing brilliant light relief, it is Isabelle Broom’s exploration of womanhood that touched me so completely. She understands the complexities of relationships that women have and the way in which they judge themselves and others. I was so ensnared by the women here that I wanted to hold each one at some point in the story to provide emotional support. I forgot that these were not real people because I cared about them so much.

The themes of Hello, again are thoughtful, sensitively handled and beautifully written so that the story tugged at my heart, rekindled memories and illustrated to me to the positive potential of my life. Apart from longing to try creating a mosaic of my own, I felt as if Isabelle Broom had looked deep inside my mind, had seen what I needed to read about, including love, friendship, relationships, self-belief, guilt, forgiveness and identity and that she had somehow written Hello, again just for me. It felt intensely intimate and personal.

I loved Hello, again. Reading it brought me joy and happiness. It’s just the kind of book the world needs right now and Isabelle Broom is the perfect author to write it. Just glorious.

About Isabelle Broom

Isabelle Broom was born in Cambridge nine days before the 1980s began and studied Media Arts in London before a 12-year stint at Heat magazine. Always happiest when she’s off on an adventure, Isabelle now travels all over the world seeking out settings for her escapist fiction novels, as well as making the annual pilgrimage to her second home – the Greek island of Zakynthos.

Currently based in Suffolk, where she shares a cottage with her two dogs and approximately 467 spiders, Isabelle fits her writing around a busy freelance career and tries her best not to be crushed to oblivion under her ever-growing pile of to-be-read books.

For more information, visit Isabelle’s website. You can also follow her on Twitter @Isabelle_Broom and find her on Facebook.

Back in November I was delighted to participate in the cover reveal for Heatstroke by Hazel Barkworth, since when I have been desperate to read it. Today I’m finally sharing my review. My enormous thanks to Jo Liddiard at Headline for sending me a copy of Heatstroke in return for this honest review.

Heatstroke will be published by Headline Review on 28th May 2020 and is available for purchase here.

Heatstroke

The summer burns with secrets…

It is too hot to sleep. To work. To be questioned time and again by the police.

At the beginning of a stifling, sultry summer, everything shifts irrevocably when Lily doesn’t come home one afternoon.

Rachel is Lily’s teacher. Her daughter Mia is Lily’s best friend. The girls are fifteen – almost women, still children.

As Rachel becomes increasingly fixated on Lily’s absence, she finds herself breaking fragile trusts and confronting impossible choices she never thought she’d face.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

Intoxicating and compulsive, Heatstroke is a darkly gripping, thought-provoking novel of crossed boundaries, power and betrayal, that plays with expectations at every turn.

My Review of Heatstoke

In the heat of the summer nothing will ever be the same again for Mia, Lily and Rachel.

What a fabulous book! Heatstroke is exactly my kind of read because it’s intensely character led but still has a gripping and frequently unnerving plot. I loved it.

Hazel Barkworth has an exquisite literary skill that creates the atmosphere of unbearable heat superbly. It isn’t just the weather that smoulders with feverishness so effectively in Heatstroke, but the relationships and events build a tension as if a storm is about to break, that made it impossible for me to put the book aside until I had devoured it in a couple of sittings. The descriptions are wonderful so that I could feel the heat, the passion and the tension every bit as much as Rachel does. Heatstroke is claustrophobic, intense and brilliantly entertaining.

Obviously I won’t say too much about the plot because I’d hate to spoil the read but when Lily goes missing the clever structure of the novel provides an almost voyeuristic viewpoint that is as uncomfortable to read on occasion as it is mesmerising. Heatstroke made my flesh creep but I didn’t want to stop reading.

And it is Rachel who creates much of this sensation of disquiet because the more she is revealed, the more compelling she becomes until I found myself both hating and loving her simultaneously. She is monstrous in some ways, simply being a woman and a mother in others, and yet much as I wanted to denounce her and dislike her I was hypnotically drawn to her. Hazel Barkworth’s skilful portrayal of females is a masterclass in characterisation.

However, the themes underpinning Heatstroke are what make it so mesmerising. Obsession, sexuality, family, friendship, adolescence, trust, loss and a laser like presentation of female behaviour provide layer upon layer of depth and interest. Reading Heatstroke is akin to seeing an object at the bottom of a swimming pool. Although you know what it is, refractions distort it until reality is blurred so that reading Heatstroke is a bit like having heatstroke where rationality can feel just out of reach. I suspect I could read the book several times and find something new every time.

Oppressive in atmosphere, fabulously intimate and definitely disturbing, Heatstroke is a completely compelling read that held me captivated. I thought it was outstanding.

About Hazel Barkworth

Hazel Barkworth is a graduate of both the Oxford University MSt in Creative Writing and the Curtis Brown Creative Novel-Writing Course. She lives in London with her partner, and works as a cultural consultant. Her debut novel Heatstroke will be published by Headline in 2020.

You can find Hazel on Instagram and Twitter @BarkworthHazel.

My goodness, the world has changed since I caught up with Veronica Henry last October at an Orion event that you can read about here. I’ve long loved Veronica Henry’s writing but since I began blogging I haven’t read enough of her work so I’m delighted to help begin the launch celebrations for her latest book, A Wedding at the Beach Hut. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to participate.

You will find my review of Veronica’s A Night on the Orient Express here.

Published by Orion on 28th May 2020, A Wedding at the Beach Hut is available for pre-order here.

A Wedding at the Beach Hut

Escape to Everdene Sands, where the sun is shining – but is the tide about to turn?

Robyn and Jake are planning their dream wedding at the family beach hut in Devon. A picnic by the turquoise waves, endless sparkling rosé and dancing barefoot on the golden sand . . .

But Robyn is more unsettled than excited. She can’t stop thinking about the box she was given on her eighteenth birthday, and the secrets it contains. Will opening it reveal the truth about her history – and break the hearts of the people she loves most?

As the big day arrives, can everyone let go of the past and step into a bright new future?

My Review of A Wedding at the Beach Hut

Robyn’s past is about to meet her future!

I just adored A Wedding at the Beach Hut. Veronica Henry has written the perfect escapist, emotional and ultimately uplifting story that took me away from the troubles of the world into another time and place where I could lose myself completely. Reading A Wedding at the Beach Hut was pure bliss.

There’s a wonderful plot here that sweeps along, drawing in the reader so that they feel they are catching up with old friends and making new ones that they won’t forget. Although I had confidence that there would be a positive ending to the story befitting the genre, I was thoroughly entertained in getting to that ending. It’s tricky to articulate but I felt an affinity with the narrative that made it very affecting and emotional. I confess I cried on more than one occasion.

Veronica Henry has such a deft touch in her descriptions that makes them visual and evocative. There’s a scenic quality that is quite spellbinding. I loved the natural tone of the direct speech because it made me feel as if I were listening in to, not reading about, the people in A Wedding at the Beach Hut, making me fall in love with them all. I thought the balance of genders and ages was just perfect. Although she’s a more subsidiary character, Gwen in particular appealed to me because she illustrates that independence doesn’t have to mean isolation. I ended the story wanting to know what happened to them all after I’d closed the book as they felt real and vivid and Veronica Henry made me care about every one.

There’s an elegant maturity to the themes in A Wedding at the Beach Hut that is so fabulous. I can’t outline them all as it would spoil the read, but making the most of life and the opportunities that are presented, love, identity, family and belonging are just a few of the threads that are presented so beautifully that I felt their resonance physically as well as intellectually. This is such warm, wonderful and emotional writing.

A Wedding at the Beach Hut is an absolutely lovey book because Veronica Henry has given her readers a flawless example of women’s fiction at its most enchanting. I absolutely adored it.

About Veronica Henry

Veronica Henry has worked as a scriptwriter for The Archers, Heartbeat and Holby City amongst many others, before turning to fiction. She won the 2014 RNA Novel Of The Year Award for A Night on the Orient Express. Veronica lives with her family in a village in north Devon.

Find out more by visiting Veronica’s website or following her on Twitter @veronica_henry. You’ll also find her on Facebook.

There’s more with these other bloggers too:

It’s always a pleasure to discover books and authors outside my usual reading choices so I’m delighted to welcome Chris Calder to Linda’s Book Bag today. My thanks to Rachel at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me to participate in this tour.

Staying in with Chris Calder

Welcome to Linda’s Book Bag, Chris and thank you for agreeing to stay in with me.

Tell me, which of your books have you brought along to share this evening and why have you chosen it?

Hi Linda, the book is called Celeste Three is Missing. I chose this one because it is set partly in the US and partly in Europe; something that should help to broaden its prospective reader appeal.

It certainly will – especially in these days of limited real travel! So, what can we expect from an evening in with Celeste Three is Missing?

This was the third of my novels; I have written five so far. The story is set in the near future, when Celeste Three is the world’s first passenger-carrying space plane. Despite the title, the narrative is not really about the craft; the plane is the means by which the determined protagonist brings to justice a monstrous Russian oligarch who murdered his friend years before and has since used his wealth and power to evade justice. For once, the Russian has stepped out of his tight security cocoon and booked a flight on Celeste.

That sounds exciting. How did you come up with the idea for the space plane?

I have been an aviation nut all my life and had been following the progress of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic craft since its inception. It is likely that in the near future something similar will be taking wealthy joy-riders around the world. That thought generated a ‘what if’ moment. What if the space plane disappeared? How? Why? And that gave me the idea for the story.

Are there any interesting sub-plots in the story?

A few, as there are in most thrillers, I suppose. My favourite is the developing romance between John Sturgess, the original test pilot for the Celeste project who has been dismissed from flying duty and Julie Fallon, a feisty private investigator who has been given the job of getting to know him in order to find out if he could be persuaded to fly the plane again. Here is a brief extract. The context is that Julie had driven John to his home after he had drunk too much alcohol the previous evening. She has stayed overnight:

Julie looked around the kitchen and found the coffee pot, mugs and milk. “Homogenized,” she sniffed, disparagingly. It would have to do. In the fridge were  a carton of eggs, butter and some tired lettuce that was useless for any kind of breakfast. She found a box of cereal in a cupboard and was looking for crockery when a bleary John Sturgess shuffled in. He was wearing an orange bathrobe, socks that hadn’t been removed the previous night, and a weary expression. His hair was tousled like a schoolboy’s. Julie grinned.

“Morning, John,” she said brightly. “And what gets you up at the crack of ten o’clock?”

He slumped into a chair, put his head in his hands and groaned. “Uhhhh.”

“Coffee coming up. What do you want for breakfast? I found eggs and cereal. No toast, unless you tell me where you hide the bread.”

“Coffee.” He moaned again. “I feel like shit.”

Julie put a hand on her hip and made a happy face. “Sorry, I’m fresh out of shit, the eating kind, I mean.”

Sturgess frowned and sat up straight. “Say, what the hell you doing here, anyway?”

“You want me to go?”

He was massaging his forehead with one hand. He raised the other. “No. No, I didn’t mean that.”

“Then what did you mean, John?”

“Christ, I dunno, gimme a break. Oh, my head.”

Julie poured coffee into a mug. “No milk, black is what you need right now.” She handed him the mug. He reached for it and his robe came open.

She grinned again. “Nice view.”

He put the mug down, pulled the robe together quickly and tightened its belt.

“And another thing. What you done with my pants?”

“Hung  ’em up with your coat. Before you ask, I slept in the spare room and I didn’t take advantage of you last night.”

He managed a weak smile. “You brought me home. Thanks…hell, I can’t even remember your name. I guess you think I’m a real horse’s ass.”

“Uh-huh. It’s Julie. Julie Fallon.”

“Julie, yeah. Thanks, Julie.”

“My pleasure.” She grinned. “Specially the last part.”

He looked at her and shook his head slowly. “You know, you’re something else.”

“I know. Now, you want some breakfast? It’ll have to be quick, I need to call a cab.”

“You’re going?” He seemed disappointed.

“I have to get my stuff and check out of the hotel. Then straight to the airport.”

“Will you be coming back?”

“Maybe. Depends on my client.”

She saw his face fall and immediately felt sorry for him. “OK, give me your number; I’ll call you if I do.”

Intriguing! We now want to know what happens to them!

What else have you brought along and why?

A couple of photographs; my part in a promotion by a tobacco company in 1966. I was a finalist in the Woodbine Flying scheme. A long, long time ago. (Sigh!) I had done a bit of gliding, so was delighted to have been selected. In those days nearly everybody smoked and of course, most photos were in monochrome. So much for my technicolour memories. These photos recorded my first flight in a powered light aircraft. Happy days!

In your writing career, is there something that you regret doing, or regret not doing?

Without a doubt, what I regret most is not starting to write books earlier in my life. In fact I might never have become a novelist at all had I not been diagnosed with an aggressive cancer shortly after retiring to live in France.

I’m sorry to hear that. What happened?

Following major surgery I found myself surrounded by lovely folk with whom I could not communicate. My French language skills at the time were, frankly, awful. Frustrated, I picked up a pen and drafted the bones of the story that became PAYBACK, a light thriller based loosely on some of the more interesting and bizarre incidents in my time as owner of a small engineering business. The book was published a year later and four more have followed since. Age does not necessarily bring wisdom, but it does provide the priceless benefit of life experience; something that cannot be bought. Perhaps not surprising, then, that I have become passionate about encouraging older folk to use their life experience and start writing. It’s never too late!

As someone approaching 60 who has only a first draft of their first novel I’m glad to hear that Chris! So, what are you working on now?

I try always to have two stories in progress at the same time. When the muse dries on the main one, I fall back on the second. It works for me. Currently I have a novella in progress, a comedy about an English soccer club manager from the East End of London whose meteoric rise to fame and fortune is followed by a disastrous slump in his career. He takes on the job of managing the national team of a West African nation. I’m enjoying writing it immensely.

That sounds like a lot of fun. 

Finally, is there anything that you would change, if you could, about the process of writing and publishing as you have experienced it?

Writers should welcome and cherish good reviews, and swallow hard and learn from bad ones. But sometimes even good reviewers seem to lose sight of the fact that in dialogue, there is a big difference between what the character says and what the writer may say in real life. Authentic dialogue is fundamental to establish the nature of a character. A highly-rated reviewer once objected to what she termed “too many f-bombs” in one of my books. Personally I hate that four-letter word. OK, maybe the character could have had less dialogue, but I stand by its use in that context. Rant over!

Brilliant! Thanks so much for staying in with me Chris, and telling us more about your writing and Celeste Three is Missing.

Thank you, Linda, for your company this evening and for giving me the opportunity to be introduced to your readers and followers. As a writer of fiction I try always to entertain, divert and amuse. I welcome contact from readers and always respond promptly to their messages, happily acknowledging that I have benefited enormously from their input.

Celeste Three is Missing

The world’s first earth-orbit passenger plane, the sensational Celeste Three, takes off from its base in Arizona, also the only place where it is designed land. On a routine flight the craft disappears.

On board is Viktor Karenkov, billionaire oil magnate who has used his wealth to evade prosecution for a murder he committed years earlier. Gregory Topozian, the murdered man’s friend, has been waiting for a chance to bring Karenkov to justice. With dogged determination and considerable ingenuity, he conceives an audacious plan.

Getting the craft down in total secrecy is key. And someone has to pay the huge costs  involved.

You can buy Celeste Three is Missing on Amazon US and Amazon UK

About Chris Calder

After ten happy years of retirement in rural France, Chris Calder is back in England. He came late to writing novels, penning his first whilst incarcerated in a French hospital following cancer surgery. At the time he spoke little French. Unable to communicate effectively with the staff, he spent his time fleshing out his first novel. Five more have followed; light thrillers leavened with humour. Best of all, the cancer is now history.

Chris knows that readers of fiction expect to be diverted and entertained. He loves feedback and believes passionately that taking on board readers’ views improves what what he does. You can email him at chris@chriscalder.com. Go on, he’d love to hear from you.

For more information you can follow Chris on Twitter @CalderAuthor or find him on Facebook. There’s more with these other bloggers too: