November Releases

Margaret James THE SILVER LOCKET
Choc Lit
1st November
£7.99 (paperback)

As the First World War gets under way, Rose Courtenay runs away from home to become an army nurse, falls in love with a married man, and has to make many difficult choices.

Sue Moorcroft WANT TO KNOW A SECRET?
Choc Lit
1 November 2010
£7.99
Money and love? Which matters most?

Karen Abbott A LOVE WORTH WAITING FOR

F. A. Thorpe Linford Romance Series - Large Print

November 2010

Cost - £8.99

Jasmine Jones gets the opportunity to open a Teashop in the lovely village

of Manorbier in Pembrokeshire -- but when disturbing things begin to happen,

Jasmine wonders who wants her business to fail...surely not local artist

Rhys Morgan ?

Trisha Ashley TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS
Avon HarperCollins
October 28th
Cost 6.99
For widow Holly Brown, looking after a remote house on the Lancashire moors seems the perfect way to escape the festivities - but when the owner unexpectedly returns just before a blizzard cuts the village off, the Twelve Days of Christmas take a very unexpected turn.

Annie Burrows A COUNTESS BY CHRISTMAS (in anthology "Regency Mistletoe and Marriages"
which also contains story by Joanna Maitland, "The Earl's Mistletoe Bride")
Mills and Boon
November 2010
£6.99
Two sparkling regency romances, set during the Christmas season

Lynne Connolly UNBROKEN
Total E-Bound
November 8th 2010
Cost TBA
Zoltan's looking for imperfection, and he finds it in Vashti.

























Dilly Court A MOTHER’S SECRET
Arrow
4 November 2011
£19.99
Raised in a notorious East End baby farm, Cassy thinks that the Indian woman
who saves her from the gutter is her mother, but she has yet to learn the
secret of her birth.

Liz Fielding MISTLETOE AND THE LOST STILETTO
Harlequin "Romance"
$4.50 US
With the entire world hunting for Lucy, hiding out in Santa's Grotto seemed like a good idea. Ho, ho, ho...

Liz Fielding A STRANGER'S KISS
Linford Romance Library
November, £8.99
Tara takes refuge with a stranger to avoid a stalker.  Out of the frying pan into the roasting pan...

June Francis SUNSHINE AND SHOWERS
Allison & Busby Ltd.
8th November,
£7.99
Patsy Doyle is settled into her role as live-in-maid to the Tanners'
household whilst Joy Kirk is busy planning her wedding but have both let themselves in for more than they bargained?

Kate Harrison THE SECRET SHOPPER UNWRAPPED
Orion
November 11
£6.99
Sandie, Emily and Grazia are on the warpath, exposing shocking Christmas shopping experiences, while they try to juggle love lives, family sagas and sabotage as December 25 approaches...

Anna Jacobs PERSONS OF RANK
Magna Large Print
15 November, 2010
£20.99
Regency romance: The dowager believes people of rank should not fall in love but her granddaughter and niece can’t help themselves, which brings a tangle of complications.

Jan Jones THE PENNY PLAIN MYSTERIES (Part 1 of 4: The Jigsaw Puzzle)
Four-part serial
People's Friend (weekly magazine)
Starts 24th November 2010 (Issue dated 27.10.10)
85p or thereabouts
A jigsaw from the past propels Penny to a puzzling future.

Freda Lightfoot ANGELS AT WAR
Allison & Busby Ltd.
November 2010
£19.99
Racked with guilt over the tragic death of her sister Maggie, Livia promises never to let anyone down again and to do something worthwhile with her life.

Freda Lightfoot HOUSE OF ANGELS
Magna large print
October 2010
£20.99
The Angel sisters struggle to escape their bullying father and find an
unexpected half-sister.

Freda Lightfoot HOSTAGE QUEEN
ebook
November 2010
£6.99 +VAT
In a court rife with murder, political intrigue, debauchery, jealousy and
the hunger for power, can Marguerite de Valois hope to keep her head.
























Chrissie Loveday FROM THIS DAY ON
Ulverscroft Linford Romance Large Print
November 2010
£8.99
Set in a Cornish village, misogenist male doctor meets his new female locum
and sparks fly ... but they reckon without his aunt who's a bit of witch.

Sue Moorcroft STARTING OVER
Isis (Large Print hardback)
1 November 2010
£20.95
New home, new friends, new love. Can starting over be that simple?

Sue Moorcroft ONE SUMMER IN MALTA
Isis
01 November 2010
£11.99
Tina has only one opportunity to spend a summer in Malta. Shame the past is waiting for her there.

























Gillian Villiers TOMORROW’S PROMISE
Thorpe Large Print
1 November 2010
Cost - £8.99
Lara is determined never to risk falling in love, but when she takes up a
new post and agrees to share a house with laid-back fellow teacher Mick, she
finds it isn’t quite so simple.


SHORT STORIES

Kate Jackson THE CIRCLE OF LIFE
Short Story
Peoples Friend Christmas Special
DC Thomson
28th October
£2.99
Christmas will never be same again without Grace.

Happy Birthday RNA

Yesterday the Romantic Novelists' Association celebrated its 50th birthday in style with a lunch at the RAF Club to launch FABULOUS AT FIFTY.

Here are a few photos of the event...

Rosy Thornton Talks About Food and Romance

Food and romance: they just go together, don’t they? Like strawberries and cream, or champagne and caviar, they are each other’s perfect complement. What could be better than curling up on the sofa with a good romantic novel and a box of Belgian chocolates?

Both of them engage our sensual side. So perhaps it is no wonder if food plays a significant part in the pages of romantic fiction. What could be more alluring than the sexy hero preparing a sumptuous meal for the heroine? Than the two of them sharing a candlelit dinner, and feeding each other across the table with their fingers?

When I decided to set a novel in rural France, it was perhaps inevitable, therefore, that the local cuisine – along with the landscape – should form a major strand in the atmosphere of the book. The Tapestry of Love tells the story of divorcee Catherine Parkstone, who sells her house in England and moves to a remote hamlet in the Cévennes mountains to set up in business as a seamstress. Her intriguing neighbour Patrick Castagnol, who lives in the house across the little valley from her own, prepares for her dishes in the local peasant tradition, using the produce of the those wooded hills: chestnuts and forest raspberries, trout from the mountain streams, wild mushrooms and wild boar. In turn, she roasts spatchcocked guinea fowl for him with rosemary from her garden, and serves him a fruit tart made with tiny Mirabelle plums which she picks from her terraced orchard.        

The meals which Patrick cooks for Catherine (and vice versa) became, for me, as real and vivid as the characters themselves. When the novel was done, I found that I wanted to recreate the meals for myself, just as Catherine and Patrick had prepared them. So I set about turning the dishes from the pages of the book into reality… and produced, in the process, a set of cévenol recipes to accompany the novel!

I have already shared the recipes with family and friends who have read the book and wanted to give them a try. If any RNA blog readers would like to have a go at conjuring your own taste of the Cévennes, I’d love to share them with you, too. Just send me a message via my website at

http://rosythornton.com/contact/contact.php

and I’ll be delighted to e-mail you the recipe booklet.     

Fabulous at Fifty

50 glorious years of the Romantic Novelists’ Association

On Thursday Fabulous at Fifty, a memoir of the first half century of the Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA), will be launched at the RAF Club in London.  Fabulous at Fifty delves into the past, with first-hand recollections of people who were there, and describes the growth of the Romantic Novelists’ Association into what was described by PD James at a recent Awards ceremony as ‘one of most professional writers’ organisations of the present day’.

The history is packed with fascinating and frank detail about past and present members, the opinion of other novelists (often less than flattering) about this massively successful commercial genre, the changing attitude to sex and a public  broadside from Marje Proops in the Mirror plus the spats, the flaps, the End of Publishing as we Know It (1968), hot books and cold champagnes.

The book will be published by the RNA on 14th October at £9.99 and available from their website www.romanticnovelistsassociation.org

October Releases

Julie Cohen GETTING AWAY WITH IT

Headline Review

28^th  October 

£19.99 (hardback) 

Rebellious stuntwoman Liza Haven finds out what it's like to be the good twin when her perfect identical sister disappears.

Rosy Thornton THE TAPESTRY OF LOVE

Headline Review

14th October (paperback)

£7.99

A rural idyll: that's what Catherine is seeking when she sells her house in England and moves to a tiny hamlet in the Cévennes mountains. Reality, however, proves rather different.

Valerie Holmes CHLOE’S FRIEND
F A Thorpe (Publishing)

Large Print
1^st October
£ 8.99 

Forced to work as a laundry maid, her father has been transported and her mother sent away, the young and spirited Chloe must make her way alone - or so she thinks...'

Janet Woods PAPER DOLL
Severn House
28^th  October
£19.99
Set in the 1920s, perfect daughter, Julia, become a perfect wife – until she falls in love with Martin Lee-Trafford.

Lesley Cookman MURDER IMPERFECT

Accent Press Ltd

£6.99

The seventh of the Libby Sarjeant adventures.

Mary Nichols LORD PORTMAN’S TROUBLESOME WIFE
Mills & Boon
£3.99
Homeless and penniless, Rosamund is forced to marry Harry, Lord
Portman. In return for a comfortable life, she must produce an heir. 
But far from sweeping her into his bed, Harry seems determined to keep
her at arm's length.

Lily Baxter POPPY'S WAR

Arrow

28^th  October 2010

Cost £5.99

Evacuated from London's East End, thirteen-year-old Poppy

Brown enters another world when she is billeted at a grand country house in Dorset.

Gwen Kirkwood HEART OF THE HOME

Severn House
30^th October
£19.99 (US $28.95)
Avril Gray has a promising career until fate intervenes. Dean Scott has ambitions but as a labourer he feels unable to propose marriage. His mother learns Avril's secret and is determined to keep them apart

Helen Scott Taylor A MIDWINTER FANTASY
Dorchester
1^st October
£5.99
Fantasy anthology including stories by Leanna Renee Hieber, L.J. McDonald and Helen Scott Taylor.

Carol Townend HER BANISHED LORD

Mills & Boon

Large Print

October

£14.50 

Disgraced, stripped of his title and lands, all Hugh Duclair has left is his pride.   Will the beautiful Lady Aude, once a childhood playmate, win his heart as she risks everything to help clear his name?

Nicola Cornick WHISPER OF SCANDAL
HQN Books
28^th September
£5.72
Love in a cold climate - Regency historical romance and adventure in London and the Arctic!

Cat Marsters DREAMING OF YOU
Changeling Press (ebook)
29th Oct
Approx £3
Two thousand years ago, Tamenorix of the Segovantes was cursed to live forever as a slave, providing pleasure to whoever wears his torc. A torc bought centuries later by a lovelorn academic for his best friend's birthday.

Annie Burrows THE VISCOUNT AND THE VIRGIN

Mills & Boon
1^st October
£6.99
Continuing the Regency Silk and Scandal Series...Imogen Hebden has the shadow of scandal hanging over her.  Just when it looks as though her last-chance season is going to be a disaster, she gets a proposal from no less a personage than a viscount...in an almost indecent hurry to produce an heir...

Lynne Connolly TEXAS HEAT
Loose-Id
5^th October
$5.50
After days of steamy passion locked in her hotel room with the devastatingly sexy Vin, Annie discovers he owns the company trying to take over her own. Can she overcome his distrust and teach him to share his worries, or is sex all they can share?

Jo Beverley EMILY AND THE DARK ANGEL (Reissue)
NAL, NY
October
$8.70
Everyone in the area is warning Emily Grantwich about her
scandalous new neighbor, but as she's running her crippled father's estate,
what's she to do?

Kate Walker KATE WALKER’S 12 POINT GUIDE TO WRITING ROMANCE (3rd edition)
Aber Publishing
30^th  October
£10.99

Award winning guide to writing romance, revised and reprinted

 

Kate Jackson GO FLY A KITE

People's Friend Special Collectors Edition 2010

16^th  September

£4.99

What can Marianne do with a three year old, a kite and no wind?

Kate Jackson A FRIEND IN NEED

People's Friend magazine

2^nd  October

85p

What's the secret behind Charlie Harmer?

Margaret Blake A FATAL FLAW
Whiskey Creek Press
October
$16.95 print –e-book $6.99
Can Kerensa really trust a copy with the mystery of why her mother shot her father?

Chrissie Loveday ROUGH CLAY

Chivers Large Print
4^th October

£16.50

In the early 20th century Potteries, Archie Barnett follows his dream to become a creator of beautiful things, namely fine bone china but dealing with life is the usual roller coaster.

Chrissie Loveday A LOVE SHARED
DC Thompson

People's Friend Pocket Novels
7^th October
£1.75
Their shared passion for horses brings Sarah and Alex together but working together in their law firm brings conflict that may prove impossible to overcome.

Kate Jackson DATES FOR MY DIARY

People's Friend Annual 2011

16^th  August

£6.99

An unexpected present helps Amanda start afresh.

Linda Gillard on Winning the Woman's Weekly Favourite Romantic Novel 1960-2010

So there I was, standing on the quayside, staring at the distant Scottish mainland, wondering if I knew anyone with a boat. And nerves of steel...

Pondering the uncertainties of island life, I texted the organisers of Woman’s Weekly’s Favourite Romantic Novel 1960-2010, for which my novel STAR GAZING was short-listed, telling them I might not make it to the champagne breakfast for short-listed authors as the last two ferries from the Isle of Arran had been cancelled due to bad weather. As it was, I’d miss my London train connection and would have to fly now. If I ever got off the island.

But after a tense couple of hours, the skies cleared, the wind dropped and Calmac declared that the MV Caledonian Isles would depart. Twelve hours later (oh, the joys of flying Easyjet!) I checked in to the New Cavendish Club in London, unpacked and started to worry that my outfit was the wrong colour. (Or was it my hair that was the wrong colour?…)

The following morning I met Trisha Ashley, fellow short-listee (EVERY WOMAN FOR HERSELF). Barbara Taylor Bradford was also short-listed with the legendary A WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE, but she lives in New York and wasn’t attending.

And then it was mingling time… I was handed a glass of champagne but I can't say I tasted it. This is how nervous I was: when they were offered, I said “No” to a tray of Danish pastries. But everyone liked the colour of my Oska top and said it suited me. (Memo to self: fix hair colour.)

I introduced myself to the Woman’s Weekly reader who’d won a trip to London. She said she’d read all three short-listed books, but had actually voted for Victoria Hislop's THE ISLAND. Moving swiftly on, I gave her a signed copy of STAR GAZING, just to show there were no hard feelings.

Then announcement time… OhGodOhGod… And the winner is… STAR GAZING!

Nooooooooooo!

But yesssss!

A beaming Katie Fforde presented me with the star-shaped crystal trophy and looked on while I improvised an incoherent speech, short on wit and long on gratitude. Applause, flash bulbs, refills… Dizzy with happiness and champagne, possessed of a sudden, ravening hunger, I looked round for that magnificent selection of Danish pastries…. Gone. Only crumbs left to bear witness to their brief existence.

Linda and Trisha Ashely

Clutching my empty glass and my beautiful star trophy, I concluded that you can’t win them all. 

Summer Reading from Christina Courtenay

Unusually for me, I haven’t had much time for reading this summer, mostly because I didn’t go on the customary beach holiday.  When I do, I always take one book for each day (well, there’s nothing else to do, is there?) and hopefully get through ten to fourteen novels that way.  This year I’ve had to make do with reading at home, which meant I had to prioritise.

The choice in my TBR pile is daunting, to say the least, but some books call to you more than others.  That was the case with All That Mullarkey by Sue Moorcroft, a superb contemporary with a most delicious hero, and ditto Turning the Tide by Christine Stovell.  (And no, I didn’t read those because the author’s are my fellow Choc Lit-mates - truthfully, I would have loved them anyway.)

Then there was The Perfect Proposal by our lovely chairman, Katie Fforde.  A gentle love story that really was perfect in every way, with another wonderful hero to fall in love with and some fabulous settings.

For something a bit different, I read The Paris Vendetta by Steve Berry (I need some stories other than romance occasionally), but I was soon back with my favourite genre, delving into Wicked Regency Nights by among others, our own Nicola Cornick and Louise Allen.  Almost Human by Cat Marsters provided more variety and in between, I devoured two dark and paranormal YA novels, Radiant Shadows by Melissa Marr (a very different world of faeries) and Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick, which features a fallen angel quite literally to die for.

I don’t know about everyone else, but the sheer quality of fiction and the fantastic stories that continue to be published, especially by RNA members, astonishes me and makes me realise how much I have to look forward to.  Whenever I want, there is always another wonderful world to immerse myself in.  The only question is which one to choose next?

(Writing as Christina Courtenay, Pia's novel Trade Winds (published by Choc Lit) is out now, and her Regency novella Never Too Late published by DC Thomson (no.1737) is in shops this week.)

Septmember Releases

Christina Courtenay TRADE WINDS
Choc Lit
30th September
£7.99
"Marriage of convenience of a love for life? - Scotsman Killian Kinross
goes to Sweden to make his fortune, but ends up married and on a daring
voyage to China instead ..."

Freda Lightfoot THE RELUCTANT QUEEN
(sequel to Hostage Queen)
Severn House
30th September
£19.99
Sixteenth-century France. Gabrielle d’Esrées’ one wish is to marry for love,
but her mother sells her as a mistress to three different men before she catches
the eye – and the heart – of Henry of Navarre, King of France.

Lynne Connolly EMOTION IN MOTION
Ellora's Cave Publishing
10th September
$5.99
Jack Hargreaves returns to his old college in Oxford to follow up a lead
on an old enemy. He finds the enemy, but also Shere, an Egyptian shape-shifter.

Kate Lace A CLASS ACT

Little Black Dress

30 September 2010

£6.99

When lady-of-the manor Tilly, meets skater-boy Ashley and it’s

love at first sight, the one thing they have in common is that they

both live on an estate. But their social differences are their downfall.

Chrissie Loveday HER HEART’S DESIRE

Ulverscroft Large Print

September 30th

£8.99

Zara has put her whole heart into making her catering business a success

but enigmatic Oliver wants her heart for himself ... should she trust him?

Dilly Court THE RAGGED HEIRESS

Arrow Books

16 September 2010

£5.99

Rescued from a shipwreck, orphaned heiress Lucetta Froy wakes up in

hospital with no memory of her past, but when two ruffians claim to be

her brothers she finds herself in a desperate struggle to prove her identity.

Anna Jacobs CHERRY TREE LANE

Allison & Busby

13 September, 2010

 £19.99

1910: When Mattie flees from Swindon and her stepfather, she nearly loses

her life in a storm, but then fate steps in to offer her a new chance of happiness.

Catherine King A MOTHER’S SACRIFICE

Magna (Large Print)

1 September 2010

£20.99

'She would do anything to keep her family safe . . . .'

Liz Fielding HER WISH-LIST BRIDGROOM

Liz Fielding/Jackie Braun/Natasha Oakley GORGEOUS GROOMS

Mills & Boon By Request £5.99

Juliet's lost her bloke, lost her job and mislaid her mind.

Things can only get better, right?  Wrong...

Liz Fielding A WEDDING AT LEOPARD TREE LODGE

Mills & Boon LP Library Edition

In which Josie wrestles with taffeta, table plans and a room shortage.

And Gideon takes advantage.

  

Margaret Mounsdon SONG OF MY HEART

People's Friend Pocket Novel

23 September 2010

£1.80

Andi Cox accepts a job looking after the daughter and niece of pop music

icon Jas Summers.

Rosie Harris AMBITIOUS LOVE

Arrow

8 September 2010

£19,99

Would Fern Jenkins ever find the love she longed for....

Louise Allen VICAR’S DAUGHTER TO VISCOUNT’S LADY

 (Part 2 of The Transformation of the Shelley Sisters)

Harlequin Mills & Boon

Sept 2010

£3.99

Seduced and abandoned by a rakish aristocrat vicar's daughter Bella will do

anything to protect her baby, even if that means marrying a viscount she has

known for twenty four hours.Now all she has to do is make the marriage work.

Victoria Connelly A WEEKEND WITH MR DARCY
Avon, HarperCollins
16th September
£6.99
A romantic comedy about two couples who meet and fall in love at a Jane
Austen conference in Hampshire