The Gilded Lily to be published by Pan Macmillan

I am delighted to announce that my second novel, The Gilded Lily will be published by Pan Macmillan, date of publication to be confirmed soon.

The Gilded Lily is a companion volume to The Lady's Slipper, but can also be read as a stand-alone novel.


The Gilded Lily

a Winter of Snow and Ice 1661

Timid Sadie Appleby has always lived in her small village. One night she is rudely awoken by her older and bolder sister, Ella, who has robbed her employer and is on the run. The girls flee their rural home of Westmorland to head for London, hoping to lose themselves in the teeming city. But the dead man's relatives are in hot pursuit, and soon a game of cat and mouse begins.


Ella is soon obsessed with the glitter and glamour of city life and sets her sights on flamboyant man-about-town, Jay Whitgift. But nothing is what it seems - not even Jay Whitgift.


Can Sadie survive a fugitive's life in the big city? But even more
pressing, can she survive life with her older sister Ella?

Set in London's atmospheric coffee houses, the rich mansions of
Whitehall, and the pawnshops, slums and rookeries hidden from rich men's view, The Gilded Lily is about beauty and desire, about the stories we tell ourselves, and about how sisterhood can be both a burden and a saving grace.

At the same time as I was celebrating my own good news I heard that Terence Morgan, a fellow Macmillan New Writer and author of historical fiction, has signed a similar two book deal with Pan Mac. Check out his recent book, The Master of Bruges. His new one will be entitled "The Last Plantagenet."