Author: assistant@macfarlane-chard.co.uk

Chris Stewart

It’s two decades since Chris Stewart moved to his farm on the wrong side of a river in the mountains of southern Spain and his daughter Chlöe is preparing to fly the nest for university. In this latest, typically hilarious dispatch from El Valero we find Chris, now a local literary celebrity, using his fame to help his old sheep-shearing partner find work on a raucous road trip; cooking a TV lunch for visiting British chef, Rick Stein; discovering the pitfalls of Spanish public speaking; and recalling his own first foray into the adult world of work.

Yet it’s at El Valero, his beloved sheep farm, that Chris remains in his element as he, his wife Ana and their assorted dogs, cats and sheep weather a near calamitous flood and emerge as newly certified organic farmers. His cash crop? The lemons and oranges he once so blithely drove over, of course.

Nat Jansz of Sort Of Books says: Unlike the rest of us, Chris Stewart’s irrepressible wit, inclusive spirit, even his wild optimism seem to strengthen as he gets older. His latest crop of anecdotes had us laughing out loud and wishing we were at El Valero picking oranges. Last Days of the Bus Club’s an unqualified hoot.’

Chris Stewart says: ‘I know it’s taken a long time, but these books are natural hand-reared products. You have to let the things happen to you, masticate and digest them. This has to be done properly in order to get them into regurgitatable form; and then the regurgitation – well, as the Spanish would have it – ‘No es moco de pavo’, or it’s not turkey-snot (or, more delicately, no picnic).  In this case, our daughter, Chloé, leaving home for the greater world outside the Alpujarra proved the rite of passage that got me thinking. Now there’s just the two of us, Ana and me, making a go of the farm at last and taking stock of all the stories. Here are some of them; I hope you enjoy them.’

Chris Stewart

The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society finds Chris and his family still living on their farm, El Valero, and with its easy ‘Sun-Lit’ charm and funny, evocative anecdotes, it will draw in new and old readers alike.

You will find yourself laughing out loud as Chris is instructed by his daughter on local teenage mores; bluffs his way in art history to millionaire Bostonians; is rescued off a snowy peak by the Guardia Civil; and joins an Almond Blossom Appreciation Society.

You’ll cringe with Chris as he stries his hand at office work in an immigrants’ advice centre in Granada, spurred into action by the arrival of four destitute young Moroccans at El Valero. And you’ll never see olive oil in quite the same way again…

In this sequel to ‘Lemons’ and ‘Parrot’, Chris Stewart’s optimism and zest for life is as infectious as ever.

Chris Stewart

Chris Stewart’s Driving over Lemons told the story of his move to a remote mountain farm in Las Alpujarras – an oddball region of Spain, south of Granada. Funny, insightful and real, the book became an international bestseller.

A PARROT IN A PEPPER TREE, the sequel to Lemons, follows the lives of Chris, Ana and their daughter, Chloë, as they get to grips with a misanthropic parrot who joins their home, Spanish school life, neighbours in love, their amazement at Chris appearing on the bestseller lists… and their shock at discovering that their beloved valley is once more under threat of a dam.

A Parrot in the Pepper Tree also looks back on Chris Stewart’s former life – the hard times shearing in midwinter Sweden (and driving across the frozen sea to reach island farms); his first taste of Spain, learning flamenco guitar as a 20-year old; and his illustrious music career, drumming for his school band Genesis (sacked at 17, he never quite became Phil Collins), and then for a circus.

Chris Stewart

At age 17 Chris retired as the drummer of Genesis and launched a career as a sheep shearer and travel writer. He has no regrets about this. Had he become a big-time rock star he might never have moved with his wife Ana to a remote mountain farm in Andalucia. Nor forged the friendship of a lifetime with his resourceful peasant neighbour Domingo…not watched his baby daughter Chloë grow and thrive there…nor written this book.

Fate does sometimes seem to know what it’s up to.

Driving Over Lemons is that rare thing: a funny, insightful book that charms you from the first page to the last… and one that makes sinking your life savings into an old Spanish mountain farm, on the wrong side of the river, with no access road, water supply or electricity, seem like a perfectly reasonable career move.

Chris Stewart, the eternal optimist, transports us to Las Alpujarras, an oddball region south of Granada, and into a series of misadventures with an engaging mix of farmers and shepherds, New Age travellers and ex-pats. The hero of the piece, however, is their farm, El Valero _ a bright patch of mountain studded with olive, almond and lemon groves, nestled above an intersection of two rivers. What better place to set up home with their menagerie of dogs, cats, chickens, doves and a flock of wayward sheep or, indeed, to bring up their daughter Chloé? This anniversary edition of Driving Over Lemons includes a NEW CHAPTER in which we rejoin Chris and Ana, still thriving at El Valero, 25 years on.

TV & Film Rights optioned by Seven Stories/All3Media

The Coffin Path is an eerie and compelling seventeenth-century ghost story set on the dark wilds of the Yorkshire moors. For fans of Michelle Paver and Sarah Waters, this gothic tale will weave its way into your imagination and chill you to the bone. 
 
Maybe you’ve heard tales about Scarcross Hall, the house on the old coffin path that winds from village to moor top. They say there’s something up here, something evil. 
 
Mercy Booth isn’t afraid. The moors and Scarcross are her home and lifeblood. But, beneath her certainty, small things are beginning to trouble her. Three ancient coins missing from her father’s study, the shadowy figure out by the gatepost, an unshakeable sense that someone is watching. 
 
When a stranger appears seeking work, Mercy reluctantly takes him in. As their stories entwine, this man will change everything. She just can’t see it yet. 

All rights under option to Blueprint Pictures/Netflix

1648: Civil war is devastating England. The privileged world of Katherine Ferrers is crumbling under Cromwell’s army and, as an orphaned heiress, she has no choice but to marry for the sake of family. 

But as her marriage turns into a prison and her fortune is forfeit, Katherine becomes increasingly desperate. So when she meets a man who shows her a way out, she seizes the chance. It is dangerous and brutal, and she knows if they’re caught, there’s only one way it can end… 

The mystery of Lady Katherine Ferrers, legendary highwaywoman, has captured the collective imagination of generations. Now, based on the real woman, the original ‘Wicked Lady’ is brought gloriously to life in this tale of infatuation, betrayal and survival. 

2024 Stage Rights to Empire Street Productions adapted by Emma Hemingford 

It’s the 1930s. Christine, A young Austrian woman whose family has been impoverished by the war, toils away in a provincial post office. Out of the blue, a telegram arrives from an American aunt she’s never known, inviting her to spend two weeks in a Grand Hotel in a fashionable Swiss resort. She accepts and is swept up into a world of almost inconceivable wealth and unleashed desire, where she allows herself to be utterly transformed. Then, just as abruptly, her aunt cuts her loose and she has to return to the post office, where – yes – nothing will ever be the same. 

Our heroine is Soldier, rescued as a small child, from the robbers who killed her parents, by the enigmatic and ruthless General Toi. She grows to be his most trusted and gifted warrior, dispassionate and efficient in the execution of her military duties. But when she falls prey to the almost folkloric phenomenon of ‘the pairing’ and experiences the awakening of love for another human being all her certainties are swept away and she finds herself on the run, in hiding, and, ultimately, on the attack. She and the band of survivors she joins are looking for peace and security, but also answers to the deepest existential questions about where they are, why they are here, and what kind of future they can build? 

When happily divorced Joni is reluctantly talked into joining a dating app, she is surprised to quickly hit it off with Ant. Phone calls and texts soon evolve into a plan to meet up. Which is a problem, as Joni’s profile picture is of someone else.  Joni daren’t confess her lie. Yet unable to stop thinking about what might have been, she hatches a plan to ‘meet’ Ant in real life without revealing who she really is.  Once she and Ant are an item, however, it’s soon clear that the only thing Ant was honest about was his profile picture. He’s still online dating. And intimately texting other women.  So Joni contacts them: they need to know. And once they’re comparing notes on Ant, upset turns to thoughts of revenge.  But how do you get your own back on a truly heartless man? 

Iris is happy: decent job, good friends, her own flat. Everything but her own family. She and her husband Tom were trying for a baby when he left her for his life coach, Maddy, four years ago. One day Iris’ best friend Fay sends her an Instagram video of Maddy, now a successful family influencer with a huge following, posting wholesome videos with her husband Lee and their three-year-old twins. Tom is nowhere in sight.  So what did Iris end her marriage for? Needing answers, she delves into Maddy’s life. Just how much can you hide behind an online persona? 

A stunning, apocalyptic standalone sequel to The Stranger.  The Terrorist Guy Fowle, known as the Stranger, escapes from prison.  A mysterious Russian hacker is murdered in London and his thumb cut off.  At the heart of government, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is desperate to keep a secret.  It’s a puzzle that Jude Lyon of MI6 must solve, and quickly.  If he doesn’t the world will literally go up in flames. 

Lockton Leather is no ordinary patient. Physically and mentally scarred, he looks back from extreme old age to a remote past as a Thimblerigger among the criminal underworld of Victorian Liverpool. It was a life fraught with hardship and danger; one which returns to threaten everything he holds dear. But how can this be, when he is telling his story in 1999? Drawn ever deeper into Lockton’s life history, Dr Sam Stockwell, the psychologist assigned to work with him, finds it increasingly hard to extricate reality from fiction, till he finally begins to suspect that the old man may actually be telling the truth.  Within this framing narrative lies the extraordinarily imaginative and compelling history of a Victorian child, orphaned and drawn into a life of petty crime, as a Thimblerigger, which leads him into events of shocking darkness, brutality and tragedy.  As these terrible events unfold, Lockton’s tireless attempts to create a new life of love and happiness are persistently thwarted and he learns the difficulty of escaping from his past, the consequences of evil, and his own fate. 

One murdered celebrity. One improbable suspect. A serial rapist on the loose. Linton and Brown’s most complex case yet. When former supermodel, Lauren Hampton, is found suffocated in the drawing room of her Glastonbury mansion, DS Kate Linton and her superior, DI Rob Brown, begin one of the most intricate investigations of their career. Set against the backdrop of a series of vicious rapes, the truth about Hampton’s past gradually emerges, along with the clues as to who and why someone may have wanted her dead. Full of twists and turns, suspects and red herrings, this contemporary ‘who-dunnit’ is as much about resolving the relationship between Linton and her charismatic superior, as it is about solving a crime. Eeny Meeny Miny Moe is the second in the series of mysteries featuring a gutsy new heroine in a one-of-a-kind location. 

A grizzly and cold November morning. Detective Sergeant Kate Linton is called on Glastonbury Tor where a young woman has been strangled. Twelve holes are found at the scene, surrounded by wax, evidence of garden flares – the only connection to two other unsolved cases. When another young woman and a TV celebrity go missing, Linton is in a race against time to find the serial killer before he strikes again. But, when her journalist ex-boyfriend is singled out as a chief suspect, Linton feels that events are heading a bit too close to home. A Means of Escape presents an intricate, gripping mystery plot, combined with a focus on the heroine’s personal life as she juggles an unwelcome attraction for her good-looking and charismatic superior with her efforts to become closer to her estranged family. A Means of Escape is the first in a series of psychologically driven crime novels. 

At the age of 22, Jack is going nowhere. Stuck in a New Mexico backwater, slicing dead cattle for a living, he is ready to seize any opportunity to make something of his life. So when his workmate Ed tells him about the $25,000 stashed in a bus station locker in San Francisco, and when he meets and falls for the beautiful De S’anna, a sweet Italian supernova of sweat and lips and purple-black hair, the two events propel him into a journey of love, drugs, madness and determination as he tries to make real those two seductive mirages, the accidental fortune and the perfect love. Christopher Neilan’s debut novel is a coruscating tale told in vibrant, visceral prose. Funny, sexy, poetic, thrilling and endlessly inventive, ‘Abattoir Jack’ is a very impressive achievement. 

Thomas is desperate to join ‘the players’, he’ll do anything to watch them perform, even skip school and risk a caning. But when Thomas’s rule breaking gets him in trouble with more than just his school master, he has to flee his home and make his way to London. Here he meets his hero, Shakespeare, and his players. But behind the excitement of the theatres is a grimy world of deception, poison and treason. Will Thomas manage to uncover the plot in time? And will he manage to save Shakespeare from a fate worse than death?  A novel for children. 

When Lizzie’s dad refuses to fight in the Second World War, the police come looking to arrest him. Desperate to stay together, Lizzie and her brother Freddie go on the run with him, hiding from the police in idyllic Whiteway. But when their past catches up with them, they’re forced to leave and it becomes more and more difficult to stay together as a family. Will they be able to? And will they ever find a place, like Whiteway, where they will be safe again?  A novel for children. 

Set in London before the First World War, it is narrated by Margaret Trant, who lives with her ailing, irascible mother in a boarding house in St John’s Wood.  Since the death of her father, Margaret and her mother have fallen on hard times, with only Margaret’s meagre salary from Plimpson & Co to keep them afloat.  When circumstances force Margaret to leave her employer, she finds herself mysteriously guided into a new position as a secretary in a dingy backstreet shop.  But all is not as it seems, and she is in fact working for a highly secret branch of the intelligence service, whose mission is to track down and neutralize the ruthless band of anarchists known as The Scorpions.  Margaret’s love of mystery fiction scarcely prepares her for the reality of true criminality, and her journey of self-discovery forms the heart of this remarkable novel, as she discovers in herself resourcefulness, courage, independence and the first stirrings of love. 

Micka loves drawing and wants a pup, but with older brothers into violence and petty crime, and a mother who can’t read the notes his teacher sends home from school, neither he nor the pup stand much of a chance. Then a new boy, Laurie, starts at Micka’s school. The two boys both have vivid imaginations, but Laurie’s fantasies are of magic and revenge, and he soon pulls Micka into a dangerous game where the line between make-believe and real life – and, ultimately, death – is increasingly blurred. Written in direct, uncompromising yet compassionate prose, and with a breathtaking clarity of insight, Micka is an astonishingly assured debut — and an unforgettable story. 

Sharp-talking, existentially troubled Dodger leads a frenzied life as PA and dogs body to one of London’s top crime bosses. He dreams of a better, saner existence, but fate has other plans for him. Sent to hire the services of notorious contract killer Bill Kane, little does he suspect that he is about to embark on a wild odyssey through the heart of Rio’s favelas and the sizzling backlands of northeastern Brazil. His orders are simple: to help Kane hunt down and kill Captain America, the organisation’s double-crossing second-in-command. But where Kane is involved, nothing remains simple for long. The instant they set foot in Rio, the unlikely duo are catapulted into a series of confrontations as bizarre as they are frightening, as comical as they are wired. Kane, who believes he is possessed by the soul of an Oglala Sioux shaman, has declared war on modern society and its evils, with cataclysmic results. But even as the mission spirals out of control, Dodger finds himself little by little beginning to share in Kane’s unusual views on life, death and what it means to be human.   Part gangster thriller in the Get Carter mould, part wild road-trip romp à la Fear and Loathing, this is a thousand-volt, turbo-paced tale that reads like an acid-fuelled rollercoaster ride through a war zone. The story takes you by the scruff of the neck, hurtles you halfway across the world, flips you upside-down, then drops you off at the end, breathless and reeling. And all told in the juiciest slang-and-expletive-filled mutation the English language has spawned in years 

It is a universally acknowledged truth that an immigrant in England must be in want of a visa. In 1980s London, young Sri Lankan Chamath, recently down from Oxford with a degree in Maths, struggles to reconcile himself with the workplace. When his father writes him to say, ‘You’re on your own now, mate’, assuming that the magic word ‘Oxford’ will open any door to him, he realizes that push must now come to shove. Working on a building site as a casual labourer, he is approached by two men who ask him whether he would like ‘a bit of work after hours, to earn some dosh on the side’. Chamath gets dragged down below the invisible grid that exists in any big city, into a blue-grey twilight world of illegals. Hired as a male escort, a ‘professional’, a career at which he excels to his great surprise, he finds an unlikely means of making his way through the world. Then, two former clients, an older couple, decide to rescue him-with disastrous consequences. Masterfully and hilariously told, The Professional is sage, canny and witty as Ashok Ferrey always is: an exploration of the nature and meaning of love, of time, of memory. 

About the author:

Ashok Ferrey: Born in Colombo, raised in East Africa, educated at a Benedictine monastery in the
wilds of Sussex, Ashok Ferrey read Pure Maths at Christ Church Oxford, ending up
(naturally) in Brixton, converting Victorian houses during the Thatcher Years.
He describes himself as a failed builder, indifferent mathematician, barman and
personal trainer to the rich and infamous. His earlier Colpetty People and The Good
Little Ceylonese Girl as well as Serendipity were shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize, Sri
Lanka’s premier literary award.
Today Ferrey continues to design houses and is a guest lecturer at the Sri Lanka
Institute of Architecture. His hobbies include pushing the car when it’s out of petrol and
de-ticking the dogs. Oh, and vegetable shopping at Raheema’s.

The Good Little Ceylonese Girl is Ashok Ferrey’s second collection of darkly humorous tales about Sri Lankans at home and abroad. Our Sri Lankan narrator visits his friend Joe in Italy where Joe attends a course in higher (or, shall we say, lower) studies in women. But Italians—much like today’s residents of Colombo—live at home till marriage, death, and sometimes even beyond. A hen and chicken affair of fake fiancés and phony engagements ensues. Long years and many miles away, Colombo’s Father Cruz attempts to rescue a church from parishioners who like to put their donations where others can see them—with plaques to announce their charity. On the coast, a retired Admiral escapes the tsunami on an antique Dutch cabinet. A broken mother—with neither Dutch cabinet nor navy helicopter to rescue her—feels her son slip away and watches him go giving her looks of mild reproach. Two childhood sweethearts, in time-honoured Sri Lankan tradition, are married off to strangers. Nineteen years of clandestine meetings culminate in another chance of marriage. Perhaps time does separate.  Ashok Ferrey writes about Sri Lanka and its people, wherever they roam. He writes of the Sri Lankan diaspora, who seem not to notice that their country has changed in their absence. He writes of the West’s effect on Sri Lankans, of its ‘turning them into caricatures, unmistakably genuine but not at all the real thing’. As you laugh, you are left with nostalgia for a bygone Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans who might have been. 

About the author:

Ashok Ferrey: Born in Colombo, raised in East Africa, educated at a Benedictine monastery in the
wilds of Sussex, Ashok Ferrey read Pure Maths at Christ Church Oxford, ending up
(naturally) in Brixton, converting Victorian houses during the Thatcher Years.
He describes himself as a failed builder, indifferent mathematician, barman and
personal trainer to the rich and infamous. His earlier Colpetty People and The Good
Little Ceylonese Girl as well as Serendipity were shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize, Sri
Lanka’s premier literary award.
Today Ferrey continues to design houses and is a guest lecturer at the Sri Lanka
Institute of Architecture. His hobbies include pushing the car when it’s out of petrol and
de-ticking the dogs. Oh, and vegetable shopping at Raheema’s

Piyumi Segarajasingham is a young barrister in eighties London, half Tamil and half Sinhalese and newly responsible for her family’s share of an inheritance in Sri Lanka. The servants’ quarters of a house called Serendipity in Colombo’s colonial quarter, Cinnamon Gardens, is now her charge-she wants to keep it, her relatives are keen to sell. So, begins Piyumi’s journey home, full of a host of memorable characters and the hilarious happenstance of daily life in Colombo, haunted by the memory of a stranger she met back in London-will they ever get together? Set in a more innocent time-Sri Lanka’s civil war had only just begun-Serendipity is satire, thriller and comedy of manners all in one, told with Ferrey’s trademark wit.

About the author:

Ashok Ferrey: Born in Colombo, raised in East Africa, educated at a Benedictine monastery in the
wilds of Sussex, Ashok Ferrey read Pure Maths at Christ Church Oxford, ending up
(naturally) in Brixton, converting Victorian houses during the Thatcher Years.
He describes himself as a failed builder, indifferent mathematician, barman and
personal trainer to the rich and infamous. His earlier Colpetty People and The Good
Little Ceylonese Girl as well as Serendipity were shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize, Sri
Lanka’s premier literary award.
Today Ferrey continues to design houses and is a guest lecturer at the Sri Lanka
Institute of Architecture. His hobbies include pushing the car when it’s out of petrol and
de-ticking the dogs. Oh, and vegetable shopping at Raheema’s

In this extraordinary debut, Ashok Ferry chronicles, in a gently probing voice, the journeys of characters seeking something beyond the barriers of nations and generations. His tales of social-climbing Sri Lankans, of the pathos of immigration, of rich people with poor taste, of ice cream karma, of innocent love, eternity, and more take us to Colombo’s nouveau riche, hoity-toity returnees, ladies with buttery skin and square fingernails, old-fashioned aristocrats, and the poor mortals trapped between them. Ferry’s stories comprise characters that are ‘serious and fine and upstanding, and infinitely dull’, but also others like young John-John, who loses his childhood somewhere ‘high up in the air between Asmara and Rome’; the maid, Agnes of God whose mango-sucking teeth ‘fly out at you like bats out of the mouth of a cave’; Ashoka, the immigrant who embodies his Sri Lankan identity only on the bus-ride between home and work; and Professor Jayaweera who finds sterile freedoms caged in the ‘unbending, straight lines of Western Justice’. Absurd, sad, scathing and generous, but mostly wickedly funny, Colpetty People presents modern Sri Lankans as they navigate worlds between Ceylon and the West. 

About the author:

Ashok Ferrey: Born in Colombo, raised in East Africa, educated at a Benedictine monastery in the
wilds of Sussex, Ashok Ferrey read Pure Maths at Christ Church Oxford, ending up
(naturally) in Brixton, converting Victorian houses during the Thatcher Years.
He describes himself as a failed builder, indifferent mathematician, barman and
personal trainer to the rich and infamous. His earlier Colpetty People and The Good
Little Ceylonese Girl as well as Serendipity were shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize, Sri
Lanka’s premier literary award.
Today Ferrey continues to design houses and is a guest lecturer at the Sri Lanka
Institute of Architecture. His hobbies include pushing the car when it’s out of petrol and
de-ticking the dogs. Oh, and vegetable shopping at Raheema’s

Love in the Tsunami brings together a selection of Ashok Ferrey’s short fiction and includes four brand-new stories. The title story, set against the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 describes Veena Patel’s all-too-brief encounter with forbidden love. ‘But Did I Tell You I Can’t Dance?’ is a hilarious fable about the occasional humiliations and the many heart-warming victories of old age. And in ‘Maleeshya’ Ashok himself makes a cameo appearance as a dead author who has embarrassingly come back to life.  Endlessly inventive and crackling with energy, Love in the Tsunami represents the very best writing in English from contemporary Sri Lanka. 

About the author:

Ashok Ferrey: Born in Colombo, raised in East Africa, educated at a Benedictine monastery in the
wilds of Sussex, Ashok Ferrey read Pure Maths at Christ Church Oxford, ending up
(naturally) in Brixton, converting Victorian houses during the Thatcher Years.
He describes himself as a failed builder, indifferent mathematician, barman and
personal trainer to the rich and infamous. His earlier Colpetty People and The Good
Little Ceylonese Girl as well as Serendipity were shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize, Sri
Lanka’s premier literary award.
Today Ferrey continues to design houses and is a guest lecturer at the Sri Lanka
Institute of Architecture. His hobbies include pushing the car when it’s out of petrol and
de-ticking the dogs. Oh, and vegetable shopping at Raheema’s

‘I was born ugly. That’s what my mother always said.’  So begins the story of young Sonny Mahadewala who leads a dual life: between his adoptive England where he cohabits with a privileged American; and the mixed blessings of Mahadewala Walauwa – the big house on the mountain belonging to his father’s people in Kandy, the ancient capital of Sri Lanka-where a troubled existence has earned him both honour and shame. For Sonny’s mother, a wonderfully maleficent anti-heroine, is convinced that demons possess this ugly son of hers. Demons and the devil himself circumscribe the playing field of this book, whether seated in the draughty chapels of Oxford or roaming the Kandyan countryside, and through their clever interplay they speak of larger horrors with able grace.  For who in this world is utterly good or utterly evil-and who, indeed, is the devil? 

About the author:

Ashok Ferrey: Born in Colombo, raised in East Africa, educated at a Benedictine monastery in the
wilds of Sussex, Ashok Ferrey read Pure Maths at Christ Church Oxford, ending up
(naturally) in Brixton, converting Victorian houses during the Thatcher Years.
He describes himself as a failed builder, indifferent mathematician, barman and
personal trainer to the rich and infamous. His earlier Colpetty People and The Good
Little Ceylonese Girl as well as Serendipity were shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize, Sri
Lanka’s premier literary award.
Today Ferrey continues to design houses and is a guest lecturer at the Sri Lanka
Institute of Architecture. His hobbies include pushing the car when it’s out of petrol and
de-ticking the dogs. Oh, and vegetable shopping at Raheema’s

Sanjay de Silva lives in Colombo, under the thumb of a controlling Sri Lankan father, having lost his English mother at an early age. When his father is diagnosed with cancer, he feels the ground shifting under his feet, the balance of power realigning. Though it is something he has dreamed of all his life, he is uneasy when it happens. Learning that he is entitled to live in England-thanks to his half-English parentage-he arrives in south London.  It is 1980, the start of the glorious, blue-rinsed Thatcher years, when every girl looks like Princess Diana but not every boy looks like Prince Charles. He meets and falls in love with a fellow Sri Lankan, Janine, who is old enough to be his mother and famous within the acid-tongued Sri Lankan community as ‘a hooker of the very highest class, with royal connections’.  Sanjay manages to buy an old wreck of a house in Brixton and succeeds, against all odds, in converting it into two flats. But all is not well with that house. At night there are voices . . . This is the story of south London’s first Asian builder who in eight years developed and sold eighty-four flats, cashing in his winnings just before the crash of 1988. But at its heart it is about grief: how each of us copes in our inimitable way with the hidden mysteries of family and the loss of loved ones. Because, as Sanjay is about to find out, grief is only the transmutation of love, of the very same chemical composition-liquid, undistilled-the one inevitably turning to the other like ice to water. 

About the author:

Ashok Ferrey: Born in Colombo, raised in East Africa, educated at a Benedictine monastery in the
wilds of Sussex, Ashok Ferrey read Pure Maths at Christ Church Oxford, ending up
(naturally) in Brixton, converting Victorian houses during the Thatcher Years.
He describes himself as a failed builder, indifferent mathematician, barman and
personal trainer to the rich and infamous. His earlier Colpetty People and The Good
Little Ceylonese Girl as well as Serendipity were shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize, Sri
Lanka’s premier literary award.
Today Ferrey continues to design houses and is a guest lecturer at the Sri Lanka
Institute of Architecture. His hobbies include pushing the car when it’s out of petrol and
de-ticking the dogs. Oh, and vegetable shopping at Raheema’s

Thomas is desperate to join ‘the players’, he’ll do anything to watch them perform, even skip school and risk a caning. But when Thomas’s rule breaking gets him in trouble with more than just his school master, he has to flee his home and make his way to London. Here he meets his hero, Shakespeare, and his players. But behind the excitement of the theatres is a grimy world of deception, poison and treason. Will Thomas manage to uncover the plot in time? And will he manage to save Shakespeare from a fate worse than death?  A novel for children.

When Lizzie’s dad refuses to fight in the Second World War, the police come looking to arrest him. Desperate to stay together, Lizzie and her brother Freddie go on the run with him, hiding from the police in idyllic Whiteway. But when their past catches up with them, they’re forced to leave and it becomes more and more difficult to stay together as a family. Will they be able to? And will they ever find a place, like Whiteway, where they will be safe again?  A novel for children. 

A grizzly and cold November morning. Detective Sergeant Kate Linton is called on Glastonbury Tor where a young woman has been strangled. Twelve holes are found at the scene, surrounded by wax, evidence of garden flares – the only connection to two other unsolved cases. When another young woman and a TV celebrity go missing, Linton is in a race against time to find the serial killer before he strikes again. But, when her journalist ex-boyfriend is singled out as a chief suspect, Linton feels that events are heading a bit too close to home. A Means of Escape presents an intricate, gripping mystery plot, combined with a focus on the heroine’s personal life as she juggles an unwelcome attraction for her good-looking and charismatic superior with her efforts to become closer to her estranged family. A Means of Escape is the first in a series of psychologically driven crime novels. 

For a little while, Violet Dimond was the very last of a tradition older than any profession, older than history, older than writing and houses, perhaps older than weapons, older than fire.  Then that tradition ended, and no one, not even Violet herself, remarked on its passing.  Violet Dimond, the Holy Terror, has delivered many of the town children – and often their children – in her capacity as handywoman. But Violet’s calling is dying out as, with medicine’s advances, the good old ways are no longer good enough.  Grace, Violet’s adopted daughter, is a symbol of change herself. In the place where she has grown up and everyone knows her, she is accepted, though most of the locals never before saw a girl with skin that colour. For Violet and Grace the coming war will bring more upheaval into their lives: can they endure it, or will they, like so many, be swept aside by history’s tide? 

A moving tale of prejudice, struggle, love, tragedy, bravery and the changing lives of women in the twentieth century, The Midwife’s Daughter grips the reader all the way to its heart stopping conclusion. 

Following on from The Midwife’s Daughter, Aren’t We Sisters? is a gripping novel about buried secrets and unlikely friendship. Norah Thornby can no longer afford to live in her grand family home in the centre of Silkhampton. Unless, perhaps, she can find a respectable lodger. But Nurse Lettie Quick is not nearly as respectable as she seems. What’s really going on at the clinic she has opened? And why has she chosen Silkhampton? Meanwhile the beautiful Rae Grainger has found the perfect place to stay, in an isolated house miles away from the town. It’s certainly rather creepy, especially at candlelit bedtime, but Rae knows that all she has to do is stay out of sight, until others – paid, professional others – are ready to take her little problem away. Then she can just forget the whole ghastly business …can’t she?  

No one guesses, of course, that there’s a killer quietly at work in Silkhampton; or that in one way or another all three women are in danger… 

The year is 2096. Earth’s climate has irrevocably changed (sea-levels have risen to the mountain-tops; the sky is always covered in cloud, the moon and stars are never visible). Instead of countries, we now have floating cities named after varieties of cheese. And what’s more, Earthlings now know that intelligent life exists beyond Earth – amongst a group of planets in the Milky Way. 

The story begins with an invitation from these planets asking Earth to send 5 children (the Five) to a training school in the centre of the MilkyWay, known as IGGY. 25 children from all over the Milky Way are being sent to IGGY for initial training. At the end of training, 5 of these ‘IGGY Cadets’ will be selected for a mission that is “too secret and too dangerous to divulge”. 

Earth’s Grand Council decides to accept the invite and send the best five kids it can find. However, a member of the Council, who ‘hates’ aliens and wishes to sabotage the IGGY expedition, chooses the biggest loser he can find to be one of the Five – Tommy Storm. 

Tommy Storm, an orphan, is 11¼. He has a stutter, he’s a mongrel-mix of races and he’s the only boy on Earth whose hair won’t spike. Tommy is ranked last of the Five in terms of ability and so, when he reaches IGGY, he’s placed into the Dream5s’ dorm with 4 other alien kids who, like him, are all ranked fifth – or last – in terms of their abilities. 

But if Tommy is a fish out of water on Earth, he becomes a fish in water on IGGY. He blossoms, learning extraordinary new skills and, in his new dorm-mates, he makes the first real friends he’s ever had. He also learns a new take on Earth’s history and sees old footage of the planet from 2009 – a time when the planet had a wondrous variety of tress and flowers and valleys and lakes and animals (before sea-levels soared). For the first time he feels a deep love for his planet. 

This is a mixed blessing because Tommy learns that the universe ‘is almost definitely’ going to be destroyed by a Terrible Future Calamity (the TFC) and that the mission of the 5 chosen IGGY Cadets will be to prevent the TFC. Even worse, to enable this mission, Earth will have to be obliterated. 

As Tommy and his fellow Dream5s struggle – in a series of outlandish contests – to overcome the other dorms and be chosen as the five IGGY Knights to save the universe, Tommy is compelled to find a way to save his planet, and has to contend with his first feelings of romance and has to break all the rules of IGGY to find out the truth about his dead parents. 

Finally, against all the odds, the Dream5s are chosen as the IGGY Knights and Tommy manages to save Earth. The story ends with the Dream5s leaving the Milky Way – possibly forever – on their far-flung journey to save the universe from the TFC. 

This utterly charming and compelling novel set in Scotland and England in 1872 and based on a true story is built from the finest elements of classical story-telling. The arduous all-or-nothing physical quest of a zoo elephant’s 200 mile walk from Edinburgh to Manchester mirrors the personal journeys of its wonderfully realized characters, including the young, mute and lonely but resourceful pickpocket Danny, the bold and forthright but emotionally vulnerable Hetty, and the noble but damaged elephant Maharajah. There is danger, drama, mystery, transgression and redemption. This is a potential modern classic of children’s fiction. Set in 1872, it tells the story of the wager between rival menagerie owners James Jameson and Arthur Albright. When Jameson buys the African elephant Maharajah at a bankruptcy auction in Edinburgh his plan to transport the animal by train to his Belle Vue Zoological Gardens in Manchester hits a snag when the elephant destroys the freight carriage. Rashly, Jameson bets Albright that the elephant will walk to Manchester within seven days – the winner will take all of his rival’s menagerie of animals. During the excitement of the auction a young, mute pickpocket – known only to us as ‘Boy’ – is apprehended, losing all his stolen goods and knowing only too well the retribution that awaits him from is violent master Scatcherd. But at a moment of crisis he suddenly discovers some kind of affinity with the distressed elephant and before he knows what is happening he is enlisted to star in the marketing spectacle of the elephant walk, disguised as the Indian ‘Prince Dandip’.  As the perilous journey proceeds, Boy meets and befriends the ebullient Hetty and her father, has his life saved by Maharajah, comes up against the sinister Crimple, and nurses a growing suspicion that their progress to Manchester is being followed very closely by someone who does not wish them well 

In the crisp early morning hours, the police are called to a suspected murder at a farm outside a small English village.  A beautiful young woman has been found dead, blood all over the cottage she lives in.  At the same time, police respond to a reported female suicide, where a car has fallen into a local quarry.  As DCI Louisa Smith and her team gather the evidence, they discover a link between these two women, a link which has sealed their fate one cold night, under a silent moon. 

Elizabeth Haynes second novel is a taut and gripping murder mystery introducing a compelling new heroine, Genevieve office worker by day and pole dancer by night who finds herself implicated in a mob underworld of murder, corruption and betrayal.  Genevieve has finally escaped the stressful demands of her sales job and achieved her dream: to leave London behind and start a new life aboard a houseboat in Kent. But on the night of her boat-warming party the dream is shattered when a body washes up beside the boat, and Genevieve recognises the victim.  As the sanctuary of the boatyard is threatened, and Genevieve’s life seems increasingly at risk, the story of how she came to be so out of her depth is unfolded, and Genevieve finds out the real cost of mixing business with pleasure. 

How well do you know your neighbours?  Would you notice if they lived or died?  Elizabeth’s novel is a chilling thriller and a hymn to all the lonely people.  It preys on our darkest fears, showing how vulnerable we are when we live alone, and how easily ordinary lives can fall apart when no one is watching.  Just go home and lock the door… 

Aiden clearly has secrets, but then so does Sarah, and that’s no reason not to respond to his warmth and charm. But something doesn’t feel quite right. As the weather closes in, and snowfall blocks the roads, events take a dramatic turn and suddenly Sarah finds herself in terrible danger, unsure of who she can trust. 

Ten years ago, fourteen-year-old Scarlett Rainsford vanished without a trace during a family holiday to Greece. Not being able to find Scarlett was one of the biggest regrets of DCI Louisa Smith’s career and when Scarlett is discovered back in her home town after all this time, Lou is determined to find out what happened to her and why she remained hidden for so long. Was she abducted or did she run away?  As Lou and her team delve deeper into Scarlett’s past, their investigation throws up more questions than it answers. But as they edge closer to the truth about what really went on behind closed doors, it is more sinister and disturbing than they had ever imagined. 

Optioned to Alloy Entertainment (Warner Bros) 2022 

What to do if Matthew, your secret lover of the past four years, finally decides to leave his wife Sophie and their two daughters and move into your flat, just when you’re thinking that you might not want him anymore . . .PLAN A: Stop shaving your armpits. And your bikini line. Tell him you have a moustache that you wax every six weeks. Stop having sex with him. Pick holes in the way he dresses. Don’t brush your teeth. Or your hair. Or pluck out the stray hag-whisker that grows out of your chin. Buy incontinence pads and leave them lying around.  PLAN B: Accidentally on purpose bump into his wife Sophie. Give yourself a fake name and identity. Befriend Sophie. Actually begin to really like Sophie. Snog Matthew’s son (who’s the same age as you by the way. You’re not a paedophile) Buy a cat and give it a fake name and identity. Befriend Matthew’s children. Unsuccessfully watch your whole plan go absolutely horribly wrong. 

Opera Rights to Malmo Opera/Nordiska 2024 for JOYRIDE – THE MUSCIAL  

A husband. A wife. A mistress. And the ultimate plan for revenge… The husband James never intended to lead a double life – with a wife in London and a mistress in the country, it’s exhausting. But that’s all about to change.  The wife Stephanie isn’t really snooping when she finds a text message from a strange woman on her husband’s mobile. But now she’s found it, how can she ignore it? It’s time to track the woman down and find out what’s going on. The mistress Katie has no reason to believe her boyfriend, James, is cheating until someone claiming to be his wife gets in touch. Now she’s been cast in the role of mistress. Not one she’s happy with.  Once Stephanie and Katie know about each other, they must decide what to do. They could both just throw him out or they could join forces to make his life hell first.  But revenge isn’t always sweet. And what happens when one woman thinks enough is enough but the other doesn’t know when to stop? 

Rebecca, Daniel, Alex and Isabel have been best friends since university. Rebecca married Daniel, Alex married Isabel and, for twenty years, they have been inseparable. But all that is about to change.  When Alex walks out on Isabel, Rebecca thinks things can’t get any worse. But then she finds out the reason why and she’s left harbouring a secret she’d rather forget.  And there’s more upheaval to come in Rebecca s life as her emaciated, neurotic, self-obsessed colleague, Lorna her arch nemesis at work suddenly becomes a regular feature in her social life.  Rebecca’s once-happy foursome is now a distant memory and with hearts broken and friendships fractured, it seems that change is never a good thing. Or is it? 

When it comes to genes life’s a lottery.  As Abi would be the first to know. She has spent her life in the shadow of her stunningly beautiful, glamorous older sister Cleo.  Headhunted as model when she was sixteen, Cleo has been all but lost to Abi for the last twenty years, with only a fleeting visit or brief email to connect them. So when Abi is invited to spend the summer in Cleo’s large London home with her sister’s perfect family, she can’t bring herself to say no. Despite serious misgivings. Maybe Cleo is finally as keen as Abi to regain the closeness they shared in their youth?  But Abi is in for a shock. Soon she is left caring for her two young, bored and very spoilt nieces and handsome, unhappy brother-in-law – while Cleo plainly has other things on her mind. As Abi moves into her sister’s life, a cuckoo in the nest, she wrestles with uncomfortable feelings.  Could having beauty, wealth and fame lead to more unhappiness than not having them? Who in the family really is the ugly sister? 

 Jen has discovered a secret.  It’s not hers to share, but is it hers to keep?  If she tells her husband Jason, he might get over the shock but will he forgive her for telling the truth? She might drive a wedge through their marriage.  If she tells someone else in Jason’s family – the family she’s come to love more than her own – she’d not only tear them apart but could also find herself on the outside: she’s never really been one of them, after all.  But if she keeps this dirty little secret to herself, how long can she pretend nothing is wrong? How long can she live a lie?  Jen knows the truth – but is she ready for the consequences? 

Behind every great woman stands another one.  And for television producer Tamsin, that’s Bea, her brilliant assistant. The only one Tamsin can trust with her coffee order, her dry-cleaning and filing;   Bea does it all with a smile on her face.  So when Tamsin hears a rumour that Patrick, her oldest and best friend’s husband, is cheating on his wife, she is furious. Knowing she can’t just ignore it, Tamsin plots a scheme to catch Patrick in the act, using Bea as live-bait. It should be foolproof.  Except Tamsin never considered Bea might have her own agenda. And if she does, then Tamsin really needs to watch her back . . . 

I want to make my husband fall back in love with me.  Let me explain. This isn’t an exercise in 1950s wifeydom. I haven’t been reading articles in old women’s magazines. ‘Twenty ways to keep your man’. That couldn’t be further from the truth.  I want him to fall back in love with me so that when I tell him to get the hell out of my life he’ll care. He won’t just think, ‘Oh good’.  I want it to hurt.  Paula has had Robert’s back since they got together as drama students.  She gave up her dreams so he could make it.  Now he’s one of the nation’s most popular actors.  And Paula’s just discovered he’s having an affair.  She’s going to remind Robert just what he’s sacrificing.  And then she’s going to break his heart like he broke hers.  It will be her greatest acting role ever.  Revenge is sweet.  Isn’t it?  

Amy thought she knew everything there was to know about her best friend Melissa. Then again, Amy also thought she was on the verge of the wedding of her dreams to her long-distance fiancé. Until she pays a surprise trip home to London. Jack is out, but it’s clear another woman has been making herself at home in their flat. There’s something about her stuff that feels oddly familiar . . . and then it hits Amy. The Other Woman is Melissa. Amy has lost her home, her fiancé and her best friend in one disastrous weekend – but instead of falling apart, she’s determined to get her own back. Piecing her life back together won’t be half as fun as dismantling theirs, after all. 

Best friends Holly and Roz tell each other everything. So when Holly gets a shot at her dream job after putting everything on hold to raise her daughter, she assumes Roz will be waiting to pop the champagne. But is she just imagining things or is Roz not quite as happy as she should be? And now she thinks about it, a few things don’t quite add up… Perhaps it was a mistake to tell Roz all her secrets. Because it takes two to tango, but only one to start a war…  

When Laura’s marriage falls apart she needs to find a home for her and her daughter. And quickly.  Welcome to The Close, a beautiful street of mansions, where Laura rents a tiny studio above a garage, and gorgeous Stella is the indisputable Queen Bee – who soon suspects Laura of having designs on her fiancé.  But when Laura unearths the ghastly secret he is hiding, it threatens Stella’s perfectly curated world as well as Laura’s career.  Hatching an elaborate plan to beat him at his own game, these former enemies are now best friends.  But has Laura forgotten that revenge always comes with a sting in the tail?  

Georgia is lying to her best friend Lydia.  Just a little white lie – a fake Twitter account to support Lydia’s struggling business. No harm meant. But maybe this wasn’t Georgia’s best idea ever.  Because Lydia wants to confide in her new (fake) Twitter friend. About Georgia and her husband Nick, who might be having an affair.  Georgia wants out. Except what if it’s true? She needs to trick Lydia into revealing all.  But there’s another possibility. Lydia could be lying right back . . .  Has Georgia’s worst idea ever turned out to be Lydia’s best idea ever?

In a North Sea storm a drilling rig sinks, taking with it the ten kilos of hashish that Calum Bean has hidden in its superstructure. When the bankrollers decide that Cal’s kneecaps are a reasonable forfeit, his cousin, renegade army officer Seb MacCoinneach, comes to the rescue.  But Seb has an agenda of his own. Turned down by the SAS, in fierce competition with his dead brother and in a bitter feud with his father, he masterminds a plan that will make fools of all those who have rejected him. Spurred on by his half-sister Madelene, a ruthless manipulator, he starts upon a lethal game in the name of freedom. And he needs Cal with him. 

Jonah is a man with nowhere left to run. Hunted, haunted and bearing the horrific scars of a life on the front line of some of the world’s most dangerous battlefields, he’s not what you’d call a model soldier. That’s why the British Army has shipped him to the lawless strip of desert sandwiched between Iraq and Kuwait, where everything is for sale and nothing is what it seems.  It’s 2003 and conflict looms, but for Jonah, the war has already started. He’s been sent here as a UN observer – unarmed, impartial and safely out of harm’s way. Big mistake. Although he isn’t a man who goes looking for trouble, trouble has an awkward habit of following him, and from the moment he lands, Jonah is in over his head.  Drawn into a ruthless world of corruption, Jonah is about to elarn that in the Zone, life is cheap, and the truth is deadly.

Winner of the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for Best Thriller 2010 

The last time Jonah saw Nored-Din, he was lying face down in a pool of black water in the Khyber Pass. For many years, Jonah had been under the impression that he’d killed him there.  How far can loyalty be stretched before it reaches a limit? Millions of lives depend on the answer, as a twisting road of betrayal and revenge leads from the mountains of Afghanistan to the heart of London . . . and a ticking bomb. 

As science develops more and more sophisticated military hardware, inevitably it has also turned to the genetic ‘enhancement’ of military personnel.  Scottish former police protection officer Harriet “Harry” Armstrong discovers the body of a beautiful young woman outside the home of a powerful US Senator.  Detective Michael Freeman knows this case means pressure – pressure to close the case quickly, pressure to keep the Senator out of it, pressure from his ambitious wife not to rock the political boat.  But Harry and Freeman have both become involved in a conspiracy that is impossible to walk away from.  What is the Senator’s link to a shady genetic engineering company? Why does MI6 want Harry to take a job with the company’s founder?  An edgy combination of political thriller and police procedural, ROCK CREEK PARK represents another step in the brilliant career of this CWA award-winning author. 

Ed found it difficult to explain why he felt such a strong allegiance to Britain, perhaps because he found it difficult to define what it meant to be British.  British by birth, foreign by descent and agnostic by conviction, Edward Henry Malik is an MI6 agent-runner.  For four years he has been running an agent codenamed Nightingale inside the ISI, Pakistan’s Hydra-headed spying agency. Then, in the aftermath of the death of Osama bin Laden, Nightingale is unmasked and Ed’s world dramatically falls apart.  Dismissed from MI6 and with his reputation in tatters, Ed returns to his roots in the immigrant enclave of Whitechapel in London’s East End. He finds a job at a freight forwarding office and unexpectedly falls in love with the proprietor’s daughter. It seems as if he has finally found respite from his demons.  But you can’t escape your past. Ed knows too much and he has come to the attention of the Hidden Hand – Pakistan’s legendary spy of spies – Major-General Javid Aslam Khan.  From the teeming city of Lahore to the anarchic tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, with a plot to detonate the dirtiest bomb imaginable, The Agent Runner carves a dramatic arc across modern Pakistan and reaches a thunderous climax in the mountains of the Hindu Kush. 

ISIS can’t control him.  MI6 can’t find him.  But he’s coming… 

Things change quickly in the world of espionage and clandestine operations. Jude Lyon of MI6 remembers the captured terrorist bomb-maker. He watched him being flown off to Syria, back when Syria was ‘friendly’. No-one expected him to survive interrogation there.   

Yet the man is alive and someone has broken him out of jail.  Bad news for the former foreign secretary who authorised his rendition. And Jude’s boss Queen Bee who knew he wasn’t a terrorist at all, but an innocent bystander. Now she calls Jude back from a dangerously enjoyable mission involving a Russian diplomat’s wife.  He has a new job: close down this embarrassment. Fast.  But embarrassment is only the beginning. Someone is using the former prisoner to front a new and unspeakably terrifying campaign. Someone not even ISIS can control.  He is like a rumour, a myth, a whisper on the desert wind. But he is real and he is coming for us . . .He is the genius known only as . . .The Stranger. 

From the corridors of Westminster to the refugee camps of Jordan, the back streets of East London to the badlands of Iraq, The Stranger is a nerve-shredding journey of suspense as Jude Lyon pieces together the shape of an implacable horror coming towards him – and a conspiracy of lies behind him. 

What do you do when you meet Miss Right ten years too late?  Sean Reilly seems to have his life sorted: gorgeous wife, beautiful house and lucrative career as a voice-over artist. But he craves the sort of romance and affection that he no longer receives from his wife. Why is it, he wonders, that once married, women want men to change and hate it when they don’t? Whereas men never want women to change and hate it when they do.  Lucy Ross, ‘caught single’ after breaking up with her long-term boyfriend, is also looking for romance when she meets Sean. She doesn’t want him to change, she wants him the way he is, so could the life of Reilly be sorted after all? 

Frank Dempsey is back but this time as a father of a very different kind.  Newly-wed Frank Dempsey, a former non-believing Catholic priest, can now luxuriate in the sublime joys of his wifes arms and the paradise of silk versus sackcloth.  Yet Frank isn’t off-duty from charitable deeds when he isnt driving his black cab for a local taxi firm, he is in hot demand to speak at weddings, christenings and funerals, or to inspire people to flock to the dance floor with his skills as a DJ.  From the Big Apple to the bitten apple, Frank soon discovers that the tempting sins of the flesh have consequences; when Frank becomes a real father, he realises he is going to need a miracle to feed the five thousand . . . 

This is a story about a Roman Catholic priest who runs his North London parish whilst harbouring an almighty secret: he doesn’t believe in God. This doesn’t stop him from being hugely successful, if a little unconventional in his work. He raises money by driving a London taxi and everything is going well until Sarah hops into his cab and into his life.