Some days, you see something incredible

Look at this picture. I mean, really look at it. Set aside politicians and wars and all the other worries, and just look at a newly born gosling taking its first look at the world while Mum sits on the other eggs while they hatch.

It’s better still in real life, so this is a brief one, because you really need to find a park and see new life beginning with the trees, flowers, birds and insects. Then just watch for a little while and realise that this is an amazing world. If you spot any litter, pick it up, because you don’t want to end up like we did, calling Swan Rescue for the bird who got a bread tie caught around his beak so he couldn’t eat properly. He’s doing well, too, and comes to say ‘hi’ to us when we go for our walks. I’d like to think he recognises us, which birds apparently do, but it doesn’t matter if he does or doesn’t because he’s here and beautiful.

So here’s some more goslings before I go on to this week’s special offers at 99p in the UK and 99c in the US, complete with synopses. I really mean it when I say there’s no pressure to buy, but I do hope I can tempt you, especially since one of them is an Esther and the Professor Cosy World War Two crime, and there’s a new one out at the beginning of May… Either way, see you on Sunday and have the very best week you can.

Windy Bay 1 + 2 Esther 2 Amy Hammond 9 Anthologies 4 29/4

Duel With Death

Amy Hammond is an avid crafter, in late middle age if she plans to live to be more than a hundred. On the surface, she's a normal woman who loves her job at a stately home but she's married to Brigadier Peter Cunningham, who's a nothing like as retired as he wants to be spy. At first, they got each other into and out of trouble but then his war came and she became part of his team of agents.

Surely nothing can go on while Swansmere is hosting the Regency Merry Month of May. Okay she'll be in costume and there'll be a duel but it's all make believe, until someone is shot while practising.

Now Royal Marine Commando Luke Grant has to take over as the dastardly duke, and old friends and new get caught up as they try to solve the mystery and stop a kidnapping.

The Best You Can

It's almost Christmas at the stately home where avid needlewoman and reluctant crime fighter Amy Hammond works. The lights will be going up, there are events galore, so what could go wrong?

Unless, of course, you're married to the nothing like as retired as he claims he wants to be spy, Peter Cunningham. If you are then you'll have to deal with alleged poisonings, wild big cats, and assassination attempts  and the best you can hope for is a happy pause at the end.

Can Amy use her rare gifts of kindness and not caring about the so-called bigger picture to help to save the day? Or will tragedy strike at what ought to be the happiest time of the year?

A fresh start

Escape to Dorset's beautiful Studland Peninsula by visiting the little village of Windy Bay, where time seems to pass more slowly, people care about each other and things happen that wouldn't be possible anywhere else

Jenny Hansford’s world is turned upside down when she's offered voluntary redundancy after a colleague steals the credit for her hard work. Her boyfriend, Doctor Colin Cameron, is too wrapped up in his job as a GP to realise how much this has hurt her and when she realises that he's forgotten that this was supposed to be their first Christmas together and is planning to go to see his parents as usual she starts to wonder if he loves her as much as she loves him.

Then her mum falls downstairs and breaks her ankle and cracks some ribs so Jenny goes home to look after her and the holiday cottages that her mum runs. Once she's away from London she begins to realise that what she wants most of all for Christmas is time to work out what she wants to do with her life now that she's been forced to make a fresh start. Getting involved with the people who are renting the cottages and renewing her friendship with her old friend Toby Druett, who's the son of the Lord of the Manor helps her to move past her anger and grief but then a child goes missing on the coldest night of the year and Jenny finds out exactly what she wants for Christmas and the rest of her life and that it's up to her to make the New Year the best one ever.

Starting Over

Escape to the seaside village of Windy Bay, on the world-famous Dorset World Heritage Jurassic coast. It's an unashamedly old-fashioned place where people have time for each other, and life is slow enough to give people time to think. There's also something about the sea air and the hills that seems to make things happen that wouldn't be possible anywhere else...

Luke and Zoe Adams have drifted apart after ten years of marriage because of the pressure of caring for and fighting for their autistic son, Noah. He almost died after he broke his ankle and was then trapped in a cave on a bitterly cold winter night as the tide came in, and they’re determined to get to know each other again and build a stronger marriage and family.

Noah is determined to celebrate being out of plaster by spending Easter in the place where all the locals accepted him just how he was so that he can do it properly this time but Zoe is dreading reliving the awful hours when Noah was lost and is very aware of the family rift that means they’re not spending the holiday with Luke’s family for the first time ever.

Can she move past her anger at her nephews and niece after their actions and lies could have killed her son?

Can meeting Mike and Lisa, who have an autistic daughter and facing her fears start to bring Zoe and Luke back together? Can she move past the affair that he almost had?

Can she find a way to stop being ‘just mum’ and start being the person that she wants to be?

Can she ever manage to find a few minutes for herself to work out who that person is?

Second Chances

Welcome to the little Dorset seaside village of Windy Bay, where time goes more slowly, people are kind, and things happen that don't seem to be possible anywhere else.

Nursery owner Chris Adams and her software designer husband Mark split up just before Christmas after their third attempt at IVF failed. Now, three months later, Chris realises that she got pregnant the last time they made love when they clung together while their world collapsed around them. 

Can she and Mark rebuild their relationship or will it be better if they divorce before the baby’s born?

Can a spring break at the beautiful seaside cottages at Windy Bay give them the peace and time that they need to find out what really matters to them?

Can they accept that it was the pressure of the infertility treatment that drove them apart and build a new and better relationship where they learn to communicate better?

And can they find a way to help Mark’s nephew Sam, whose bullying almost ended in a tragedy and tore the family apart now that he's in even worse trouble?

One thing that they can be sure of is that they badly need the peace of a quiet seaside holiday while they cope with that lot and edge towards a happy beginning and a new family of their very own.

Endings and beginnings

Winters can be bleak in the beautiful little Dorset seaside village of Windy Bay, but fifty-ish Kath Conway can't remember a worse one. She worked as a housekeeper at Druett Manor for almost half her life after finding sanctuary there when she was tragically widowed. Now, Sir James Druett, the man she loved but was never in love with, has died, and she is beginning a new stage of her life in the village where she was born.

She’s lonely and struggling with grief when she's adopted by an as wild as it suits him to be ginger cat, who she calls Cat because he’s definitely not the sort of animal who needs or wants a cute name.

She’d hoped that some secrets could be buried along with Sir James, but vet Michael King has come back to Windy Bay to help his daughter Nicky, who’s just bought the veterinary practice. She’s incredibly like her Mum, who was Kath’s best friend until she had an affair with her husband and fled the village after he died in a car crash on the night that he was leaving Kath to be with her. Kath's always kept that secret but now what an angry and grief-stricken Nicky thinks she knows could destroy not only Kath’s good name but her tiny, sneaky hope of finally finding herself a happy ever after.

Can you ever bury the past? Should you try to? And when should you stop putting other people’s needs and wants ahead of your own? Kath's got so many unanswered questions, especially when Nicky goes missing on a stormy night. Can she find a happy beginning after so many endings, not just for herself but for Nicky and the new Lord of the Manor who's like a son to her?

Building a future

Jess Jones comes to live in the beautiful Dorset seaside village of Windy Bay while she converts a big old house into new homes. It's only a few weeks since her mum's unexpected and tragic death and she's not only struggling with grief but because she's trying to decide whether she want to contact the father she’s never met or known about and who apparently only found out that she existed a few weeks before her mum died. He’s written her a lovely letter and seems to be  eager to meet her and welcome her into his family but she needs to understand why her mother didn't tell him about her or about the cancer that was already killing her when she died in a car crash before she can face him.

Her mum wanted her to do this job and organised a lovely rented cottage up on the cliffs overlooking the sea and as Jess begins to feel as if she belongs in the village where she was conceived as she begins to make new friends. She and local policeman Ben Moore team up to try to unravel the mystery of her past while she advises him on making his grandmother’s home safer but neither of them are ready to get involved with anyone.

Only this is Windy Bay, where new starts and happy beginnings are always waiting for anyone who has the courage to look for them, and what happens on the night of a massive storm reminds her how fragile and precious life is and how important it is to make the most of every second of it.

A Healing Time

Newly qualified vet Nicky King buys the veterinary practice in the beautiful little Dorset seaside village of Windy Bay because she needs a fresh start after her mother’s slow death from Motor Neurone Disease. her father comes back to the village where he was born and his parents still live to help her after the locum vet walks out after an argument . That's great in some ways but it also uncovers a shameful buried secret.

Can Nicky and Lord of the Manor Sir Toby Druett, who’s struggling to come to terms with the responsibility of running the estate after his father’s death not only uncover the truth but come to terms with it and begin to build a good future despite the scars of the past? Or will old loyalties ruin new friendships and end a love before it can begin?

A darker kind of war

It's 1942, and Esther Graham's husband Robert  has been reported missing in action, leaving her as the mother of two children, a war worker, a WVS volunteer who drives a canteen van and sometimes a strange sort of investigator. She's convinced that he can't be dead, so she does her best to keep it secret as she and her boss, the brilliant but sometimes irritable Professor James Lomax, are drawn into an attempt to avoid a massive raid on her home town of Poole.

Can this have anything to do with her husband vanishing in Tobruk?

And can old friends and new help her solve the mystery of Robert's disappearance while she plays her part to divert the enemy?

Will she ever see her husband again?

And can she keep up the charade when it feels as if her world has collapsed?

A summer affair

An anthology of summer short stories with happy endings from the worlds of Tia Brown and Eleanor Neville

Featuring

Amy Hammond

Lucy Williams

Esther Graham

Windy Bay

Oldcastle

Harbourside

The world of the Shadows

Did you ever wonder what your favourite characters did in between books? So did I, so here are some glimpses into their world designed to be read  on the beach, in the countryside, in the garden or indoors with a cup of hot tea on the days when the weather seems to have forgotten that it is summer. Which it never does in these stories! All clean and wholesome, all cosy, all guaranteed happy endings, just like Tia and Eleanor's romances, crimes and paranormal stories.

Fair Winds and Calm Seas