Novels
Here is a little information about the 14 completed novels I'm hoping to get published one day. I've written a snippet about each of them, opaque enough and short enough to discourage plagiarism, but informative enough to allow you an insight into what each novel is all about. I've included some pictures, largely filched from various Internet Websites illustrating some aspect of each novel's theme.
The Final Chance
Genre: Literary
Words: 85,691
When Daniel Rudd, residing in Andalucia, Spain, womanising self-declared lottery winner, meets Marsha Church, beguiling American traveller, he's immediately suspicious, despite being drawn to her in ways he'd rather he wasn't. Neither are what they seem. He's nursing a secret past, and she's concealing a mysterious present. His murky past and her shady present become entangled in ways neither would have wished or anticipated. Soon they're embroiled in a dangerous mission to nullify the consequences of Marsha's shabby deceit, while Daniel continues to wrestle with his conscience over his own sensational duplicity. The roosters are coming home for both of them.
The Coldest Secret
Genre: Literary
Words: 70,371
When the worldwide TV broadcast of Prince Charles and Lady Di's wedding was sensationally interrupted for fifteen minutes with horrific images of an apparent live massacre in the USA the shocked world dismissed it as an unseemly, elaborate hoax. The Agency knew otherwise. All was kept secret until the the sole perpetrator of the murders - codename, Tom - approached journalist Christopher Ketching with his story. Tom was a cold war warrior, a cold blooded assassin amongst other roles for Uncle Sam. But no ordinary agent. Is he the possessor of extraordinary supernatural powers, or is he a highly gifted conjurer and illusionist. Ketching decides on the former and publishes Tom's story, The Coldest Secret. A huge financial success but dismissed as crude conspiracy theory hokum. Now there's a new magician in Ketching's life, Jennifer, seeking answers to all things Tom. Why? And the Agency are active again, soliciting Ketching's help to find Tom who has contacted them with an unusual request. The Agency are out to eliminate Tom permanently and Ketching is the common denominator in the struggle now involving the mysterious Jennifer.
Englandia
Genre: Literary
Words: 106,654
A divided nation where the self appointed elite Posh own and control everything, and the rest, the Serveretti, get by the best they can. Love across the divide is, of course, forbidden. A fascist government in London rules by decree, an England closed off from the rest of the world. Pen, a Posh girl, falls for Sam, a Serv serving in the Posh world. They want each other, unthinkable, unlawful, and they want out of the land that suffocates them. But they're young, coming to the end of their school days. What can they do? Soon they discover there are already plenty of people escaping to the continent, where Sam's own mother is suspected of disappearing to many years before. A tale of living on the edge, in fear, but of bravely striving to forge a better life elsewhere, away from a soulless, repressive, ugly England.
Into The Light
Genre: Literary
Words: 49,865
Is it heaven, hell or purgatory? One way or another death is something of a disappointment. Not only has the life he lived not been quite what he thought it was, but it's clear his journey isn't over just yet. He's going somewhere, he's told, Into The Light, but he's got some unfinished business to deal with before he can get there.
The Secret Life of Naomi Graham
Genre: Literary
Words: 130,348
Feted British Olympic athlete Naomi Graham exploits her minor celebrity and her Oxford Uni contacts to forge a career in novel writing, journalism, TV presenting and politics. Forever in the gossip columns for her high profile romances she covertly pursues a parallel seedier private life with a group of like minded hedonists. The boundaries of love and lust blur as she grapples with working out what she really wants. Along the way she accrues enemies, an unknown one brutally forcing her to choose a new path.
Henry James
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Words: 83,434
An English Don, Hemingway expert and lover of modern American literature in general, namesake of one of the greats. With a penchant for short term romances with pliable undergraduates he's bound to run into trouble one day. Especially when one of them doesn't play to script and outstays her welcome, and his best friend extracts a promise from Henry to woo and win his fiancée while he takes a sabbatical in Australia. A simple life becomes complicated and frantic, and it's touch and go which woman will kill him first.
The Long Year
Genre: Mystery/Literary
Words: 117,545
Six souls thrown together by circumstance, intimately share their undergraduate experiences, a tightly knit group fractured by the death of one of them before their university days are over. After the murder they cling together in much the way they did before, even as life goes on and growing up tries to pull them apart. Looking back, all was not quite as it seemed at the time. What really happened? And who is the murderer among them?
Anything Is Possible
Genre: Science Fiction
Words: 86,783
Imagine having your time again. Imagine having a second chance, and a third, and a fourth, and ... A certain man doesn't have to. He never gets past a certain day in a certain year. And then it's back to a different life, with a different wife and not everything quite as it should be. A different history for everyone, a different future. Is it real or is he mad? Can he get to his future, the future beyond the dreaded day when he's sent tumbling back to have another go.
The Broken Kind
Genre: Science Fiction
Words: 271,179
An epic saga set in the near and far future, chronicling the inevitable collapse of human civilisation, following the simultaneous development of time travel and the elimination of human aging. Two temporanauts bear witness across the eons to the catastrophic disintegration of society and a return to stone-age living for the surviving rump of humanity. Tiny in number, immortal but sterile, can the survivors find a way to relaunch the human race.
The Averham Mystery
Genre: Mystery/Romance
Words: 148,696
The girl likes a little mystery about her men, but her latest beau carries perhaps a little too much. The mistake is falling in love and then there's no room anymore for secrets - it's time for answers. They don't come quickly or easily and chasing a damaged soul is daunting. Will her love survive the final revelation?
The Crumbling Founds
Genre: Mystery/Erotica
Words: 164,413
Keeping away from the group in general, keeping away from him in particular, seems like the smart move - except she doesn't want to. There have been mysterious endings - disappearance and death - for some of her predecessors. But he says she's special. He says there's nothing to worry about. But that's what he told the others. They were special once, now where are they? She has to find out. Her mother shagging her boyfriend is the least of her problems.
How I Murdered Myself
Genre: Mystery-Thriller/Fantasy/Comedy
Words: 70,422
Waking up dead's a poor deal, unless you happen to have inherited your younger and fitter best mate's body and his nymphomaniac wife. The problem is, who killed you? And if your former body is now a corpse, what happened to your mate? It's time to find out, but you're the prime suspect for your own murder and everyone thinks you're bonkers.
After Elvis Died
Genre: Mystery/Romance
Words: 89,005
A once global pop superstar hides away in a quiet corner of England. But 20 years after the death of his friend, Elvis Presley, his anonymity is under threat. When the local gentry decide to build walls around the community in response to social unrest in the area, his metaphysical walls of secrecy and deception threaten to collapse in the political fall out. Will the love of the local book shop owner help or hinder? What will she make of him when she finds out who he really is? Can they fashion a shared happiness amidst the mounting chaos?
Pretenders
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Words: 101,210
Your bisexual girlfriend insists on keeping a boyfriend. You watch, you wait, you pray. And then there's hope when the boyfriend takes a fancy to a new woman in town. But the new woman is from your girl's past and holds the key to some dreadful secrets. Is your girl a haunted innocent? Or has she been running away from her own dark deeds? You're about to find out.