New Book Release Spotlight: A Widow's Vow by Rachel Brimble

A Widow’s Vow by Rachel Brimble

From grieving widow...

1851. After her merchant husband saved her from a life of prostitution, Louisa Hill was briefly happy as a housewife in Bristol. But then a constable arrives at her door. Her husband has been found hanged in a Bath hotel room, a note and a key to a property in Bath the only things she has left of him. And now the debt collectors will come calling.

To a new life as a madam.

Forced to leave everything she knows behind, Louisa finds more painful betrayals waiting for her in the house in Bath. Left with no means of income, Louisa knows she has nothing to turn to but her old way of life. But this time, she'll do it on her own terms – by turning her home into a brothel for upper class gentleman. And she's determined to spare the girls she saves from the street the horrors she endured in the past.

Enlisting the help of Jacob Jackson, a quiet but feared boxer, to watch over the house, Louisa is about to embark on a life she never envisaged. Can she find the courage to forge this new path? 

A Widow's Vow is the first in a gripping and gritty new Victorian saga series from Rachel Brimble. You won't be able to put it down.

Amazon UK                 Amazon US 

Rachel lives with her husband and their two daughters in a small town near Bath, England. She is the author of over 20 published novels including the Pennington’s department store series (Aria Fiction) and the Templeton Cove Stories (Harlequin).

Her next project is a Victorian trilogy set in a Bath brothel which she recently signed with Aria Fiction. The series will feature three heroines determined to change their lives and those of other women. The first book. A Widow’s Vow is due for release in September and available for Amazon preorder now.

Rachel is a member of the Romantic Novelists Association and has thousands of social media followers all over the world.

To sign up for her newsletter (a guaranteed giveaway every month!), click here

Website          Twitter

Facebook

Instagram

Book Spotlight and Author Guest Post: The Worst Lie by Shauna Bickley

The Worst Lie by Shauna Bickley

​Genre: Crime / murder mystery

Hello and thanks for inviting me on your blog.

A piece of advice that’s often given to writers is to write what you know. In selecting locations for my books I’ve generally taken this advice and set my novels in places around England that I know well such as London, Bristol and Cornwall. I’ve also set several books in locations around New Zealand where I now live.

Some books can happen anywhere, while in others the location is so important that it appears almost like another character. Think of how Daphne du Maurier uses Cornwall and the moors in some of her books. Her settings are vital to the mood and tempo of the story.

My novel, Lives Interrupted, is set in London at the time of the bombings and is about the impact of that event on the lives of the characters, so it needs to be set there and at that time. Initially, I was going to set my crime novel Lies of the Dead here in New Zealand, but as the plot progressed I realised that Tom needed to follow a set of clues regarding suspicious money transfers and that would be a lot easier to do if the book was set in England and Europe. To give some emphasis on the three siblings’ different characters I had them living in different locations. Tom, the oldest and most traditional of the three lives in the Cornish village where they grew up. Andi lives in Bristol, while Liam the youngest lives in London. He teases Andi that she’s moved away from the village but wasn’t adventurous enough to make it to the capital. So for them location is important to their character development and how they think of themselves.

In my latest crime novel, The Worst Lie, the main character Lexie Wyatt used to live in London, but after losing her job she moves to a small town with her family. At first she hates the move because of everything it represents in her loss of self-esteem and confidence. I created the town of Nettleford because I didn’t want to do the more cliché thing of a small village, and there weren’t any ‘real’ places that fitted exactly what I wanted. I made up the name of the town to sound a little unpleasant as in the first novel that’s how Lexie views it. Ironically, it was only after I finished the first draft of the book I realised that they’d moved from Primrose Hill in London, which has a lovely sounding name in direct contrast to Nettleford. I love the way our subconscious works with things like this.

The other important location in The Worst Lie is Little Stillford. This is another place I fictionalised for my own purposes. It’s loosely based on Avebury but I changed the geography entirely for story reasons. I increased the height of the stones in the circles, planted an entire wood around the two circles, and created a larger village with shops and places to eat as well as a nearby ancient long barrow. The larger village was required as the reunion takes place over a weekend and I needed a small hotel for the group to stay, several pubs, a restaurant and a library. The wood was also necessary for parts of the plot and to create an eerie atmosphere. It’s a lot easier to hide and overhear conversations when there are lots of trees around!

Avebury is beautiful and so is Little Stillford, if it existed outside of my head I would love to visit it.

Many thanks again and happy reading to you and your followers, Shauna xx

 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0829DMZN3/

​

Madelaine had everything she wanted.
​
Friends, a successful film career, and a loving boyfriend.
​
Then she was dead.
​
When Lexie Wyatt’s close friend Helen is frightened by an unexpected visit from an ex-university flatmate, Lexie is determined to help. She contrives an invitation to a weekend reunion of the group at one of England’s ancient stone circles. While there one of them admits they believe their long-dead friend was murdered.
Digging into the flatmates’ secrets, Lexie discovers they have lied. Have they also committed murder?
There is another death at the stone circles, and Lexie uncovers information that may connect the two crimes… and implicate her good friend.
​
Is someone targeting the former students, or is the killer one of the group?

​
Shauna writes mysteries featuring characters who aren't afraid to go looking for murderers and generally get themselves in all sorts of danger. In real life, Shauna doesn't do any of those things.
​
When she can't come up with a murderous plot, she also likes to write about ordinary people pushed into extraordinary situations. Underneath all that criminal intrigue is a true romantic who likes to see the magic and mystery in everyday life.
​
When she isn't writing (or surfing the internet pretending she's researching), you can find her reading, running (or more likely walking), coming up with excuses not to attend Zumba, and trying to find new ways to use the excess fruit from the trees in the garden.
​
Shauna's latest release is a crime thriller, The Worst Lie, featuring Lexie Wyatt from the novel Still Death.

Currently she's working on a sequel to Writing the Stars, but if discovered staring out of the window she's probably contemplating new ways to kill people for a third Lexie Wyatt novel.

Shauna is always happy to hear from people, but only if they're friendly and don't ask hard questions. You can find her on Twitter, Pinterest and via her website or through good old-fashioned email. 
​

Website

Pinterest          Twitter