Please, let it rain.

Yesterday, the air got that peculiar heavy feeling that usually means that rain’s coming. The skies and clouds darkened. I began to hope. The clouds pootled off again and rained on the bay where no one got the benefit of it. Mean, mean, mean clouds when it’s the first time in fifty years that our water board has declared a hosepipe ban following a severe lack of what they called meaningful rain.

I was feeling a bit tetchy because of the heat and screaming children who have nothing wrong with them, but their parents say they enjoy screaming, so I tried to distract myself by wondering what meaningful rain is. Does it whisper deep thoughts while it soaks you? Does it target people who’ve annoyed you, and wouldn’t that be fun? If I read it philosophy and poetry and invited it round for earnest herb tea, would it come and rain on the garden for a few hours? If so, can anyone recommend any philosophy?

I’m not convinced that’s going to work, so I’ve fallen back to my best trick to encourage it. I’ve got a line full of washing at 5.30am, and now both our electronic weather gauges think it’s coming. Yes, we’ve got two. My son loved the weather when he was a kid and was fascinated that the top and bottom of our garden seem to have different eco-spheres. It’s because of the fruit trees down there, but you wouldn’t expect it to be hotter further away from the house would you?

But that’s the joy of the English climate, and right now the rain would be a joy. It’ll be filthy, of course, but we don’t use a hose to clean the car anyway, and we’d just finished watering the garden when the email warning of the hosepipe ban came through. We’d refilled the water butt too, so we should be okay. But some rain would be nice all the same, and feel free to remind me of that when autumn and the rains come, and I’m saying I’m desperate to get out.

And here, just in case the prospect of limited fame encourages it to join me, is a picture of the harbour on a grey, wet day when I got absolutely soaked, to separate my ramblings from the books that are on special offer at 99p in the UK and 99c in the US. I hope you enjoy them and get whatever you want in the way of weather this week and fingers crossed for no more forest fires. If you’re listening, rain, please can you head for the New Forest instead? Fires have been burning there for more than ten days, and it was so beautiful, and I am ashamed of myself for worrying about my garden, no matter how much I love it.

Accidental Hero

The Shadows are an ultra-secretive part of British Intelligence who handle the strange jobs. The ones no one would believe could happen and no one deserves to have to worry about. Agents are carefully selected to be compatible, but they're utterly professional, so they never fall in love. Or hardly ever. Or... who are we trying to kid when rules are made to be broken if you're a Shadow, apart from Rule One, which is that you get the job done and do your best to make sure that no one who doesn't deserve it gets hurt. Even the ones who deserve it shouldn’t be hurt any more than absolutely necessary.

So what happens when a writer who's visiting London to promote her latest book gets sucked into a situation that belongs in one of her books? If you’re Becky Smith, then you lurch from one crisis to the next while you find out that heroes are far more complicated in real life than they are in fiction, especially when you realise that they're not telling you all of the truth. Finding out that your dream hero is a pain when you meet his real-life equivalent is bad enough. Trying to help a bomb disposal expert come to terms with his past while being kidnapped and then recruited as a temporary spy is enough to make anyone decide to give up writing romantic suspense and start writing knitting patterns, even though you can’t knit.

Can the writer get her very own happy ending to go with her very own hero?

Strange Harvest

What happens when an environmental activist meets a former spy turned hostage recovery specialist? If you’re Erin O’Donnell, then he stops you from being flattened by a speeding car before she realises that he’s the man she'd always believed had framed her former boyfriend and current boss and had him sent to prison for drug dealing. She still finds herself drawn to him, and they start a strange relationship that leaves her doubting everything she thought she knew.

Then Neil Meredith is kidnapped, and she realises that her boss is being duped into betraying the whole environmental movement, and it’s up to her to rescue Neil and then find a way to stop it. The last thing anyone sensible would do is fall in love with this cool, unemotional man who challenges everything that she believes in. But she’s never been renowned for being sensible, and this is the first time that Neil Meredith has ever let his heart rule his head.

With so much at stake, can there be a happy ending?

Kisschase -

Being kidnapped and held hostage and then being shot when she was rescued was as close to hell as intelligence analyst Lissy Grant ever wanted to get, so she walked away from that world and took refuge in a little cottage by the sea on Dorset's exclusive and beautiful Sandbanks peninsula. People keep telling her that she needs to rebuild her life, but how can she when she's lame, and they haven't caught the double agent who kidnapped her? He was also her fiancé and it turned out that he’d never really loved her.

Petroc Tallon was one of the agents who rescued her, and he’s currently on sick leave because he can’t remember what happened. He’s sailing his beloved boat 'Last Hope' while he recuperates and comes to her rescue when he thinks she's in trouble in the sea, and again when she’s attacked. He and his partner take on the job of finding out why she is still in danger because they're the top protection team of the ultra-secretive MI27.

Can they work together to solve the mystery? Can they find out why Petroc has wiped out what happened when he rescued her? Can they survive, let alone find a happy ending?

The Toddler and the Tough Guy

Royal Marine Drew Scott used to be convinced that he could handle anything. Then his brother and sister-in-law died in a car crash and left him responsible for his three-year-old niece Chloe.

Divorced childminder and mother of two, Lisa Jones, lives across the road from Chloe and has looked after her since her mum went back to work. She took care of Chloe till Drew could get back and is the ideal person to give him a crash course in parenting, just as he’s the ideal person to help her when her younger son seems to be going off the rails.

Both of them are determined not to get involved with anyone again, but that doesn’t stop their relationship from growing until Drew’s allegedly ex-girlfriend destroys Lisa’s dreams. A near tragedy brings them all to their senses, but is it too late for a second chance? Can the tough guy handle the toddler and family life, or is it one challenge too many for him? Can Lisa learn to trust as well as love? Can two people who’ve both been hurt by life find a happy new beginning and create a new and blended family?

Buried Trouble

Archaeologist Honour Fry returns to the stately home where her father worked, and she spent a lot of time when she was a child, to investigate a newly discovered hoard of Roman coins. She’s excited because she grew up hearing about the legend of the legionary who buried his treasure and sent his family to safety before dying bravely in a futile attempt to save his home, and always dreamed of uncovering his horde and learning more about him.

She's also a strange mixture of excited and worried about seeing Alex Trevett again. Once, they roamed the estate together, and she was head over heels in love with him. Once, on a golden, never-to-be-forgotten night, he kissed her and told her that he loved her. But he was gone in the morning after a massive row with his father, and the now Lieutenant Colonel Trevett has only come back to the now decaying estate because his father had a heart attack after his older brother and his wife died in a car crash. It's anyone's guess whether he'll stay, and what'll happen to the estate that he'll now inherit if he decides not to.

It’s a good job that Honour’s not still in love with him, because she soon realises that the find isn’t genuine and Alex is her main suspect. On top of that, he’s spending a lot of time with gorgeous blonde estate accountant Tanya Legge. Despite that, they have to work together. When the horde’s real owners start using threats and violence to get the coins back,

Can the past be more than Buried Trouble?

And what would a happy ending look like for two people who've had very different lives, even though they once shared the same dreams?

Where there’s a Will

Alison is cool, calm, collected and dedicated to running an auction house in the beautiful little Dorset town of Oldcastle because she gave up on love after her fiancé died. Sean is a brash, aggressive dot-com millionaire who sold his firm before the bubble burst. They’re thrown together because they’ve been left equal shares of the auction house as long as they can increase the turnover by ten per cent in a year.

They say that opposites attract, but will Sean notice Alison when the ice-cool Lauren and the seductive Tanya are so blatantly interested in him? They’re the previous owner’s nieces and will benefit if Alison and Sean fail, so they might well have an ulterior motive.

Can Alison trust her instincts professionally and personally?

And is that long-missing sketch of a beautiful Monet too good to be true?

They say that ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way.’ But this time it might be more accurate to say ‘where there’s a will, there’s trouble and hope and chaos.’

I could not dig

Widow Lucy Williams works very hard to seem like every other work-from-home mum, but once, she had another name and was a strange sort of spy. She thought she’d left that world behind her when she and her husband were given new identities after an operation went badly wrong. Now she’s back in a very different way and is using her mummy skills and access to the local gossip network, which one of her bosses claims MI5 would envy, as well as her more conventional analytical skills.

Meanwhile, she’s trying to deal with her growing feelings for Marine Commando Tony Hammond and Detective Chief Inspector Laurie Pearce. As if all that isn’t complicated enough, why has wannabe Queen Bee and witch with a B Stephanie Rogers become so accident-prone? Could it be connected to Tony’s injuries and a very unwanted face from Lucy’s past?

Luckily, Lucy has genuine and very nice Queen Bee Sally Shaw and her teaching assistant friend Tiffany Jones on hand to help out, as well as her new boss Peter Cunningham and Tony’s CO, Major Luke Grant. So what could go wrong? Where shall I start?

Never again

Lucy, her friend Tiff, and their daughters are off to beautiful Brownsea Island to camp at the place where scouting began. Lucy is living under a false identity and used to be a specialised sort of spy, but surely nothing can go wrong, can it?

Okay, there’s a pushy dad and his two shouty boys who are also camping. They think they’re better than the girls, but that doesn’t have to be serious, does it? Then Lucy and her partner, Marine Commando Sergeant Tony Hammond, find the pushy dad unconscious on the beach late at night when neither of them can sleep and smell drugs…

Can they give the two boys a day to remember? Can they unravel a mystery, catch the guilty and protect the innocent? Can she and Tony navigate their increasingly complicated feelings for each other? And who knew that you could do THAT with a can of surprisingly bright blue bathroom paint?