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Fellow Choc Lit Author, Evonne Wareham is back with something a little different; a fun, flirty summer read set on the Riviera featuring mysterious strangers, confidence tricksters, film crews and cocktail parties.  Phew!  If that wasn’t enough to whet your appetite I’m delighted to bring you an exclusive from Evonne’s latest novel right here! "Cassie put her feet up on her desk and stared at the ceiling. She was too restless to settle to work for the moment. Images of Jake McQuire floated in her mind. And she didn’t like thinking about Jake McQuire. Too many memories. Benita and Tony, Cassie and Jake. They’d been friends all through school, part of a much bigger gang, but their foursome had always been special. Everyone had expected them to pair off. Tony and Benita had. That last glorious summer, in the weeks before Jake went on to university, anything seemed possible. Cassie had been seventeen and wildly in love. Recollection brought a lump to her throat. After years of ...

‘Mummy’ says Rose, not quite believing it herself, ‘all your and Tom’s babies have babies of their own now!’ We’re delighted to welcome our fourth grandchild, a beautiful daughter for my younger stepson and his fiancee, which does indeed mean that our children have their own children now, yet we can’t help but look at each other and ask - as in Talking Head’s ‘Once in a Lifetime’ which is on constant repeat in my head at the moment - how we got here. Neither of us feels any different from when we met, yet here we are! I’ve found myself in some interesting places over the last few weeks. The Poppit Sands race series began in true bonkers form on a wet, cold evening with a slog through mud, across stepping stones and the seemingly endless trudge along the beach. The series marks a year since I met my wonderful running buddy Helen who beat me by a minute and several places! Two days later, I was treated to a splendid day out in London by my very dear friend Jill to mark my...

“… they do things differently there.” So begins L P Hartley’s 1953 novel, The Go-Between , with its ageing narrator, Leo Colston, looking back at one particular summer in his childhood and his unwitting part in a secret affair.  This opening line also serves as a reminder that we stand on shifting ground whenever we survey the past. Our perceptions of those retrieved memories change with time and experience as I rediscovered last week when Tom attended an academic conference at my old university, UEA. Although my experience of studying at UEA was a positive one, the cumulative effect of a couple of bad decisions took its toll during my final year. I've always looked back with some regrets about what could or should have been, but as I walked round Norwich revisiting old haunts I started to be a bit more forgiving towards my anxious and confused younger self.   I started St Andrew’s Hall which was the rather incongruous setting where I saw the Stranglers at the heig...