A Magic Wish

Lose yourself in this heart-wrenching young adult/adult novel that delves into early difficult family life from the perspective of a brother and younger twin sisters having to grow up before their time.

At the centre of the story is James, who craves the attention of his father but has to look to his granddad for affection and support.

He has to deal with his sisters making home life unbearable for him as their father favours them above him.

A chance meeting with Hailey while on holiday turns his young life upside down. Their friendship quickly develops into something deeper, but a potential life-threatening health condition stands in the way of their relationship going any further.

Facing this turmoil, they make a magic wish, which gives them some confidence that whatever is thrown their way, they will always be together.

The reader will easily feel some sympathy towards James with his feelings and emotions stretched to the limit, while also seeing his parent’s marriage fall apart and experiencing personal tragedy.

The emotional twists and turns will keep you captivated until the end, perhaps touching on personal experience.

Love? In A Cottage

Love? In a Cottage is the story of two middle-aged people from very different backgrounds who meet as the result of an advertisement placed in the lonely hearts section of a national newspaper. Marlene Sugden is a secretary working in London whose life has changed very much for the worse in a few months. Firstly her father, who she has loved and cared for over many years, dies then her best friend marries and immediately emigrates to Australia and, as a final straw, Marlene’s boss retires and her new boss is a snappy and difficult man. Marlene dearly wants a husband and a home to care for and in her desperation, she places an advertisement in the Evening Standard. “Lonely unmarried woman, good cook and homemaker seeks kind-hearted, single middle-aged man with view to matrimony if suited”. Deep in the Herefordshire countryside, Donald Evans sits reading a two-day-old newspaper as he eats his meal of baked beans straight from the tin. His eye is caught by Marlene’s advertisement. He is single, mid-40s and kind-hearted if it does not cost him anything. Donald hunts out a piece of notepaper, sharpens his pencil and replies to Marlene’s advertisement.

Happy Never After?

Harry had been a happy-go-lucky member of the human race until his girlfriend of two years decided she preferred the company of her own gender. Since then his life had become a downward spiral of misery and self-pity. His best friend Paulie had been as supportive as any male can be, but he too was beginning to drown in Harry’s woes, as were the rest of their group. Together with his twin sister Sarah, Paulie was determined to get Harry ‘back on the horse’ and find a girl. They knew that if that endeavour was to have any chance of success, he would need to recover his happier self. Thus began Harry’s quest to trawl through some of the myriad alternative therapies in a desperate attempt to ‘pull himself together’. Unfortunately for Harry, ‘Murphy’s law’ was a reality and anything that could go wrong, did, usually in the most unlikely and worst possible ways. The adage ‘There’s always someone worse off than you’ is true and in the world of alternative therapy that person is Harry. Throughout this rather painful journey of self-discovery, his awareness of deepening feelings for Sarah slowly develops. Join Harry through the trials and tribulations of his journey to enlightenment and hopefully love. This is his story.

Charlotte

“…if you had opened your window that night from the castle, you would have enjoyed a true spectacle. She was standing beneath the vastness of the sky, just a sliver above the grass, brushing against it with a generous thin dress, barefoot. Swinging her hips and putting her arms up, she was getting into a tender dance, caressing the flower buds, brushing the ground, the tree barks and the wet leaves of the night.”