Jilly Bond

Angela Thirkell, the cousin of Rudyard Kipling and the granddaughter of celebrated Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones, was an eminent twentieth century literary figure, and wrote avidly until her death in 1961.

In her beautifully nostalgic memoirs, she recalls in rich detail the three houses in which she grew up and the childhood memories their walls contain. Thirkell's elaborate portraits of the three houses - The Grange in Fulham, 27 Young Street in Kensington Square, and North End House in Rottingdean - offer an invaluable insight into late Victorian life.

Three Houses allows us a snapshot of history from the busy literary centre of London to the English coast. Charmingly expressive, these stunning memoirs are both reminiscent of the golden days of youth and an interesting vision of a writer and the early influences that informed her later work.

In a faraway kingdom, in a long-ago land...

Rosie’s only inheritance from her reclusive mother is a notebook full of handwritten fairy tales. But another story is lurking between the lines.

Desperate for answers to questions that have tormented her for years, Rosie travels to Moscow and uncovers a devastating family history spanning the 1917 Revolution, Stalin’s bloody purges and beyond. At the heart of those answers stands a young noblewoman, as pretty as a porcelain doll, whose actions reverberate across the century …

There's nothing like the contentment and security that money can bring. That's how it is for Lucinda, Elizabeth and Flora, living the risk-free dream in the glittering eighties. Houses, holidays, happiness - everything is there for the taking.

The financial slide comes crashing into their lives with a vengeance, and everything they've built up so carefully dissolves into a pool of hopelessness, taking self-respect and relationships with it.

Now, the secrets will out and within a year, someone will be dead.

Delve inside this CHRISTMAS STOCKING choc-full of perfectly themed, never-before-published seasonal short stories perfect for anyone who loves romance, humour and happy-ever-after endings.

Laura, newly married and ever conscious she may be living in the shadow of her husband Alec's first wife, decides to take a holiday with his family in Cornwall.

Through the long hot summer days, she is slowly charmed by the beautiful old house and the people she learns to know and love. In time her uneasy spirit is soothed by the sparkling, brilliant sea, and her restless heart finally calmed. But is this newfound tranquillity too good to be true? For with the arrival of an anonymous letter, one accusing her of having an affair, Laura's world is thrown into turmoil.

Fran has always wanted to be a farmer. And now it looks as if her childhood dream is about to come true.

She has just moved to her aunt's beautiful but very run-down farm in the Cotswolds. If she can turn the place around in a year, the farm will be hers.

But Fran knows nothing about farming. She might even be afraid of cows.

She'll need help, not just from her best friend Issi, but also from her wealthy and very eligible neighbour - who might just have his own reasons for being so supportive.

Is it the farm he is interested in? Or Fran herself?

Returning from a brief holiday, Juno Browne is relieved to find that no one has been murdered in the picturesque Dartmoor town of Ashburton while she was away. Though uncharitable friends suggest that the quiet was simply due to her absence. Just as she’s settling back into her routine at the antiques shop and as domestic helper and dog walker, the brutal killing of local journalist Sandy Thomas shocks the town and Juno is swept up into a fresh murder inquiry.

What was Sandy really investigating on the night she was killed? With a spate of dog kidnappings to contend with as well, the Devon countryside never felt less tranquil, and inevitably Juno’s amateur sleuthing skills will be called upon once again…

Book 6 in the Devon Mysteries.

As amateur sleuth Juno Browne’s Sunday gets to a chilly start in the delightful Devon town of Ashburton, a murder is brewing. As always seems to happen, Juno is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she discovers the body of Bob the Blacksmith, his dead hands entwined with a sprig of elder.

Juno begins to see links with previous ‘accidental’ deaths, although her way through the cloud of suspicion is further obscured by those who insist on links to ancient folklore. Determined to take the evidence with a generous pinch of salt, Juno navigates pagan ceremonies and astrological connections that turn up yet more bodies on a deadly path to the truth.

Book 7 in the Devon Mysteries.

When Kate Ivory returns from holiday and visits her mother, Roz, she sends her away insisting that her new friends, the Freemans, are taking care of her. Something about the couple disturbs Kate, so she decides to look into their background. She uncovers a countrywide trail of deception and soon realises that her mother may not be the only one in danger...

When two of Kate Ivory's friends, working at an Oxford University biotechnology unit, start to receive smoke bombs through the letterbox, Kate is intrigued and disturbed. The team is in danger of being disbanded and if this happens the important project they are working on will come to an end.

It's gloriously sunny in Cornwall as the school year starts at the little boarding school by the sea. Maggie, the newest teacher at Downey House, is determined to make her mark - but will it be at the expense of her relationship with safe, dependable Stan?

Simone has won a scholarship and wants to make her parents proud. Forced to share a room with the glossy, pretty, clever girls of Downey House, she needs to find a friend, fast.

Fliss is furious at being sent away from her home. As Simone tries desperately to fit in, Fliss tries desperately to get out.

Over the course of one year, friendships will bloom and lives will be changed forever.

Book 1 in the Maggie Adair series.

Now engaged to her longtime boyfriend, sweet and steady Stan, Maggie’s just got to stop thinking about David McDonald, her colleague at the boys’ school down the road. Well, hasn’t she? Can Maggie take a leaf out of the Well Behaved Teacher’s exercise book and stick to her plan for a small but elegant wedding and settled life of matrimony?

Even as Maggie tries to stay within the lines, rules are being broken all around her. Maggie’s boss, headmistress Veronica Deveral, has more to lose than anyone. When Daniel Stapleton joins the faculty, Veronica finds herself forced to confront a scandalous secret she thought she’d carefully buried forever. How long will she be able to keep her past under wraps?

Book 2 in the Maggie Adair series.

As an heir to the Plantagenets, Margaret of York is seen by the King's mother as a powerful threat to the Tudor claim to the throne. Caught between the old and the new, Margaret must find her own way, concealing deep within her the knowledge that an old curse cast upon all the Tudors is slowly coming true...

Three rival actresses team up to solve a murder at the stately home of Lettice Davenport, the author whose sleuthing creation of the 1930s, Dahlia Lively, had made each of them famous to a new generation.

Each actress has her own interpretation of the character and her own secrets to hide - but this English summer weekend they will have to put aside their differences as the crimes at Aldermere turn anything but cosy.

When fictional death turns into real bodies, can the three Dahlias find the answers to the murders among the fans, the film crew and the family - or even in Lettice's books themselves?

Book 1 in the Three Dahlias series.

It's a baking hot British summer, and the sleepy town of Market Foxleigh is staging a crime writing festival... with the three Dahlias as guests of honour.

After all, not only have Rosalind King, Caro Hooper and Posy Starling each played fictional detective Dahlia Lively on screen, but they're also making a name for themselves solving real-life murders too.

The Dahlias are anticipating a weekend of cream teas, awards dinners and warm white wine... but before long they're sleuthing together once again - this time helping a true crime podcast investigate a local cold case with a personal connection for one of the Dahlias.

 Book 3 in the Three Dahlia Mystery series.

A high society Christmas Eve wedding at a remote Scottish castle sounds like the perfect winter getaway for the three Dahlias and their partners - until a snowstorm hits, cutting them off from the mainland, and civilisation.

Which, of course, is when the dead body of one of the other guests turns up in the snow outside the family chapel. A dead body wearing a wedding dress and a stolen diamond necklace...

The Dahlias were ready for mulled wine, roaring fires, and romance this Christmas. Now, they're on the hunt for another murderer. And if their suspicions are right, it looks like the wedding may be off...

Book 4 in the Three Dahlias series.

Ex child star Posy Starling is finally filming her dream role - Dahlia Lively in The Lady Detective movie. But things take a nightmare turn when a prop weapon is replaced with the real thing - with almost fatal consequences for her fellow Dahlia, Rosalind King. There's something very wrong on the set of The Lady Detective - which means it's time to call in Caro Hooper, so the three Dahlias can investigate.

In between filming scenes, signing autographs for locals, photoshoots on set and jetting off to France for an impromptu party, the three Dahlias do what they do best - surreptitiously sleuth. And very soon the evidence starts to point towards one particular co-star...

Book 2 in the Three Dahlias series.

Wideacre Hall is the ancestral home of the Laceys, loved by all the family especially Beatrice, the daughter of the family. With a huge capacity for evil she is prepared to go to any lengths to make Wideacre hers.  Book 1 of series

When Mark Hannah finds a beautiful ship's figurehead he traces its origins to a small Cornish port. There he meets restorer Gabrielle Ellis, and the attraction between them is immediate and mutual. As neither wants to break up their marriages and families, they begin a secret relationship in London.

Jeannie, a newly qualified doctor, returns to her home town, determined to help the women who live in the city's slums. She soon realises that good intentions are no match for experience.

Harriet Swift has the perfect life - she is thirty-two with a satisfying career, her own flat and a new boyfriend. When her sister is killed, Harriet gives up her ordered life to help look after her niece and nephew. Moving back isn't easy, but she starts to discover things about the family she never believed possible.

Without noticing, Esther Fairchild has become a prisoner of routine. Living with her brother she illustrates children's books in the day and works as a waitress at night. Every week she visits her father, and every fortnight she meets her married lover. Then one day she encounters a face in a crowd…

Set in England in the 1950s, at the start of the rock and roll era, this is a charming story of 17-year-old Penelope Wallace and her eccentric family. There's her beautiful widowed mother, her younger brother who's obsessed with Elvis, and a large crumbling ancestral home. Oh, and there's her best friend's cousin, Henry… Richard & Judy Bookclub

On a street in the North of England ordinary people, doing every day things, lead normal lives, often interconnecting yet never really connecting. But when a summer evening is shattered by a terrible event, those who witness it will never be the same again.

Helen Kovac’s research into the Nazis in Eastern Europe leads to her murder. Her friend Faith retraces the dead woman’s steps, accompanied by a journalist who is investigating her grandfather, Marek, a refugee of WWII.

When the lovely Juno takes part in the reality-tv show ‘Queen Mum’, her best friend and next-door neighbour Ally finds she is not the friend she thought she was.

When Pru travels to Vietnam to visit her daughter she is thrust into a life-or-death adventure.

Somerset 1936 and baby Hope is the outcome of her mother’s adultery. She is secretly taken in by a loving warm family in a nearby village. She becomes a nurse which takes her to the battlefields of the Crimea. Unaware of her true identity Hope returns to England to face the legacy of her birth.

Violet Hetherington has taken the rash step of joining a transatlantic cruise ship to New York to visit Edwin, an old friend. As she makes the six day crossing, she relives the traumatic events that led to her losing Edwin's friendship, and abandoning her career as a poet, for the safety of marriage and domesticity.

An incredible true story of how Eve Haas uncovered her family history and revealed a passionate and ill-fated royal love affair, which ended with a child torn from her mother, and the tragic and cruel death of Eve’s own grandmother.

In the tradition of Sarah Waters, this is an historical novel about an orphan girl’s journey form poverty to film stardom, set against the backdrop of World War 1 Berlin, the cabaret era and the run-up to World War 2. Richard & Judy Bookclub

Angelica's running away again, whilst Katie and Ross are trying to save their marriage. Meanwhile Lauren is dreaming of the perfect first dance at her wedding. As friendships are formed over the foxtrot at the evening dance classes they all attend, everyone starts to find themselves learning important lessons about life and love.

When a number of strays from a rescue centre are matched with new owners, it's not just the dogs who are in need of a second chance. As the new owners cross paths on their regular walks they quickly move from awkward nods of recognition to something more. The lives of the dogs and the dog owners become interwoven and linked.

A successful auctioneer, Jude is asked to value a collection of scientific instruments and manuscripts belonging to Anthony Wickham, a lonely 18th century astronomer from Norfolk, where she grew up. As Jude untangles Wickham's tragic story, she discovers threatening links to the present. Richard & Judy Bookclub

Sheba Hart is having an illicit affair with a pupil. But when her colleague Barbara Covett becomes her comfort and confidance, Barbara turns as treacherous as any lover. Richard & Judy Bookclub.

In a tiny stained-glass shop in the hidden backstreets of Westminster lies the cracked, sparkling image of an angel. Fran Morrison helps craftsman Zac restore the shattered church window. As they reassemble the dazzling shards of coloured glass, they uncover an extraordinary love story from the Victorian past, sparked from the window's creation.