Some days, the sun comes out.

Some days, you get all the hospital appointments sorted out and in the right order. Some days, you go down to the cake shop and get a wicked cake to celebrate your daughter’s birthday.

Some days you go looking for ducklings and see a water vole that moved much too fast to photograph, but was still lovely.

Some days, you just about spot a swan sitting on her nest, just above some gorgeous bright pink azaleas.

And some days you look at your brave, brilliant, beautiful daughter, think ‘where did the years go’ and know you are totally blessed in your family and your life. May as many as possible of your days be like this.

Some days, you also look at your book special offers and think ‘my dream came true and I make my living doing a job I love doing, so this week’s special offers are after the cormorant, which isn’t something you get to say very often. 99p in the UK, 99c in the US. Happy ending guaranteed and we don’t get to say that anything like enough either.

Amy Hammond 7 Shadows 9&10 Harbourside 2 15/4

Be Thankful you’re living

Jenny Stannard finds an unconscious man outside her compartment door when she’s on her way home from her Austrian finishing school in the spring of 1938. Miles Kinsella has been seriously injured, and she’s heard him being threatened by a Nazi, so she and her brother, Piers manage to smuggle him back to England and get the precious documents he’s carrying to her spymaster father.

She’s fallen in love with him, and her love grows as they spend an idyllic summer with him while he teaches her about the realities of life in Germany and Austria as the Nazis gain power. He’s determined to go back to carry on rescuing people from the Nazi’s and doesn’t want her to be involved in his world. He doesn’t want her to go back to school either, but her father believes that it’d be more suspicious if she didn’t.

She’s got nothing in common with the other girls any more, so she goes down into the town more and more and accidentally overhears the Nazi who shot Miles talking about his plans. She’s taken hostage and threatened, then rescued by a senior Nazi officer, who turns out to be Miles working undercover.

He has to marry her so that he can get her home on his passport, but the Nazis are looking for them. So is his own side because he disobeyed orders to rescue her.

Can they make it back to England safely?

Can Jenny convince him that she’s tough enough to cope in his world, or, failing that, that she’ll get into much more trouble if he isn’t there to protect her?

The Unlikeliest Spy

The late 1960’s are swinging, but young diplomat Cristin Meredith isn’t getting anywhere with her career in the staid British embassy in Vienna until she gets the chance to translate for Miles Kinsella, who works for British Intelligence. She’s drawn into his world when he discovers her ability to change her nature to suit the situation and ends up working with young former diplomat Greg McKenzie while they try to rescue the daughter of an old friend of Miles from the KGB.

Can they succeed? Who are the double agents who are making their job close to impossible? And can the unlikeliest spy find a world where she belongs?

Sweeter than Honey

In 1970’s Berlin, secret agents David Stannard and Richard Kinsella are on the hunt for a double agent high up within the Embassy when David Stannard is targeted by KGB  honey-trap Ursi Schmidt. The allegedly sweet and guileless student has an impressive record of trapping diplomats and businessmen with sex and persuading them to spy for the Russians, but David hopes to use her to trace the enemy within. 

He and Ursi begin a dangerous dance as they form a strange relationship that’s far sweeter than honey, but nothing is what it seems in a world where enemies may really be allies and allies may well be enemies.

A Shot in the Dark

A British spy finds a beautiful naked girl in his bed who wants to seduce him. His friend gets shot while they try to escape a sadistic Russian secret agent who’s an old enemy. A skilled seductress reactivates an old cover to rescue a girl that she and her boss, the autocratic Sir Miles Kinsella, once failed to rescue before they try to bring her father to safety and unravel a deadly puzzle.

Being an agent of the ultra-secret MI17 isn’t easy in the 1970’s, even if you don't mention the mine field. It’s probably best not to because double agents are quite enough to expect anyone to cope with, whether they’re real or being framed.

The evil that men do

Death by Misadventure

Peter’s  Cunningham’s god daughter needs his help when her mother is murdered at beautiful Corfe Castle. Her bomb disposal officer father died before she was born and he’s been in loco parentis ever since, but his wife and partner in crime solving Amy isn’t surprised that she hasn’t realised how close they are before because they’re both quiet, reserved, secretive people.

Can Amy and Peter and old and new friends solve an old murder as well as a new one and protect the fragile peace process in Northern Ireland? Will their old friends Becky and Colin have the beautiful wedding at Swansmere that they both deserve before they move into new roles? And what will happen to a conspiracy theorist who’s just realised that the Deep State isn’t what he thought it was?

Crazy for Death

A crazy quilt and a woman with early onset Alzheimers lead Amy Hammond and her husband's  latest protégée, journalist and conspiracy theorist Bob Reid to a new place and a new sort of trouble. The woman is convinced that the quilt holds the story of a long ago murder that was covered up, and when Amy finds her body on the beach by Poole Harbour, it’s up to her, and her husband, the nothing like as he claims he wants to be former spy Brigadier Peter Cunningham to unravel a mystery that has disturbing links to the present.

New team member Royal Marine Commando Major Luke Grant brings his specialist expertise to the investigation and Peter’s goddaughter Stacy brings her sewing abilities and a determination that no one else should have to die in the way that her mother was murdered.

Amy and Peter are off home territory this time and they can’t be sure that one murder has been committed, let alone two or three, so can they unravel the past and discover whether there are clues in the embroidered quilt before there are any more deaths?

A Patchwork Life

It’s September at the Harbourside Complex by the sea on Dorset’s beautiful Sandbanks peninsula, where people go to live when they mightn’t be young but they’ve still got a lot of living left to do, and Ruth, Katie, Laura and Hannah are all facing very different challenges.

Ruth has received a letter that brings back her past and leaves her trying to work out what to do for the best and what she wants from the rest of her life.

Katie’s family are worried by her deepening friendship with widower George, and she’s angry that they think they can tell her what to do. She’s also losing weight and making plans, so her family may be right to be worried, but are they worrying about the wrong things?

Laura is fighting the increasing limits imposed by her rheumatoid arthritis because her current latest flare goes on for so long that she’s worried that it might be her new normal.

Her god daughter Hannah, who runs the complex, is worrying about all of them and her developing relationship with Katie’s grandson Liam. Luckily, their friendship means they’ll all support each other, but what will Christmas bring them all?

A gift for living

Susie Morgan lost her parents, her husband to her so-called best friend, the job she loved, and the house she’d been sure would be her forever home in three very eventful months.

Now she’s the youngest resident of the Harbourside complex, which is a set of flats for the young at heart, and she’s working on her lifestyle and house furnishing business. Spring is coming, and she’s kept her New Year's resolution to give up dating for three whole months when she meets Mark Johnstone, who needs her help to buy and furnish a house. He’s gorgeous, and there’s definitely a spark between them until he drops a bombshell by saying how much he’d give for a single hour with his first wife, who’s the mother of his beloved daughter, Hannah, who runs Harbourside.

That makes Susie realise that she has to see and talk to her husband Edward before she finalises the divorce. He turns out to be desperate for a second chance, so as Susie rushes to meet Mark’s deadline, could something be happening far more slowly? And should a gift for living involve giving two people who once loved each other a second chance?

She doesn’t know what she wants, but this is Harbourside, so she has friends to listen and help her along and at least a hope of a happy new beginning if she’s brave enough to grab it.