Category : Miscellaneous

Leeds-Dortmund anniversary celebrations

      LD50 During the past two weeks my home city has been marking a special anniversary: 50 years of town twinning between Leeds and Dortmund, Germany. Twinning was set up shortly after the Second World War with the aim of encouraging friendship, co-operation and understanding between people, with…

Wiki: Enthralling Historical Mysteries that Take Place in England

I’m delighted that DYING IN THE WOOL, first book in the Kate Shackleton series, has been chosen as a Wiki Enthralling Historical Mystery. Hope you enjoy the video Kate’s hobby is photography. She takes her camera wherever she goes. Researching the background for Kate’s first adventure, I looked at early…

The Secret World of Emily Brontë

(Written on New Year’s Eve.) We’ve almost reached the end of the celebrations of Emily Brontë’s 200th anniversary. What better way to close 2018 than with Lily Cole’s Channel 4 documentary film, The Secret World of Emily Brontë, made with assistance from the Bradford Film Office. Throughout the year, the…

A Suffrage Anniversary

A SUFFRAGE ANNIVERSARY There is always a huge amount of interesting background information that never finds its way into a novel. The next Kate Shackleton mystery takes place in 1928. In that year, a wealthy industrialist bought the Brontë Parsonage and donated the deeds to the Brontë Society to create…

A Trip to Germany with Murderous Sisters

I’m recently back from a trip to Germany where I was honoured to be guest speaker at the 2017 Mörderische Schwestern Conference that took place over the weekend of 30 November to 2 December at Kloester-Schoental.  Fenna Williams and Gitta Edelmann met me at Frankfurt airport. Gitta and I stayed…

Moerderische Schwestern Conference 2017

It’s an honour and a pleasure to be guest speaker at this conference in Kloester-Schoental.

Here are the links to my talk, in German and in English.

German talk (in German)
German talk (in English))

Stewed Mushrooms in Gravy and an old recipe book

I was recently invited to contribute a post to Suzanne’s Dear Reader Column and was happy to oblige. The brief was to write on whatever topic I chose. Mushrooms came to mind. I have some very old recipe books. Here’s a picture of the page that prompted my column. Stewed…

“Vigee likes your review”

  This morning, I was thinking that it’s a long while since I wrote a blog, and also thinking about this coming weekend when I’ll be attending the St Hilda’s Crime & Mystery event in Oxford. I then opened my emails. Goodreads told me that Vigee liked my review (2011)…

Introducing Death at the Seaside, and a Goodreads Giveaway

Goodreads  giveaway, open to entries until 23 September (UK and Ireland) Last November, I was in Whitby doing a little extra research for Death at the Seaside, the eighth Kate Shackleton novel, to be published as a paperback original on 6 October 2016. Whitby is a former whaling port, once…

Goodreads Giveaway Halfpenny Dreams

To mark the re-publication of Halfpenny Dreams (originally called Sisters of Fortune), my brilliant publisher will be giving away ten copies on Goodreads, UK and Ireland. Halfpenny Dreams began with a wish to set a story in that area of Leeds called the Bank, where the poor Irish lived from the…