Merry Christmas, and a Warm Hug,
To All My Fabulous Readers!
WELCOME, READER!
Here's where you'll find all of my books
in suggested reading order:
The 'change of life' means menopause.
But what if it also means reinvention, with the help of a little bit of magic?
Adie Bostock is a self-confessed 'basket-case.' She's 52, at the mercy of her haphazard hormones, and struggling to face the end of her marriage. Alone for Christmas and fed up with family drama, she lands at Teapot Cottage where she plans to wallow in guilt and self-pity in private.
But the cottage, with its mysterious healing energy, has other plans for Adie and she soon finds that it takes more than one person to make things fall apart, and more than one to put them back together. Â Confirmed widower Mark Raven is a rough-edged farmer determined to hide his heart. He's battling with grief and ageing, and keeping his rather dreamy daughter at least partly in the real world. Romance is not on his radar. Â Adie and Mark want to keep things purely platonic, but an unseen influence is nudging them in a different direction. Then Adie's husband decides he wants her back. It's what she's been praying for, but is it still what she really wants? Escape to the Lake District, with this magical, life-affirming story about overcoming challenges and finding love again later in life.
Sample the First Chapter
Every woman dreams of finding
the love of her life.
But what do you do when yours brings baggage that can hurt you and your family?
Feen Raven is often described as more than just a little bit barmy. The young 'white witch' has finally found her soulmate, but old family wounds are opened again when she finds out who he's involved with.
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Gavin Black is on an unhappy errand that forces him to reconnect with his estranged mother. All he wants is to claim what's his and go home again, without any complications. Â Â Carla Walton can't let go of a grudge. After a lifetime of pushing everyone away, she is isolated, bitter, and blaming everyone else for her problems. She wants to be left alone so she can keep ignoring her demons. Â Â But Teapot Cottage, with its mysterious ability to heal the broken-hearted, always has a more complicated agenda for people who don't want to rake up the past. Pretty soon, Gavin, Feen and Carla come to question everything they think they do and don't want in life. Â Will love and a little bit of magic help them find a way forward? Or will old family fractures be too hard to heal? Come to the Lake District, to a gentle place where a beautiful blend of music and magic can heal the hardest hearts
Sample the First Chapter
Nobody comes home expecting
to find intruders -
But what would you do if you did?
Alison Jones is single, lives alone, and doesn't have a lot of self-awareness. But, after coming home to find burglars in her house, she reacts without thinking, and is forced to confront some very ugly truths about herself.
Darren Davies is a petty thief, stuck in the revolving door between small-time crime and prison. After he makes the biggest mistake of his life, he is forced to re-evaluate the path his life is taking, and deal with the demons that drive him. When Darren and Alison's lives intersect, they each find themselves on a soul-searing journey, as they struggle to come to terms with the catastrophic impact of their acts and omissions. After stumbling through the wreckage, the future for them both becomes crystal clear, but it's not what either of them expected. As one door opens and another slams shut, choices expand and diminish. At the crossroads of Beginning and Ending, who decides to go where?
Sample the First Chapter
Having a baby is something most women dream of and plan for. But what does it mean if you can't make it happen, no matter how hard you try?
Debby Davies longs for a family of her own. She is desperate to have a baby with the husband she adores, but fruitless years of trying to conceive have left her feeling like a failure. It's starting to make her crazy, that she can't seem to achieve the one thing she always felt destined to do.
Darren Davies is at his wits' end with his wife. Her simmering resentment is changing her in ways that really scare him, and the horrible way her parents treat him is starting to take its toll. He's beginning to question whether their marriage can survive what feels like a never-ending series of storms. Â Â Â As their doubts take hold that their love can survive, they know they're in the last chance saloon. But Teapot Cottage, with its mystical ability to pour balm on battered souls, has plans for Debby and Darren that show them what's possible in ways they could never have imagined. Â Â Â Can they stay together and face a very different future from the one they had planned, or will they find the challenges too great, and go their separate ways? Come and spend some time in the Lake District town of Torley, where lives can change and anything can happen, in ways people never predict.
Sample the First Chapter
Everyone makes mistakes, and some of them are hard to come back from.
When you've taken someone else's life, and destroyed your family in the process, where do you begin, to
pull things back together?
Stuart Thomson is a disgraced lawyer whose catastrophic error of judgement has all but ruined his life. By the time he leaves prison after six years, he no longer has a career, a home or a marriage, and his troubled teenage daughter is barely speaking to him.
Meghan Thomson is almost fifteen. She's a mixed-up mess of anger and confusion, and she has no idea how she feels about anything at all, especially her father. When he books a holiday to the Lake District together to reconnect, it's the last thing she really wants to do with a man she doesn't trust. Â Â Â On holiday, father and daughter both struggle to understand each other. But Teapot Cottage, with its enigmatic way of turning troubled lives around, reveals an amazing opportunity they once could never have imagined. The future on offer means a whole new level of faith and commitment from them both, to make it happen. Â Â Â Stuart and Meghan desperately need a new start. Can they trust themselves and each other enough to make it happen? Or does the heartbreak of the past make the leap of faith too tough? Â Â Â In Torley town, in a very special cottage, lives are often transformed with the help of 'a little bit of love and magic.'
Sample the First Chapter
Earth-shattering secrets will always come out, and the truth doesn’t care about the cost.
Adie Bostock has finally found the baby she was forced to give up at fifteen – the one her husband and grown-up children don’t know about – and she intends to keep her secrets. But, in the wake of a shocking crime, her tightly-woven web of deceit starts unravelling and she doesn’t have a clue how to stop it.
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Matty Bostock boosts his graduate income with sex work. Everything ticks along nicely in his smug, self-satisfied world, until one of his clients is murdered. With another refusing to give him the alibi he needs, he can’t prove his innocence, and he faces going down for a crime he didn’t commit.    Ruth Stenton has a happy, settled life with her wife Gina Giordano, and she is blissfully unaware of just how big a lie she’s been living. When she discovers who has been hiding a terrible truth from her, and for how long, the impact is profound and far-reaching.    Ruth is forced to face demons she didn’t know she had, and Gina has to find a way to help her. Adie can’t protect one of her children without destroying another, and Matty must confront the consequences of the way he has chosen to live.  As moral dilemmas start to crush a family that’s been buckled by betrayal, everyone has to decide; how much does ‘blood’ really matter, and what can or can’t be forgiven?
You can live your whole life without knowing what’s happening around you. But how can you stop the things you haven’t even seen from blowing your world apart?
Minty Cartwright is on the brink of menopause, and reeling from the discovery that her husband has been having an affair with her closest friend from childhood. She takes refuge at a quiet holiday house in the Lake District, while she considers her next move.
Fiona Winterson is a mess of haywire hormones too. She hates herself with a passion she once never knew she could feel. Her selfishness has shattered the heart of the ‘soulmate’ she’s known and loved all her life. But faced with the worst of circumstances, she discovers that she needs that woman’s help.    With decades of love and trust destroyed, Minty and Fiona are thrown back together in a sea of shame, fury and fear. Both women are forced to reconsider the value of a friendship that has influenced their whole lives.    Will the mysterious, healing energy of Teapot Cottage help them rediscover what’s important to them both? Or is it all too painful – and too late – to even try?    Come back to friends old and new in the Lake District, where shattered lives can be gently pulled back together, with the help of ‘a little bit of magic’
Sample the First Chapter
Gail Burgess has had enough of her controlling husband Charlie.
In the last four years of their twelve-year marriage he has become unbearably abusive and violent.
She is quietly making plans to leave him but, when they are on holiday abroad with two other couples they are close with, Charlie is found dead on the ground below the balcony of their luxury suite.
As Gail tries to come to terms with her husband's death, people start asking questions about why she isn't upset. Other questions start emerging too, about what certain 'involvements' Charlie Burgess had that very few people knew about.
Gail starts asking questions of her own, For starters, how did Charlie end up dead? Did he fall, or was he pushed? If it was the latter, someone knows why, but who?
As more and more potential motives emerge, from people who had a grudge against Charlie, Gail is left asking the biggest question of all - who can she trust in her circle?
​COMING IN 2025!
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What Are My Books About, & Who Are They For?
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All of my novels are about hope and inspiration to recover from different kinds of life-shattering trauma. They are all stand-alone stories, but ALL of them are LINKED - even the ones that are not part of the 'Teapot Cottage' series.
The non-TC books are written in a darker genre. They are what's termed as 'literary fiction,' exploring the impact of serious crimes on people who've been affected by them.
They put a little meat on the bones of one or two of the characters in the Teapot Cottage series, to enable the reader to learn a little more about them, but they are distinctly different.
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The Teapot Cottage stories are more lighthearted, but with important messages of hope and recovery from horrible life events. They reflect my background as a forensic, criminal and family psychologist (it's a hat I wore in a past life!)
These stories examine recovery from life-changing trauma, dysfunctional family dynamics and estrangement, and rebuilding blown-apart lives in unexpectedly wonderful ways.
It all happens with the help of 'a little bit of magic,' at Teapot Cottage - a gorgeous little holiday house in the Lake District, nestled in a quiet corner of a working farm.
Traumatized people somehow find themselves being drawn there, to experience the unique healing energy that lives within its walls.
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My stories are for 'grown ups' of all shapes, sizes and persuasions, but they tend to have a special appeal to 'ladies of a certain age,' who are dealing with things like menopause and anxiety around issues like resolving family problems and
finding the courage to face an uncertain future. These themes endure, with characters that overlap, who will eventually become good friends if you let them. They're my friends, now, and I couldn't imagine my own life without them!
Enjoy the stories and, if you like them, please let me know. If you can also leave me a nice review on Amazon and/or other literary platforms, that would be of huge help to me.
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Hopefully I'll see you in Torley! You'll probably find me in Peg's cafe, sitting with a lovely cup of hot chocolate and a big slice of jelly cake, chewing the fat with Feen Raven.
I'll probably have a shopping bag at my feet, with something in it from Trudies' wonderful boutique in the town, because she has the best sales ever.