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(Please note this post contains spoilers of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.) The Other Wife was inspired by Daphne du Maurier’s gothic novel Rebecca, published in 1938. Rebecca is one of my all-time favourites, as is Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847) and the prequel...

Come Rain or Shine by Sarah Bennett is out today! 🐰🌷 Writers take inspiration from lots of places. A piece of art, a picture or post that catches your eye as you scroll through social media. A TV show or a song perhaps. The backstory for my heroine in Come Rain or...

This year sees the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) celebrating two hundred years of lifesaving thanks to the passion of one man who wanted change. Sir William Hillary lived in Douglas on the Isle of Man and, over the years, had helped save lives from many...

In Murder at Merewood Hospital, Sister Helen Hopgood is the last nurse in a temporary military hospital that must close – even though casualties remain. At the start of the Great War, Helen left behind the comfort of her nursing quarters at the Nightingale School in...

Did women stand in the shield wall or are we just making that up? by Donovan Cook I’m going to be honest with you here. When I first came up with Thora in Odin’s Betrayal, she was going to be very different from the character she ended up being. In fact, originally,...

With the popularity of domestic thrillers sky-high, we cannot get enough of controlling couples in books and that translates to the big screen too. There’s nothing more delicious than watching a vile character get his or her comeuppance, or having your nerves...

Back when I was working as a music journalist, and had friends working in all parts of the industry, I would always wonder about what kind of story I could write, based on my experiences. Well, it was always fiction that I dreamed of writing, and I knew that I...

The Button Girls, The Telephone Girls and The Picture House Girls by Patricia McBride are out today! Shop the Lily Baker series here.🧡 People often ask me what inspires my books, and The Picture House Girls was inspired by real events that occurred in Cutteslowe (a...

A Wartime Welcome from the Foyles Bookshop Girls by Elaine Roberts is out today! 🎉 During my research I discovered some fascinating, and sometimes quirky, information about the legendary Foyles Bookshop most of which I couldn’t use in my books because they were things...