Posted in Blogging

o/t but big news! – BOMBSHELL BOOKS are BACK!

Bombshell Books are back!
After launching with the hilarious The Queen of Blogging, Bombshell Books are back with two new authors and three fabulous novels.

Therese Loreskar returns with her sequel to The Queen of Blogging – The
Queen of New Beginnings

Therese Loreskar started her career in 2010 self-publishing her first novel,
which quickly became a critically acclaimed best-seller.
In 2014 she was signed by a Swedish publishing house before being signed by Bombshell in the summer of 2016. Her novel, The Queen of Blogging, received overwhelming feedback and the book was referred to as a modern Bridget Jones.

Therese has since had four bestselling children’s books.
Her never-ending energy for writing and entertaining people is her biggest trait. Therese lives in the countryside on the west coast of Sweden. She has a big and busy household with her husband, two children, deaf cat, five hamsters and a grandmother.

When she is not busy writing stories she enjoys nature, people, history,
redecorating the house without permission and all other kinds of creativity.
The Queen of New Beginnings will be published on August 10th this year.

Guardian book prize shortlisted author, Suzie Tullett, signs with Bombshell
Books. Suzie Tullett is an author of contemporary humorous fiction and romantic comedy. She has a Masters Degree in Television & Radio Scriptwriting and worked as a scriptwriter before becoming a full-time novelist. Her motto isto ‘live, laugh, love’ and when she’s not busy creating her own literarymasterpieces, she usually has her head in someone else’s.
Suzie lives in a tiny hamlet in the middle of the French countryside, along withher husband and two Greek rescue dogs. You can find Suzie on Twitter:
@SuzieTullett or you can visit her website: suzietullett.com

Her heart-warming romantic comedy, The Trouble with Words, will be published on July 29th this year.

Debut author, Callie Langridge, joins Bombshell Books Caroline was born and brought up in Berkshire. After a brief teenage spell in the depths of Lancashire, she moved back to London. Having left school at 16, she studied drama before embarking on a career in marketing. This saw her work in music marketing in the heady days of Britpop in the late ‘90s. She unleashed her creativity in the design of window displays and marketing campaigns for the leading music retailer. More recently she has
followed her passion for social history and currently works in marketing for a
national historical institution, promoting projects and running events.

On hitting her thirtieth birthday, she decided finally to take her A levels and
gained A’s in English Literature and Language, and Film Studies – not bad when working full time – and this spurred her on to take the first of many creative writing course. A few years later and she has had a number of short stories published and plays performed at theatres and venues across London.

Caroline lives in London with her long-term partner and an ever-growing
collection of antique curiosities. Her beautifully written and heart-wrenching debut novel, A Time to Change, will be published on September 24th this year.

Bombshell Books is an imprint of Bloodhound Books. Bombshell publishes
brilliant women’s fiction and is on the look out for new authors. We wants stories that will make you laugh, cry and fall in love. For more information visit our website – www.bombshellbooks.com

Posted in Blogging

Welcome 2017.

You may have noticed I’ve not been around much over the last few months.  I’ve still been reading at a steady pace, but stepped away from the blogosphere for a while in order to come to terms with some of those hassles we regularly call ‘Life’.

Now with the hideous year that was 2016 out of the way, I’m feeling refreshed and ready to start picking the site back up again.  It may take a little while but bear with me….

2017 is the year I am back. 😉

Posted in Blogging, Reading, Reviews

Melody Bittersweet & The Girls Ghostbusting Agency – Kitty French

Life’s tricky for Melody Bittersweet

She’s single, she’s addicted to sugar and super heroes, her family are officially bonkers and … she sees dead people. Is it any wonder no-one’s swiping right on Tinder? 
Waking up lonely on her twenty seventh birthday, Melody finally snaps. She can’t carry on basing all of her life decisions on the advice of her magic 8 ball; things have got to change. 

Fast forward two months, and she’s now the proud proprietor of her very own ghostbusting agency – kind of like in the movies but without the dodgy white jumpsuits. She’s also flirting with her ex Leo Dark, fraternising with her sexy enemy in alleyways, and she’s somehow ended up with a pug called Lestat. 

Life just went from dull to dynamite and it’s showing no sign of slowing up anytime soon. Melody’s been hired to clear Scarborough House of its incumbent ghosts, there’s the small matter of a murder to solve, and then there’s the two very handsome, totally inappropriate men hoping to distract her from the job… 

Welcome to Chapelwick, home of the brand new and hilarious Girls Ghostbusting Agency series, where things really do go bump in the night.

Take some Janet Evanovich, mix it up with some classic Scooby-Doo mysteries, throw in some Ghostbusters, some of M Knight Shyalaman’s Sixth Sense along with a pair of devilishly handsome but totally inappropriate suitors, and you’ve got your next funtastic read.  If anything can take a grey, miserable time and turn in on its head into one filled with smiles and laughter, this book can do it

Melody Bittersweet is a hilarious narrator, and absolutely adorable, you can’t help but fall for her charms as she converses with ghosts, translates their thoughts and words to the “I-don’t-see-dead-people” folks, and solves mysteries, all while caught between an outrageous ex-boyfriend and an all too desirable complete non-believer out to discredit her at all times.

Her sidekick’s are just as much fun, and I’m really struggling to decide who I like the most.  Feisty Italian descended Marina, loyal and innocent Artie, Melody’s interfering family or LeStat the pug, there’s so much to look forward to from this interesting bunch that I’m already keen to find out what’s next.

With an interesting and tragic family mystery to solve, there’s plenty in here to keep the cosy crime fanatic in you enthralled, just enough romance to spice it up, and some great wisecracks, and while you let yourself go in the company of Melody Bittersweet, I will be eagerly awaiting the next instalment…..

 

Posted in Blogging

Off topic, but had to share…

I’ve loved everything about space since I was as young as I can remember, had moon maps and star maps on my walls, I had my own telescope and would spend hours trying to get beyond the light pollution and star at the stars, I had dreams of becoming an astronaut one day.  My dreams were just that, dreams, but for others they took them much further, and made them reality.

That’s astronaut Colonel Chris Hadfield, one of the previous captain’s of the international space station.  Today I got to see him.

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I was like a kid at Christmas when I got tickets to see him at Cheltenham Literary Festival this week.  He was there launching his children book The Darkest Dark, all about his childhood dreams of overcoming his fears and becoming an astronaut, and showing that with hard work and determination you can be *anything* you want to be.

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For an hour I was mesmerised, as he talked, shared stories and answered questions.  It was one of the best things that I’ve been to see for a while, if you get the chance to see him, take it.  He’s amazing.

Posted in Articles, Blog Touring, Blogging

Undertow by Elizabeth Heathcote – Exclusive Extract

 

The woman’s name was Zena and she was twenty-nine. There was a picture in the paper – she was very good-looking, slim with long glossy black hair, flawless ivory skin, in the photograph she looked like a model. Paula recognised her, had seen her before in the village. Shaun had pointed her out one day – he knew her a bit from when they were young, she’d grown up nearby and then moved away. Shaun had said hello to her, but she’d blanked him. He’d been stung by that, she could tell, but he’d laughed it off.

It turned out she and her partner had been living around the corner in Shell Road. The paper said that they’d bought it as a weekend place just a few months ago. Paula could see the house from her garden – an old lady called Iris used to live there and after she died it was empty for a while. Paula knew someone had moved in, but she hadn’t seen them yet, she didn’t realise it was the same woman. They were down for the bank holiday. The woman went for a swim late afternoon on the Monday and didn’t come back. The paper said she had swum from the stretch of the beach next to the bungalow, which wasn’t safe – she should have known that, growing up around there. It wasn’t protected for swimming – jet skis and boats used that area, plus the tide was strong and there were big waves, an undertow that could be dangerous.

There was lots of talk in the village, about the dead woman, theories about how she had died, rumours that it wasn’t just a simple case of drowning, that there was more to it than that. Shaun said it was all nonsense and Paula was happy to agree with him. St Jude’s was a gossipy place, everyone liked to have an opinion.

Someone who knew the dead woman from way back said she was a strong swimmer, that she knew what she was doing. Sometimes, Shaun said, it isn’t enough.

 

 

My husband’s lover. They said her death was a tragic accident. And I believed them . . . until now.

Carmen is happily married to Tom, a successful London lawyer and divorcé with three children. She is content to absorb the stresses of being a stepmother to teenagers and the stain of ‘second wife’. She knows she’ll always live in the shadow of another woman – not Tom’s first wife Laura, who is resolutely polite and determinedly respectable, but the lover that ended his first marriage: Zena. Zena who was shockingly beautiful. Zena who drowned swimming late one night.

But Carmen can overlook her husband’s dead mistress . . . until she starts to suspect that he might have been the person who killed her.