My BOOKS
Lavender Fields
Starting in 1871, Emma Pagett is from Seven Dials, a poverty stricken slum in the parish of St Giles, to the west of Bloomsbury. She lives in squalid poverty with her violent and abusive father, her cold and indifferent mother and her eight siblings.
She meets the mixed race costermonger Charlie Bateman and escapes the abuse by living with him at the age of fifteen. He also becomes violent and controlling and she leaves with her family for Mitcham in Surrey where she meets Mark Rivers, the owner of the lavender field where she works.
They become lovers and she bares his child but she runs away and embarks on a series of misadventures before finally returning to Mitcham and eventually marrying Rivers. But theirs is a unusual marriage and she finally finds solace in their unconventional lifestyle.
Starting in the 1780's, Amy is brought into Coram's Foundling Hospital in Bloomsbury as a three week old baby and after being nursed out until the age of five, she grows up in the Foundling until at aged fourteen she is sent to work as a nursemaid at Lady Bessborough's house in Cavendish Square.
She becomes the personal maid of the volatile and mentally unstable Lady Caroline Ponsonby and at sixteen is seduced by Lady Caroline's brother Lord Duncannon.
She embarks of many love affairs and even works for the complex poet Lord Byron where she witnesses the breakdown the Byron's marriage.
Amy eventually defies convention and finds happiness, love and contentment in the most unusual quarter.
Amy, The Story of a Coram Foundling
The Coutesan and the Mutineer
Set between the 1780's and 1820's, Mary Ann Turner, or Polly as she known is born into wretched squalour and poverty in Southwark, the daughter of an alcoholic prostitute and a Lascar -an Indian sailor, one of her mother's clients.
She is abused and bullied by her mother and three elder brothers and then sexually abused by a friend of her brothers.
He rapes and impregnates her at the age of fourteen and she is forced by her mother to marry her abuser.
A destitute and starving Polly is tricked into a life of prostitution by the madam of a brothel but she eventually escapes the stew in Southwark to become a high-class courtesan.
Polly's journey then takes her to the Polynesian island of Otaheila where she becomes unwittingly involved in a mutany led by the enigmatic Mr Jefferson.
Out of the Darkness
In 1790, Laura is rescued from a life of horrendous cruelty and neglect in the slums of Saffron Hill by Mr Freeman, a rich philanthropist and his wife Caroline, a passionate campaigner for women's rights and anti-slavery.
The childless Mrs Freeman soon loses interest in Laura as she is difficult and troubled and deeply traumatised by the abuse she has suffered.
The seemingly kind and patient Mr Carnegie raises Laura until one day when she is twelve years-old their relationship of father and daughter changes to something dark and sinister.
The Freeman's relocate to Clapham where Mrs Freeman becomes a member of the Clapham Sect, a group of social reformers and abolitionists and where Mr Freeman continues to sexually abuse Laura.
Laura's journey encompasses love, children, heartbreak and even more abuse until she eventually comes out of the darkness to find true love.
The Beast Catcher
(Not yet published)
Henry Delavelle -the heir to Lord Capleton- is a student of science and a true child of the Age of Reason, returns home to Capleton in Surrey to claim his inheritance after his father's death in 1800.
He hears that there is a beast living in Capleton Forest and the supertitious villagers believe it is the Devil or one of his beast-like minions. The enlightened new Lord Capleton laughs this off until one day when he is riding in the forest he himself sees the beast.
He repeatedly visits the forest until one day he accidently catches the beast, who turns out to be a feral child, a girl who has been living wild in Capleton Forest.
He sets out to tame and humanise the beast whom he calls Flora and they embark on a journey together that encompasses love, loss and then tragic heartbreak.
It is only a hundred and fifty years later that the tragic mystery of Flora is resolved.
La Bella Visconti
(Not yet published)
Set between the turbulent years of the 1470's to the 1530's, Caterina Visconti -or Kate as she is known- is brought up and educated in the nunnery of St Helen's, Bishopsgate. She is the daughter of the late Tomaso Visconti, an Italian merchant and his English wife Katherine Stanley. Kate is placed in St Helen's where she hardly ever sees her mother who is an attendent of Queen Elizabeth Wydeville, the wife of the Yorkist Edward IV and who lives constantly at court.
When Kate is fifteen she he told that she is betrothed in marriage to her cousin. She thinks that her intended is her Visconti cousin Giovanni, whom she has fallen in love with but she soon learns that is Richard Stanley, a relative of her mother's.
She has to endure a miserable loveless marriage for years until she finds love in the most unlikely place, until Henry VIII's Reformation sweeps away all of that she holds dear.
Lady Anna
Anna is the illegitimate daughter of the debauched and drunken Lord Hartley. She lives with her mother in St John's Wood where she is subjected to her frustrated and cruel tirades. She is often left in the care of neglectful servants or more often than not on her own. Her education is neglected as well until at the age of sixteen she is told that she is to marry the elderly Lord Albury.
She later finds out that this was part of a deal because her father owed Lord Albury so much money.
Lord Albury is desperate for a son and will go to any means to produce his next heir.
Anna finds love and the heir is duly produced but various men in her life complicate matters until she eventually finds fulfilment with someone from her past. That is, until a jealous brother-in-law threatens to ruin everything.
The Fat Suit
(Not yet published)
Overweight Alison lives with Gary, her lazy and abusive partner. She goes out to work all day and pays all the bills while he lays on the sofa and watches telly, claiming he can't work because of his bad back.
Gary verbally and emotionally abuses her everyday over her weight and she is at the depths of her despair when one day at work she meets Andy and falls madly in love with him.
She is far too shy to speak to him and thinks that he will never notice her because of her weight, so she embarks on a rigourous regime of diet and exercise until she slims down to a size 10.
Even though she has stepped out of her fat suit, she still hasn't the courage to speak to Andy and tell him her feelings and he hardly notices her, also the abuse continues at home with Gary finding other ways to put her down other than her weight.
Alison is given promotion at work and goes to work in another area while Andy leaves the job, without him ever knowing how she feels about him.
Thwarted in her hopes and dreams about Andy, Alison manages to find the courage to finally leave Gary and live on her own.
