Strange times.

How’s it going for you? Are you as confused by this sad old world as I am? I don’t know who to trust or what to believe at the moment, so I’ll tell you about the forsythia and the bluebells in my garden and the first butterflies that are coming back from their long journey.

I’ll tell you about how kind people are, especially since my daughter broke her wrist. Naturally, it’s the one she draws with, and it’s a month away from her unit assessment. Thankfully, she takes after me, so all her drawings were finished, and she’s typing one-handed while she finishes that side, so she’ll be good to go.

I’ll tell you about the little girl and the one-eyed swan. She wasn’t a happy little girl because she wanted to persuade a swan to get off the road so it wouldn’t get hurt. It didn’t want to move. It’d happily eat her grain, but nope, not moving. Trouble was brewing. A grandmother looked at me and said "What can you do?’ I said ‘Can I try?’ Because my little girl was once like that too…

So I said that there weren’t any cars driving through, and he could move, but he didn’t want to because it was getting him lots of attention. Obviously, she’d never do anything like that. She grinned and didn’t comment. So I told her about the one-eyed swan who’d been shot by some louts with an air pistol, so found life a bit harder, and how he’d found a home in Poole Park after being rejected by his original family of swans. I told her how he needed a little extra care and someone who’d look out for him when they came to the park and make sure the food was where he could see it. I wondered if she could be that person… and she could. Now One-Eye is a lovely swan. He’s a bit of a hisser, but he knows when people want to look after him, and a certain young lady very much did.

Once, someone did something like that for my daughter and started a love affair with birds that I suspect will last her lifetime. Who knows what started yesterday, but she was talking to him, and he was giving his happy swan croon, which sounds a bit like a croak, and I walked on with a smile. Meanwhile, a certain other swan watched, snorted and walked off the road when he realised it wasn’t getting him his own way. I only wish that could be a metaphor, don’t you?

So here’s a picture of a swan before we go on to this week’s special offers. As ever, they’re 99p in the UK and 99c in the US, and they’ve now got descriptions of them too.

The Perfect Home

Middle-aged and cuddlier than she'd like to be, avid crafter Amy Hammond never intended to become a strange sort of detective and investigator. Sometimes she doesn’t want to be one, but she hasn't had much choice since nothing like as retired as he claims that he wants to be spy,, Brigadier Peter Cunningham came to live next door to her and they first became friends, then fell in love and, eventually, had a wonderfully quiet and unexpected wedding when the first COID lockdown lifted.

It’s December 2020. Covid cases are still high, and Amy and Peter are living in a self-catering cottage at the Swansmere Estate, where Amy runs the craft centre, while they try to find the perfect home after selling their homes incredibly quickly at the height of the property mania as people decide to move to the countryside.

Surely nothing can go wrong when Peter falls in love with an old bungalow? Then they find hidden treasure that turns out to be the proceeds of a couple of jewellery robberies and the past comes to taint the present and some very important people don’t seem to want that to happen.

Can they sort it out before anyone else gets hurt? Can they make the best of a very strange lockdown Christmas? And will Amy get the sewing room of her dreams and manage to stop Fluffy the cat escaping their temporary home and falling prey to foxes and hawks? At least she can be sure of one thing. Her life will never be dull.

The End of the beginning

Amy Hammond always claimed that she wanted to have a more adventurous life after spending years caring for her elderly parents but she was happily stuck in her rut until retired Brigadier and not as retired as he claims that he wants to be  spy Peter Cunningham moved in next door to her. After years of sharing adventures, she’s now married to him and mostly enjoying her dream job as manager of a craft complex at a beautiful English stately home. When she’s not terrified, she also enjoys feeling that she can stop the bad things from happening and protect at least a few of the sort of people who all too often get sacrificed to the so-called greater good.

Spring is finally coming to Swansmere in the second year of Covid. The lockdown is easing as the vaccines are being rolled out, but not believes in Covid or vaccines so maybe it's not surprising that a prominent scientists wife and young family have to take refuge at Swansmere after their home was firebombed. One of Peter’s protégées knew something was wrong and has risked his career to get them clear, and the local anti-lockdown group is using an autistic boy to try to find out what’s happening so it’s a safe bet that some secrets aren’t staying as secret as they should.

Can Amy and Peter keep the family safe and happy and find out and neutralise whoever’s stirring people up? And will Amy ever get a chance to enjoy her lovely new home and sewing room?

Never Romance

It’s 2005 and Kim Stannard is a newly qualified agent of the ultra secret department of British Intelligence, that's known as the Shadows because they specialise in being inconspicious. Her mother was a legend in their world so she's got a lot to prove. The last thing she wanted was to be partnered with her second cousin David Kinsella who’s always seen her as a kid sister and is blissfully unaware of how much she loves him. The last thing he wants is a girl who’s already lost so much  to come into this dark and dangerous world, so clashes and misunderstandings are inevitable.

Add to that a computer virus threatening to derail a vital missile system, a terrorist with a sideline in white slavery and a grudge against David and a young accountant who’s always dreamed of adventure, and it’s safe to say that there’s a bumpy ride ahead.

Angels Unawares

This is a collection of the first two novels in the Shadows Romantic Suspense. It's aimed at people who can't access the 99p or 99c deals and would like a taster of the series.

In Fallen Angel, an apparently invincible renegade spy turned arms dealer comes up against an ambitious undercover police officer who has a personal score to settle. All the rules say that Sarah Norton mustn’t sleep with the enemy, let alone become his assistant, but anyone who meets Guy ‘Lucifer’ Stannard rapidly realises that rules don’t apply to him. Anyone who meets Sarah Norton will know how far she’ll go to break a case and get revenge, and if that means becoming his imp and sleeping with him, then it's a price she's prepared to pay.

There's double-crossing, double-dealing and double-trouble, and it’s anyone's guess who’ll win or what winning means and how much it could cost.

In Haunted Angel, being held hostage and tortured inevitably leaves mental and physical scars, especially when you don’t know why it happened. It also left forensic accountant and new Shadow controller Mark Graham with a burning determination not to allow anyone else to ever feel alone and abandoned in the dark.

Former close protection officer Liz Stratton thought she could handle anything when she joined the shadowy world of British Intelligence's most secret department, but she reaches her limits and goes a long way past them on her first assignment. She’s falling apart inside, but Mark Graham knows how that feels and his steady confidence in her helps her to save her critically injured partner and the two terrified children who’ve seen their parents murdered by terrorists.

Things go from bad to worse when they realise that someone's out to destroy the Shadows and is still desperate to know whatever they kidnapped Mark to try to find out. Liz can use her skills to protect him as they’re swept into a world where loyalties are tested, and old enemies have come back to haunt them. All they can rely on is each other, and sometimes they’re not even sure about that. All they can be sure of is that people like them don't fall in love this fast; yet they both have.

Can they keep their friends and themselves safe and make a future? Can they even survive? Only time will tell…

Murder devils and Maidens

Imagine an idyllic English country village where time seems to have stopped in the nicest part of the nineteen fifties. There are shops, a perfect little school, a well attended church and a pub with food that would make a critic swoon if he was ever allowed to find it. But they're not, any more than double glazing salesmen or lorries ever find a place that somehow got missed off all the maps and sat navs, Unless, of course, the village wants you to be there because it needs you for something.

Now imagine that that village could be on an access point between dimensions and home to all sorts of entities who don't want you to know about them, and sort their own problems out in their own way. That's why virtuous vampire and erotic romance writer Kit Conway has been called back there with her cat Handsome. She wasn't sure she wanted to come, and the more trouble she finds, the less she understands why she loves the literally bloody place so much! Could it be that like her friends the werecat, the witch hunter, the homicidal river spirit, the witch, the archangel, she's finally found the place where she belongs and it's well worth fighting for?

This book contains the first three in the series - Bloody Murder, Devil to Pay and the Missing Maiden at one bargain price.

Why does she keep finding trouble

Amy Hammond is in her fifties, cuddlier than she'd like to be and stuck so deep in a rut that she can't see over the top of it. She's always wanted an adventure, but she ended up caring for her elderly parents and time slid by without her noticing it. Then she got to know her new next door neighbour and suddenly she started finding dead bodies and getting involved in crime! As Amy and Peter and all her friends at  the stately home where she works solve mysteries, their relationship develops as Amy gets to know a very complicated man.

This is an anthology edition of the second three books

The Prodigal Daughter

A Prayer for Peace

AND

To Have and to hold

It's aimed at people who don't have Kindle Unlimited, or access to the individual books when they're discounted on Kindle Deals but would like to try a new series without spending too much.

The trouble with falling in love with a retired spy

Follow not as intrepid as she'd like to be amateur sleuth Amy Hammond and her enigmatic partner retired Brigadier Peter Cunningham through these three adventures as she finds out more about the man she's coming to love and his past. They take her to beautiful rural Monmouthshire, to a stately home at Christmas where the past isn't as well hidden as people would like it to be and to a Fun Day at  the English stately home with potentially poisoned fudge!

Can crafter Amy use her much underestimated skills of kindness and common sense to keep out of trouble? Of course not... Can she manage a happy ending? That all depends on what happy is. Is she enjoying herself? Worryingly, yes!

This anthology is aimed at people who live in countries where they can't get the 99p or 99c special offers, but everyone's welcome to read them and it contains

Let the Dead

The Ghosts of Christmas Past

The Past is Always with Us

Bloody Murder

Life in a beautiful little Dorset village where there's still a school, a post office stores and a pub would be idyllic if someone wasn't systematically murdering the paranormal population who've ensured that Christians Cross doesn't appear on any map or sat nav.

Virtuous vampire, writer and private investigator Kit Conway was born there almost four hundred years ago and left it when she escaped a lynch mob after her fiancé denounced her as a witch and her lover turned her into a vampire and has been avoiding the place ever since.  She wishes that she'd carried on avoiding it when she finds her employer dead in a cupboard in her temporary home on the day she moved in.

Mostly aided by her partner, the werecat former cat Handsome, she has to find the murderer before he can add her to the list of victims. She also needs to begin to come to terms with her past because it doesn’t seem to want to stay in the past any more. Suspecting the handsome Detective Inspector O'Donnell of being at least a witch hunter and quite possibly a mass murderer doesn't make things any easier, especially when they find and manage to save the latest victim.

The village is used to policing itself and resents incomers and the pub landlady is also a vengeful river spirit, so this is pretty high on the list of jobs that Kit wishes she'd never taken but she's still fallen in love with the place. Now all she has to do it stay alive and convince the place that it wants her too; and she isn't sure which is going to be harder!

Devil to Pay

The apparently idyllic little English village of Christians Cross has a thriving school, a village shop and a pub that would be famous for its food if it was anywhere else. It's also home to a wide variety of non-humans, including virtuous vampire, writer and private investigator Kit Conway  and her werecat friend and colleague, Handsome, the gorgeous ginger Persian.

At first she thinks her greatest trouble is her absentee kitchen fitter that means she's washing up in the bath and eating only what she can cook in the microwave that's on top of her fridge in the living room. Then he dies horribly and all hell quite literally starts breaking loose.

Can she, Handsome and her friends the ancient and powerful vampire Nico De Sauveterre and Chief Inspector Marcus O’Donnell, the witchfinder who doesn't want to be one save the world from a demonic takeover? And how will O’Donnell cope with discovering that his beloved younger sister is not only coming into her powers as a witch but falling in love with a werecat without either of them knowing about his dual identity? Will Kit ever get her kitchen finished? (Hey, even heroines need to eat and she's never claimed to be totally virtuous!)

Missing Maiden

The beautiful old Dorset village of Christians Cross has got a lovely old primary school which gets excellent results, a gorgeous pub with amazing food that's reasonably priced, a post office general stores that always has everything that you need and a little delicatessen. Before you rush to move there, it's only fair to warn you that it also guards a gateway to hell and several other unfriendly dimensions and has such a high population of paranormal residents that it's protected by a magical field that makes sure most people don't notice it at all and everyone local takes it for granted that it's a bit different and doesn't think about it.

None of that explains why fading star Quentin Phipps decides to buy a ruined house just outside the village so that he can make a TV show about his attempts to renovate it. Neither the village nor the house wants him there, any more than anyone seems to want virtuous vampire, writer and private investigator Kit Conway, but no one was expecting him to die horribly just after he asks Kit to help him because he was convinced that someone was out to destroy him.

Add to the mix a sexy Detective Sergeant who has designs on Kit's witchhunter friend Detective Chief Inspector O’Donnell, a new vicar who's a lot more than he's trying to seem, a werecat who’s been called to Christians Cross to lead a team to protect the world and is in love with a newly emerged witch and some sentient standing stones and it’s going to be an interesting few weeks.

Can Kit save the world even though she's so fed up that she's wondering why she's bothering to try to? And what will happen if she can't?