La Vida Loca

“I once read that life was a book. It is a true statement. The next part was that if you don’t travel, you stay on the first page, so while you’re young you should embrace life and travel the world. That part is the bit I have a problem with. Just because you don’t travel doesn’t mean you’re living any less of a life. You’re just rewriting your story, which is what you do when you travel too. No one’s stories have set endings. That’s the wonderful thing about life. We are the ones to write the story we live in.”

A trip abroad offers an opportunity for Isabelle Torres to find herself with her two best friends, Danielle Roane and Catherine Peters, before they go off to university.

The group of guys and girls they end up with are all wonderful, and it is a holiday filled with excitement, romance and many fun times and trips which are sure to change their life for the better.

From secret trips to city breaks, the ten teens were set on finding themselves, but instead manage to find friendships that are bound to last forever.

What can Izzy say – they really are living La Vida Loca.

Lady and the Tramp and Me

Life doesn’t always turn out the way you think it should, does it?For instance, what happens when you get a puppy you don’t want? For Simon that answer is simply: nothing good.His life as a happy bachelor is torpedoed when he reluctantly accepts a puppy of indeterminable breed who names himself Tramp and seemingly never ever stops growing – personality included. Any principles for raising a dog are put to the test, and so is Simon’s state of mind when his sex-life is sabotaged, his sports car rendered useless, and Tramp is spending all of Simon’s money.And then there’s the women… quite a few of them, but one in particular. The angry one in the park who likes dogs and who wonders if Simon is a stripper because he flashes her his ass. But in reality, he looks like he’s just escaped from an asylum.And that’s just the beginning…

Lady Moon

Living abroad, travelling the world, dreaming, exploring, discovering,

Learning and seizing life,

Too independent, too much of a dreamer,

A hopeless wanderer.

Closing my eyes, I feel anything is possible,

I feel powerful I can do anything,

I can be anyone.

But I am just a wandering soul,

A dim moon in a bright world.

Lady Visit To Nepal And The Far East

This powerful story, the sequel to Christopher Hayes-Brown's book Lady, tells the amazing adventures of Lisa and her son David, along with their German shepherd dog Lady. They are given a great opportunity to travel to Nepal on a two-year conservation programme. This will prove to be full of wonder, emotions, unconditional dedication, sacrifice, soul-searching, sometimes tearful sights, but above all rewarding with challenges that lie ahead, and extreme dedication of the people who they share their adventures with, in particular the Nepalese people, who care for their wonderful country’s habitat and wildlife within. 

This story will touch your very heart and soul. As for the people, it will change their lives forever.

Lady with Edelweiss

Human ashes in a tea caddy, a baby delivered in a snowstorm, worm pie, a priest with a passion for airbrushing. How much do we know about our friends, our families, or even ourselves? This debut collection exposes the strangeness of everyday lives, embracing the light and the dark sides of human nature.

Uncomfortably honest and direct, these stories reveal the fears and passions of the mind through their characters, places and situations, an exploration of the boundaries between fantasy and reality. These are people we all know. 

A rich potpourri of character and plot in this intriguing (and sometimes dark) collection of tales from a talented storyteller.

Angela Locke. Author of Dreams of the Blue Poppy (Robert Hale) etc

Steph Newham has empathy with all her characters so presents her stories as rounded pieces for her readers’ enjoyment. Where she takes on characters from history her research is careful and enriches her stories, which range across many subjects.

Vivien Jones. Poet, author. Co-editor Southlight Magazine

Short but not sweet, Steph Newham writes vignettes that blaze out, illuminated briefly by the photo-flash of her pen. And when the light blinks out, you are left wondering as the scene presents itself again like the complexity of good wine, each time leaving a different taste.

Tony Walker. Author of A Christmas Ghost, etc and The Classic Ghost Story podcast.

These stories are atmospheric, the characters well-drawn. In ‘Unwise Words’, I felt the young mother’s regret and shivered in fear as the bonfire was lit. The sights and smell in the four Spanish stories took me to that country and I laughed out loud at the manuring of the roses in The Sand Walk. Something here for everyone.

Gwen Kirkwood. Author of sixteen Scottish novels and novellas (Joffee Books)

Ladybirds - Tales on the Wing

As a youngster I loved getting, and subsequently owning, a brand new ‘Ladybird’ book. I especially liked the smell of the pristine pages as I turned them for the very first time. There was an aroma to their ‘inks’ that was distinctly ‘Ladybird’. What a joy! What a childhood memory!

These new tales came into being from the front covers of specific ‘Ladybird’ books, so to them I am clearly indebted. I just let my imagination do the rest once the seed was sown. They are both weird and wonderful, and abound with fact and fiction, truth and lies, deceit and lust. Very unlike the little books themselves, and if you take the trouble you will surely see what I mean. 

Lasseter's Legendary Lost Reef

Headlines are made when a gold discovery that is claimed to be Lasseter’s legendary lost reef is made by the international company Krennerite Gold Corp. This is the most fabled lost gold reef in Australia’s long mining and exploration history, purported to have been discovered more than a century before. James Buchanan, a world-famous exploration geologist is intrigued because the region of the rediscovery is not known as a gold-bearing district but is frustrated in his efforts to access the discovery site to test his scepticism. Unexpectedly, James is approached by the Chinese chairman of the board of Krennerite, who is concerned about the veracity of the discovery and the damage to his reputation if any fraud is uncovered. He and James devise a plan which involves James and the chairman’s daughter Pearl posing as tourists in the Central Australian region near Alice Springs and Ayers Rock to remotely investigate the discovery site using a drone. How will they handle their contrasting western and Chinese cultures in the wild and dangerous Australian outback? Will conflict or romance evolve from their interaction? Will the reported discovery really represent Lasseter’s long-lost gold reef or are there more sinister motives and activities at play? Will rapidly evolving and challenging events played out in the Australian outback, in Western Australia, and China make positive or negative changes to the lives of those involved? Only time will tell!

Lasseter's Truth

Jack Johnson is both lucky and unlucky. He survives the Vietnam war as a decorated helicopter pilot, marries the girl he left behind, and lands on his feet at Australia’s leading advertising agency, as a launch pad to spectacular success in the industry. Lucky, you might say.

But luck can change. Jack is hit with a bogus criminal charge that chases him into the Great Australian Desert, in a quest for Lasseter’s fabled gold reef.

But Jack is not the only one looking. A mysterious Chinese company called Triple Eight is buying up leases in the desert, and people are dying.

Back home, he leaves not only a heartbroken wife but a beautiful and very determined daughter who has had her own problems. Expelled from Australia’s most prestigious public school, Tess Johnson vows to clear her father’s name.

Lasseter’s Truth follows them both as they take on the odds. A story that ranges from the greed of the nineties, into a famous legend of Australia’s outback, with a compelling climax for our own time.

Last Keeper's Lighthouse Stories

The very nature of lighthouses captures the imagination. Being marooned on different lighthouses throughout my career has produced many memorable incidents and humorous stories. Diverse locations like Lundy, Alderney, Wolf, Sark, all have something unique to offer. Rock tower lighthouses, land lights or island lighthouses, each one is different. Cooped up on a tower and being pounded by heavy seas is not only exhilarating, but frightening as well. Fog signals can play a huge part in a good duty period and the relief for going ashore is always welcomed. The characters are what makes this book such a good read. It gets your chuckle chops in overdrive, especially at some of the antics on the lights. A month’s duty is filled with incidents and the constant change in weather conditions has an effect on everything that you do. These stories will show how hardship goes hand in glove with humour whilst aboard.

Latitude 55°02’ North, Longitude 1°42’ West

A routine flight meets an unexplainable accident in the same way as an RAF jet did a few years ago. Can anyone provide answers? Are there any answers at all? Only a special squad, made of misfits and weirdos, might be able to deal with the problem.

This extraordinary, thought-provoking, multifaceted, earthly-plot, will grip you from beginning to end and beyond with its intriguing, intricate and vivid prose. Fasten your seat belt and prepare to be exhilarated.

Laura's Year

In January 1976, it is an excited, but nervous family of four who board a Jumbo jet, to leave England to begin a new life in a small town, on the Persian Gulf in Iran.

Adrian, an ex-Royal Naval Officer, thought this new job in Iran would be a chance to earn big money, and although neither parent had wanted to disrupt their children’s education, they thought it was worth the risk, giving them both valuable life experiences, and a chance to see ‘something of the world.’

Once settled in their new home, with the children happily enrolled in an excellent international school, they immediately made friends with like-minded ex-pats, and got involved in an active and well-established social scene, with parties and functions most weekends, and daily trips to their ‘club’ in town, which housed a bar, and swimming pool.

Caroline and Alex, having made friends at school, as well as with some local children, who lived in mud huts, in the desert at the end of their road, also seemed happy with their lot, but Laura becomes pregnant, which threatens to disrupt their idyllic lives, and events that followed, appear to have changed Laura’s, once devoted and loving husband’s feelings towards her.

But, had Laura changed? And that was why her previously, caring husband didn’t fancy her anymore.

How was she to get their relationship back on track, when there were so many exciting distractions and choices which held his attention, which didn’t include her?

Leaving Behind

All his life, Malcolm Tutt wanted to be found. Now on the eve of turning fifty, he realised that sometimes life may never find you and if you wanted it bad enough, sometimes you would have to go and look for it yourself. The only problem was that he would have to die, if he wanted to live.

A young woman finds out that her husband is having an affair with her best friend. She decides to confront him, but before she does, she hatches a plan to catch them in the act of betrayal. As she gets closer and closer to discovering the truth about her husband, her anger towards them grows. Like a cheap paperback novel, her life begins to unravel until one night she commits a terrible act, and in the process, finds out what a scorned woman is truly capable of.

Leaving Behind is a collection of short stories that explores the lengths that people will go to when they are desperate, each with an unexpected twist.