Avon Authors

The Joy of Cornwall

Writing about why Cornwall is the perfect setting for joyful fiction has left me a little stumped. Not because I don’t have anything to say about this most inspiring of counties, but because I have too much. Cornwall has inspired eight of my novels now, including the Cornish Café and… Read More

Recipes with a Deadly Twist

‘Don’t talk with your mouth full.’ Sound advice from Mum and Dad. Nobody likes watching someone speaking and eating at the same time, for obvious reasons. It’s gross to look at. But on the printed page you can get away with it. No messy crumbs, no unpleasant noises, no unwelcome… Read More

Unleash Your Dark Side

From the age of 14 I was obsessed with women’s fiction. I dreamed of writing books like my heroes – Maeve Binchy, Patricia Scanlan, Sheila O’Flanagan and then, as I grew a bit older, Marian Keyes. I wanted to tell stories of real,… Read More

Bella’s Favourite Gin Cocktails

My name is Bella and I like gin. So it was no real surprise to those that know me to see gin featuring in my latest novel Coming Home to Ottercombe Bay. That said, I still felt that if I was to do a proper job then some serious gin… Read More

Sophie Jenkins’ Little Guide to Happiness

Happiness is… something that happens to us when our lives become perfect, like for instance when we’ve fallen in love with the perfect man (and he’s fallen in love right back), and we’ve also got the perfect job – writing, of course – and we live somewhere lovely right in… Read More

What I Love About Italy

Aside from a long-ago holiday in Sorrento in the south, I knew little of Italy when I began visiting Umbria in 2013. At the time, I’d answered a plea from an author buddy, Gilli, to help her friend Sara expand her residential courses to include writing. Hand-on-heart, Gilli did type… Read More

The Happily Married Divorce Lawyer

Like a beautifully fitting glove, My Husband’s Lies slips snugly into the ‘domestic noir’ genre. What are the ingredients of such stories? Well, they are generally set in homes or work places and there’s often a dark narrative and a sense of claustrophobic danger or unease between husband and wife… Read More

My Own Summer Theatre

My love of theatre started when I was aged ten and my parents took me to see a local amateur pantomime. I was mesmerised by the cheeky Dame, the slapstick comedy duo, and the heroic principle boy – even if I was confused as to why the male parts were… Read More

Writing Her Hidden Life

As I point out in my Author’s Note for the book, the idea for Her Hidden Life came from an Associated Press article published in April 2013. The true story of a woman, Margot Woelk, who tasted Adolf Hitler’s food to protect him from poisoning captured my imagination and spurred… Read More

Researching an Orphan’s War

When Avon suggested I write a series of novels set in Liverpool in a Dr Barnardo’s orphanage in the Second World War I was filled with trepidation. The last bit was fine – I’ve always been very interested in that period, and had done loads of research for one of… Read More

The Importance of Flowers

Before writing The Memories of Us, my relationship with flowers was probably not dissimilar to that of most people—I considered them beautiful, loved receiving them and enjoyed buying them for loved ones on special occasions. However, I had given very little thought to where our fresh blooms come from or… Read More

How to Have an Adventure at Any Age

I have so enjoyed reading recent reviews of my debut novel, A Grand Old Time, and there seems to be a couple of recurring themes from these early readers that make my heart rejoice. One is that my feisty, mischievous heroine, Evie Gallagher, is celebrated for going off on a… Read More

Ten Points About Guilt

  A brief summary. My psychological thriller Guilt begins with a stabbing, leaving one twin sister dead, and the other accused of her murder. After the opening scene, past and present story arcs are intermingled, gradually revealing the reason for the fight and, at the crescendo of the book, the… Read More

How real crime inspired The Rebel

  There’s been an alarming increase in fatal gun and knife attacks across London. Most of victims are young people and many of the killings are gang-related. But this surge in extreme violence is clearly a trend that poses a threat to everyone, young or old, male or female. And… Read More

Life in Devon

In 2015 we sold our house in Cheltenham to someone who was moving out of London. She declared it absolutely perfect (and then spent the first year knocking seven bells and several walls out of it.) Devon has more thatched houses than just about any other county and we were… Read More

MJ Ford on his writing journey to Hold My Hand

First off, I think I’ve been pretty lucky with my journey into writing. I started out as an editor of children’s non-fiction, almost straight out of university, with an English and Classics degree and little idea what to do with it. I was fortunate that the opportunity arose to write a book… Read More