Dorothy Whipple

Celia Brayfield

Presents a story of three sisters who's choice of husband dictates whether they have homes, and whether, in their homes, they will be allowed to flourish, be tamed or repressed.

They Were Sisters

The first book about a generation of women writers who challenged the world.

Shelagh Delaney • Edna O’Brien • Lynne Reid Banks • Charlotte Bingham • Nell Dunn • Virginia Ironside • Margaret Forster

Rebel Writers: The Accidental Feminists

Three remarkable women--friends from vastly different backgrounds who meet at Cambridge--vie for the heart of one of the world's most eligible bachelors, His Royal Highness, Prince Richard, Duke of Sussex. Reprint.

The Princess

Placido's Beach Bar, the ultimate beach bar - although there is no beach at the end of the bay and few let their dreams bring them to this one-boat fishing village. Kim has come to Placido's to watch the sun set, to wait for her lover, and to understand the instability of all that seems stable. Kim's life started before she was ready and ran out of control into tragedy. She came through with the help of her friend, vibrant, fascinating Stella; now there is also Matthew, Kim's lover, a creature of true instinct but deceptive beauty. A woman, her lover and her friend; sacred bonds or the random choice of destiny? The island Los Alcazares, a scrap of desert in the sub-tropical Atlantic, a place of fantastic dreams and immeasurable secrets, of strange energies and violent events. Its people are fugitives, hedonists and visionaries, a mulinational community of refugees from reality. Among them a death has occured, a death for which both Stella and Matthew may be responsible. Written with profound passion and great precision, SUNSET, is haunting, vivid and a novel of paradoxes - trust and mystery, faith and knowledge, fate and love. The most ambitious work yet from a supremely perceptive and compelling modern writer.

Sunset

What do you do when your daughter tells you it's time to leave the nest? Throw the computer into the back of the car, pack your bags and move your entire household, including your cats, to France, naturally. Celia Brayfield tells of her year in la France profonde, a tiny village in the Bearn.

A Writer's Year in the Bearn

Deep France

The most wanted, the most feared, the most hated, the most powerful job in journalism: being a reviewer means writing about something you love and getting paid for it. So for a lot of people it's the NO 1 dream job in the media. Whether your passion is film, music, books, visual arts or the stage, you can get closer to it as a reviewer and establish a career in one of the most influential roles open to a writer. A great review will be read by millions, and writing it calls for a high degree of skill. Based on a lifelong passion, packed into a few hundred words and often written in less than an hour, a review makes heavy demands on writer's technique and experience. This book explains how to seize your readers' attention and how to be witty always, fascinating most of the time and bitchy when you need to be. Reviews from classic writer like Pauline Kael or Kenneth Tynan are contrasted with today's hot names including Mark Kermode and Stewart Maconie. We look back at the history of the critic and some of the groundbreaking groups who have shaped our culture, including Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, the French New Wave directors who founded Les Cahiers du CInema and London's celebrated Modern Review, founded by Julie Burchill, Toby Young and Cosmo Landesman.

Arts Reviews

Prima ballerina Lydia Kusminskaya, whose talents saved her from starvation in imperial St Petersburg, trusted her beauty to secure her place in the gilded cocoon of the court – unaware of the cataclysm about to destroy it, and her hopes. Eighty years later, in London, the legacy of Lydia’s beauty snares a woman and two men in the trap of their own obsessions: Alexander Wolfe, the desirable American who worships women and glamour; formidable businesswoman Bianca Berrisford, who believes beauty always has its price; and Lovat Whitburn, her bitter ex-husband, for whom beauty, once an ideal, is now a weapon. Now the three are chained to Lydia and each other in a lethal struggle for wealth, love and, above all, power. But the illusion of beauty which betrayed Lydia is lying in wait for them, too . . . ‘A breathtaking achievement’ Woman’s Own ‘Ms Brayfield knows what she is doing . . . her women sound and act like real women’ Anthony Burgess in the Independent ‘A wonderfully written novel about men, women and a burning obsession’ Me

White Ice

The Bourton sisters knew all about power. Rock star Monty moved millions with her music; Cathy made millions on the stock market. But the morning they awoke to discover a priceless pink pearl under each of their pillows their lives were turned upside down. An international bestseller called "a passionate page turner!"--Time.

Pearls

Covers structure, audience, location, character, theme, research, plot, suspense, endings, and style, and includes advice on the practical aspects of getting published

Secrets of Successful Writing

Bestseller

The Prince

'Make this your next inspirational read. Trust us, it's Oprah's Book Club worthy' Vice In London in 1958, a play by a 19-year-old redefined women's writing in Britain. It also began a movement that would change women's lives forever. The play was A Taste of Honey and the author, Shelagh Delaney, was the first in a succession of young women who wrote about their lives with an honesty that dazzled the world. They rebelled against sexism, inequality and prejudice and in doing so challenged the existing definitions of what writing and writers should be. Bypassing the London cultural elite, their work reached audiences of millions around the world, paved the way for profound social changes and laid the foundations of second-wave feminism. After Delaney came Edna O'Brien, Lynne Reid-Banks, Charlotte Bingham, Nell Dunn, Virginia Ironside and Margaret Forster; an extraordinarily disparate group who were united in their determination to shake the traditional concepts of womanhood in novels, films, television, essays and journalism. They were as angry as the Angry Young Men, but were also more constructive and proposed new ways to live and love in the future. They did not intend to become a literary movement but they did, inspiring other writers to follow. Not since the Brontës have a group of young women been so determined to tell the truth about what it is like to be a girl. In this biographical study, the acclaimed author, Celia Brayfield, tells their story for the first time.

Duncan Sprott

Writing Historical Fiction: A Writers' & Artists' Companion is an invaluable companion for a writer working in this challenging and popular literary genre, whether your period is Ancient Rome or World War II. PART 1 includes reflections on the genre and provides a short history of historical fiction. PART 2 contains guest contributions from Margaret Atwood, Ian Beck, Madison Smartt Bell, Ronan Bennett, Vanora Bennett, Tracy Chevalier, Lindsay Clarke, Elizabeth Cook, Anne Doughty, Sarah Dunant, Michel Faber, Margaret George, Philippa Gregory, Katharine McMahon, Valerio Massimo Manfredi, Hilary Mantel, Alan Massie, Ian Mortimer, Kate Mosse, Charles Palliser, Orhan Pamuk, Edward Rutherfurd, Manda Scott, Adam Thorpe, Stella Tillyard, Rose Tremain, Alison Weir and Louisa Young. PART 3 offers practical exercises and advice on such topics as research, plots and characters, mastering authentic but accessible dialogue and navigating the world of agents and publishers.

A Writers' and Artists' Companion

Writing Historical Fiction

There is only one rule in a suburb – never trust your neighbours. Westwick, the ultimate suburb. Nothing ever happens in Westwick; that’s why people live there. Nice people, like Stephanie Sands. Loving husband, adorable son, dream job and a beautiful garden – life is just about perfect for Stephanie until the day her husband is kidnapped. Big mistake, losing your husband in the suburbs. The neighbours turn nasty. The TV totty sees Stephanie as a media victim and the totty’s husband sees Stephanie as ‘lonely’ – codeword for desperate. Stephanie discovers that she isn’t the kind of woman to take this lying down. Suddenly it’s a jungle out there – adultery, blackmail, sleaze in high places and lust on the lawns, until Westwick scrambles the helicopters and takes to the streets with an army of eco-warriors in the hilarious live-TV climax. ‘Deliciously comic – lightening flashes of wit and scalpel-sharp observation.’ Daily Mail ‘With a sharp wit and snappy dialogue Brayfield has produced a very funny, cleverly plotted novel that displays Fay Weldon’s understanding of the pleasure to be derived from seeing the bad get their just desserts’ Daily Telegraph

Celia Brayfield

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