Books

Every Easter Monday, in the village of Biddenden in Kent, a queue of elderly residents forms outside the old village workhouse, which has now been converted into residential property. At ...

I sold my first novel, A Hand to Hold in Deep Water, on the crest of sixty. Now sixty-three, I’m looking forward to the release of my next novel, The Precious Jules. ...

- The island of Parris: paradise or poison? Luca Laine Thomas lives in Parris, the beautiful island plagued by the unsolved deaths of young women - most significantly, Luca's best ...

1) I left school at 16 with only a handful of O Levels and unwittingly enrolled in the cliched ‘University of Life’. Over the next few years, I fell in ...

Play to your strengths: If you’re good at drawing horses, write a graphic novel about a horse. If you like drawing cars or machinery, write a story involving those. I like ...

As we walked in the shadow of the Parthenon some years back, my best friend cleared her throat and said, in the tone of one confessing to a murder, "I ...

I have a confession to share. One day in June, I spent an hour on deadline day deciding whether I needed a teapot-shaped handbag instead of finishing my novel. To ...

-  Hi Jane, It’s me again! I feel like I’m constantly Twittering at you, trying to moderate my admiration for you and your books and play it cool, and always ...

I was admitted into the Queen’s University Fine Art Program in Kingston, Ontario, in 1995. I swore I wouldn’t go to Queen’s, because my brother was two years into his ...

Dear Lynda, I must have been totally bonkers not to reach out to you sooner. But it was deliberate, I promise. Let me explain. No one can accuse me of ...

If you are female and want to run a marathon, there are thousands of races all over the world to choose from. The only real challenge you face is training ...

I adore psychological thrillers. I guess it was blockbusters like Gone Girl that got me hooked on this genre. I love the way they delve into the human mind, analysing ...

It was so easy to write every thought and feeling my main character, Jackie, would have. So why did I find describing her face so difficult? If she’s got blue ...

THE WHITE HARE is a novel about the deep connection between landscape and people and how we often lose touch with the things that matter. Two damaged women and a ...

1) I don’t really like talking about myself. I don’t think I’m a particularly interesting person. I struggled with thinking of seven things about me that people would want to ...

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with wildlife. It was (as is the case with many nature lovers) birds first. I would take my binoculars everywhere ...

A concept that comes up often in my work as an organisational psychologist and career development coach is that of the ‘growth mindset’ - a term originally coined by Stanford ...

Described as ‘the book you need after Squid Game’, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy of Kiersten White’s adult debut novel, Hide. I didn’t know much ...

With so many businesses shuttering their doors, at least for a period of time, because of COVID-19, the national and local economy is on the forefront of everyone’s mind. Amidst ...

Writing in short bursts and making each piece catch and hold the reader’s attention are journalistic skills that also work for novel-writing; but we need some extra ones too. Most ...

After a loss, there is a period where the body and mind disconnect; a period where everything even the things you love feel uncomfortable and difficult to bear. Your mind ...

Who hasn’t indulged by wallowing in hindsight? Or analysed the mistakes of each misstep? ‘Regrets, I’ve had a few,’ crooned Frank Sinatra back in the sixties, articulating a sentiment that ...

Dear Thomas Hardy, I have been a fan of your torrid tales since I was a teenager. Nevertheless I have always wanted to ask you a question that you may ...

Sibling relationships have always been rich fodder for literature. I love exploring the bond between people who are uniquely the only ones in the whole world who have the singular ...