From Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers to Jilly Cooper’s Wicked!, I’ve always been hooked on novels set in boarding schools. So when Endeavour Press asked me to write a series of novellas about a school, I jumped at the chance. The first of the series, all published as short ebooks, was called School Ties. Now the second, Lessons in Love, is out and there will be a third later in the ...keep reading
I’ve been a fan of Karen Wheeler’s books about her life in France for ages so it was a pleasure to meet her on Twitter. I loved her latest book, Tout Soul, and I’m an avid reader of her blog, Tout Sweet, too. Her stories of how she hung up her fashion editor’s high heels and left chic west London to start a new life in rural France make me want ...keep reading
Will Hughes slammed his pen down in frustration. It was ten fifteen on a rainy September night and he’d been marking Hamlet essays for more than an hour. And what a bloody shambles they were too. Admittedly he was teaching the bottom set, but he was stunned by the quality of the teenagers’ work. Some could barely string a sentence together, let alone use an apostrophe properly. Only one had ...keep reading
Downthorpe Hall is a posh boarding school in the wilds of the Oxfordshire countryside. Fresh from working in an inner-city comprehensive, Will Hughes has just been appointed as the new head. He knows there will be a host of challenges ahead. Tricky parents, rebellious teenagers and teachers who will fight his attempts to reform the school. He doesn’t expect a battle for his heart. But when he meets two women ...keep reading