I am the author of 16 bestselling novels including my debut Sally (1996), Pillow Talk (2008 – winner of the RNA award) The Turning Point (2016), Richard & Judy Bookclub selection Little Wing (2022) and The Unfinished Business of Eadie Browne (2024). I am also independently publish works including The Book Lover’s Journal as well as a new series of novellas which I launched in November 2025 with Christmas at Flora’s House. I write a montly newsletter which is brimming with chat, exclusives, behind the scenes plus of course book recommendations.

A sense of place is central to my writing – the importance of setting as a major character, never as a backdrop – and my stories are aided and abetted by locations such as Derbyshire, Teesside, North Norfolk, the Scottish Highlands and Islands, Vermont, France and British Columbia. I have degrees in Art History from the University of Manchester and the Courtauld Institute, London and love tutoring writing workshops. Contact me directly if your writing group are interested!

I’m a passionate reader and I genuinely love books as possessions too. I love hardbacks, paperbacks and audiobooks but I don’t have a kindle, I just don’t fancy one! Books have defined and shaped all the key stages of my life. A A Milne taught me about rhyme – and reason; Barbara Sleigh fired my imagination and my playtimes with the Carbonel stories. Black Beauty was the first book that made me cry, while Ruby Ferguson’s Jill books transported the pony-mad girl in me away from the city.

In my teenage years, I found solace in Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Judy Blume’s novels, while To Kill A Mockingbird and Flowers for Algernon opened my eyes to justice, humanity and judging people. At University, I turned to Jilly Cooper for respite during exams, while novels by Jane Gardam and Barbara Trapido introduced me to characters whose shoes I wanted to step in to. I love talking to writers – part of the reason I created The Book Lover’s Journal as well as the inspiration for my Instagram live series Wednesday Writers – a half-hour slot at lunchtime where I chat candidly with another author about how we write, why we write, where we write…and how we cope when we fear we can’t bloody write!

I grew up in a home filled with books and loved weekly visits to the library to choose something new – or an outing to the bookshop to spend a book voucher! Whether my childhood home or student digs in Manchester or various flat-shares and then my own home, I’ve always surrounded myself with books. I’d go so far as to say I decorate my home with my book collection. Every book I own is a treasured possession of mine, an essential part of my history. Every book I own, quite literally, tells a story.

Since 2009 I have lived on a small farm in East Hertfordshire with my family – my offspring Felix and Georgia, my dog Bee (and memories of our much-loved, deeply missed Twig and Milo), my horses Nathan and Jack and my sheeps Brontë, Emily, Eliza and Lovely. In my spare time, I enjoy ceramics classes (I’ve been going for years and basically make the same bowl over and over again, plus little porcelain sheep) or invariably I can be found in one saddle or other. I’ve ridden horses since I was little but I took up road biking after my back surgery in 2017 – and have become somewhat obsessed…