The seaside town of Filey, a former fishing village on the east coast of Yorkshire between Scarborough and Bridlington, held its inaugural literature festival in May this year. I had the pleasure of taking part. There were walks and talks and a film about the life of Hannah Hauxwell, solitary…
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…
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…
(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…
On the Pennine Way near Stanbury, three miles from Haworth, stands a house with a history. A former farmhouse, Ponden Hall was occupied by the Heaton family from the mid seventeenth century until 1898. The Brontë family were neighbours. It’s said that the Brontë children liked to…
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…
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…
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.
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…
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)…
