Voted Best Indie Book 2018! Why? Read It For Free & Find Out.

Redundancy gives Richard, a talented musician, the chance to pursue his dreams, but his fiancée, Bridget, publicly ditches him, making enemies of his friends. Next. his ex-wife, Naomi, dumps teenage Maria on his doorstep, claiming she’s his daughter. Scrapping freedom and dreams, Richard moves from the town where he’s lived all his life and takes Maria and an unwanted dog, Ben, to London with him. Can they find in each other the love they’ve been denied?

Better still, read the trilogy while it’s on offer!

 

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This is the first time the books have been offered together, so no reviews are showing. Added together, the individual books have 70 between them. Reviews on this page, or each book’s own page, are very much appreciated.  They help to sell the books to people who will enjoy them, and I also read the reviews, so they help me.  Sarah

 

 

Richard and Maria marry, but both are haunted by past rejections. Sinister letters and unwanted gifts arrive, and the more each tries to protect the other by keeping them secret, the worse the anxiety. When vicious attacks on lives and property begin, Richard and Maria reveal the truth to one another and decide they must discover the identity of their enemy and defeat him or her. Will their love hold fast or the old saying “marry in haste, repent at leisure” prove true?

Richard and Maria’s inheritance, The White Hart Inn, is in financial trouble, and they are working very long days. Richard’s audience is shrinking as he gets older, and for Maria, all the fun has gone out of cooking, and yet only The White Hart Eatery profits stand between them and bankruptcy. After an overheard row, their daughter Eleanor tries to help by locating and contacting her maternal grandmother reviving dangerous secrets from the past.

 

Click ANY PICTURE TO GO TO AMAZON

Remembrance Day Worldwide

Poppies, a Symbol of Bloody Wartime Sacrifice. Are there ever winners? Is anyone innocent?

Families torn apart by the Great War. When war is declared in August 1914, Bill, a farm boy brought up in a village on the Duke of Buccleuch’s Northamptonshire estate, is plucking up his courage to ask his sweetheart, Florrie, to marry him. Florrie has given up her dream of being a dancer to bring up her siblings and protect them from their violent and abusive widowed father. For her, marriage to Bill is love, escape, and protection: a dream to be clung to.
But Bill and Florrie’s dreams are dashed – Bill is sent with the Royal Buckinghamshire Hussars, a yeomanry cavalry regiment, to fight in Gallipoli, Egypt, and Palestine taking with him a horse, Copper, volunteered for service by the 7th Duke’s young daughter, Lady Alice. Bill makes promises before he leaves: to marry Florrie if he survives and to bring his beloved warhorse home safe to Lady Alice.
While Bill fights Turks and Germans in appalling conditions, Florrie, a strong female, fights her own war with rationing, poverty, the loss of her menfolk, and her father’s drunken temper. As WW1 proceeds, fearful and with her resilience faltering, her feelings of self-worth plummet, and she turns to her dandelion clocks for reassurance. ‘He lives? He lives not? He loves me? He loves me not?’
When Bill returns to England six months after the armistice in November 1918, both he and Florrie have been changed by their personal journeys. Has their love survived their wartime romances, five years apart, and the tragedies they’ve endured? Can Bill keep his promises to Florrie and Lady Alice?
A heartbreaking story of lovers torn apart by the Great War. An insight into the military history of the 1914 1918 war as fought by the Royal Buckinghamshire Hussars and the Queen’s Own Worcestershire Yeomanry – some of the ‘PALS brigades’. At first thought, ‘not real soldiers’ by the regular army, the Royal Bucks and the Worcester Yeomanry fought with great courage and suffered huge losses. In fact, the Worcesters sustained more losses than any brigade in any war, and the PALS earnt the respect of all those who fought with them. Although Military Fiction, it is a story inspired by real people and based on real events that doesn’t forget the role of women in the Great War or their need for a wartime romance – love where they could find it.

Amazon

Auschwitz 1944: ‘He had no way to tell her he’d saved her life: no right to tell her to abandon hope.’
Walt is a doctor in the women’s infirmary in Auschwitz-Birkenau, a Nazi death camp in Poland, when Miriam, a Jewish nurse, steps down from a cattle wagon and into his heart, but can he save her? Together, they fight to save their patients, joining the camp resistance and risking death daily. liberation throws them from one hell into another, and Walt is forced onto the March of Death through Poland’s bitter winter, leaving Miriam sick with scarlet fever. Can he escape to help her? Post war, Walt hides stolen evidence, which should have been used to convict Nazi war criminals, in order to protect his post-war family. The truth and his own cowardice weigh on his mind and, as a way of dealing with it, he sets in place an elaborate puzzle, not expecting his determined granddaughter to unravel it.
Touching the Wire is split into two parts and is a present-day mystery as well as historical fiction. Part One transitions between 1944/45 Auschwitz and 1970s England and tells of Walt and Miriam’s love, their promises to one another, and their struggle for survival. More of their story is revealed in Part Two as Charlotte searches for the truth her grandfather couldn’t tell her – a truth that blows her ‘safe’ world apart.
‘Heartbreakingly beautiful. Relentlessly compelling.’
GOLD MEDAL WINNER historical fiction Readers’ Favorite Book Awards 2019
FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR – IAN Book Awards 2019
A fictional tale of love, faith, cowardice, and courage, and a tribute to everyone who bore the Auschwitz tattoo or were interred in Nazi death camps during the Holocaust in WW2, this novel is inspired by real events. An inescapable part of Jewish history, Mengele’s medical experiments, carried out under the auspices of war and Hitler’s obsession with a master race are hard to understand, impossible to condone, and difficult to imagine forgiving. The human spirit that finds love in such a place must be rare, but a person in dire circumstances will grab at a kindness where it is offered. Such is the premise of this story, and it asks the question, could you forgive?
Any errors are my own.
Excerpt: “A young woman bent to retrieve her possessions. An SS officer strode past. ‘Leave. Luggage afterwards.’ She stood wide-eyed like a startled deer, one arm cradling a baby. Beside her, an elderly woman clutched a battered suitcase. The girl’s eyes darted from soldier to painted signboard and back. ‘What are we doing here, Grandmother? Why have they brought us here?’ The wind teased at her cheerful red shawl, revealing and lifting long black hair. She straightened and attempted a smile. ‘It’ll be all right, Grandmother. God has protected us on our journey.’ Voices rasped, whips cracked, dogs barked. An SS officer pushed towards a woman of about fifty. ‘How old?’ She didn’t respond, so the officer shouted. He edged closer. As a doctor, he held a privileged position, but he’d also discovered he had a gift for languages. He translated the German to stilted Hungarian, adding quietly. ‘Say you’re under forty-five. Say you are well. Stand here with the younger women.’ He moved from woman to woman, intercepting those he could. ‘Say you are well. Say your daughter is sixteen. Say you can work or have a skill. Say you aren’t pregnant.’ Miriam’s eyes glistened. ‘May He rescue us from every foe.’ She touched her grandmother’s cheek, a gentle, lingering movement, and placed a tender kiss on her baby’s forehead. She moved to stand where he pointed. Miriam’s eyes met his. He had no way to tell her he’d given her life: no right to tell her to abandon hope. ‘Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.’ ”
Readers’ reviews are hugely appreciated. If you love this story, tell your friends.

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All links will take you to Rebecca Bryn’s Author Page. Help yourselves to the freebies, but do check out the other books. Rebecca is a an award-winning writer who caters for lovers of many different genres.

The Chainmaker’s Wife

Don’t miss Book 1, The Chainmakers’ Daughter!

Rebecca Bryn

Cover reveal! At least, I think this is the final cover.

The Chainmaker’s Wife follows Jack and Rosie’s story in the chainmaking town of Hawley Heath in England’s Black Country from 1911 through the First World War to 1919, and what a tumultuous time it was in British history, especially for women. Rosie is caught up in the fight for women’s suffrage and is torn between the suffragette activists, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, and the more peaceful suffragists led by Millicent Fawcett and Mary Macarthur.

In The Chainmakers’ Daughter, we left Jack and Rosie after the successful 1910 strike of the women chainmakers of Hawley Heath against Matthew Joshua, the local chain master. After Matthew’s death, Jack and Rosie are thrust into running the factory for Marion, Matthew’s widow, with all the challenges that involves – strikes and shortages are just two problems they face when war is declared. Rosie…

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Handsome Is As Handsome Does, or does he???

Today, I’d like to welcome a very special guest, Theresa Jacobs, but BEWARE! She’s brought someone with her.

HI, Sarah, and hopefully many readers, thank you for allowing me to be here today. Let’s get right down to the good stuff –  a serial killer called Handsome.

See what I mean? The instant Theresa gets a foot in the door, HE is here!

I began writing horror/sci-fi, or speculative fiction as it’s called with mixed genres’ and had no intention of going away from that path. Until one scorcher of a summer’s day, our air conditioning broke, and I know you’re asking, what’s that got to do with writing? Oddly enough the repair person was just gabbing away about the shutters on my windows and happened to say “Did you know if someone has a star in their window it means they’re swingers.” Okay, so that was weird.

True, but workman do say odd things. I wonder if they save them up for ladies alone in the house. What did you say, Theresa?

“That’s a great way to have a stranger arrive at your door under the guise of ‘interested’ and kill you!”

Oh, glory!  Did the guy finish fixing the aircon?

AND, Bob’s your uncle, the new Serial Killer idea was born.

She’s not telling about the aircon… and it isn’t all she’s refusing to say. Handsome seems to be the boss around here.

However I did a lot of research and it’s not a star in the window that lets people know your inclinations, but something else – I can’t tell you what though. Grab Handsome to find out.

I guess we’d be safer with Handsome firmly under Kindle arrest. Everybody ready? 

To Amazon, Quickly!

Got him? Good. I feel much safer. Now, Theresa, I hope we’re not the only ones chasing your serial killer?

No, you’re all quite safe… I think… Marcy Gagon is on the case.

So, what did you do next? 

Once I finished writing about this new detective, Marcy Gagon, I decided to make her into a series because I enjoyed writing her. And as it turns out all my readers so far enjoy her and want more too. I do have too many ideas though and I paused book two, to write a children’s story, which is a month in and halfway finished. Plus I still plan on writing horror, as it’s my all time favorite.

I had noticed horror. In case any of our visitors don’t consider a serial killer on the loose scary enough, I checked one out.

Seventeen-year-old Josephine is used to new towns, the same bullies, and being a loner.
Until they move to Lilith Falls, where her world gets turned upside-down. Here she suspects a creature that can not possibly exist, just might.

With nothing to lose, she begins her search. Along the way, she finds a few unexpected and unusual friendships. And for the first time in her young life; falls in love. But it’s a love that is not only utterly wrong, it also cannot be returned.

Will Josephine finally be happy and find a place to call home? Or will the mysteries of Lilith Falls destroy her and leave her broken?

AMAZON

What I like most about the other genres is that I can make everything up, the towns, the scenery, how the story will play out. Whereas with crime books I am using Toronto, so streets and places need to be accurate and study the proper tools, forensics, and so on. It’s much harder, but the outcome is extremely satisfying.

I’m fighting the same battle, Theresa. Actually, my characters claim to have written all my romantic suspense novels, and I expect they’re right. Crime thrillers take a lot more work!

Now, my dear friend from Ontario, when you’re not writing or admiring Niagara Falls, how do spend your time?

I still work a forty-hour a week job and spend time with my husband, walk the dog, cook most of the time (my choice because he will cook too, I’m just a major foodie) and binge-watch shows. It’s too bad we need to sleep!

Err… yes. I think we’d all agree there aren’t enough hours in the day. Well, to quote from Mamma Mia, “do you want SOME MORE, folks? If you do, get those questions coming in. Theresa will be popping in and out all day.

Welcome to all my Indian Readers

So many of my books are selling in India I felt I had to say thank you. Usually, all I know about readers is the country in which they live, but I do know a few from India, and Harsha_ir has just joined my website followers, so a very special welcome to her.

Many of you already know Jaykishan as I’ve featured his book and his music.

You can find it on Amazon  India 

Or on Amazon Com

Please, if you live in India and are reading this, do leave a comment.

If you would send a photograph to me at authorsarahstuart@gmail.com and maybe a tell me a little bit yourself and your life, I’d love to add it here.

Also, I do price my books as cheaply as I can on Amazon India, but Jaykishan tells me they are still very expensive. If you’d like a free copy of one them, please email me and say which one you would like.

Thank you, Sarah

Readers’ Favorite Book Review

Author’s new book “Mollie’s Magical Tooth” receives a warm literary welcome

Author's new book "Mollie's Magical Tooth" receives a warm literary welcome

Readers’ Favorite announces the review of the Children – Picture Book book “Mollie’s Magical Tooth” by Jana Buchmann, currently available at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1735458600.

Readers’ Favorite is one of the largest book review and award contest sites on the Internet. They have earned the respect of renowned publishers like Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Harper Collins, and have received the “Best Websites for Authors” and “Honoring Excellence” awards from the Association of Independent Authors. They are also fully accredited by the BBB (A+ rating), which is a rarity among Book Review and Book Award Contest companies.

Reviewed By Sarah Stuart for Readers’ Favorite

Mollie’s Magical Tooth: A Tooth Fairy Magic Land Adventure by Jana Buchmann is a picture book beautifully illustrated by Lara Korotenko in vivid colors. She, in collaboration with Jana Buchmann, instantly picks up on the unicorn theme and the fact that most little girls like pink, the brighter the better. The story opens with an argument! Mollie has a loose tooth and when it comes out, she wants to hang it around her neck on a chain Mommy has given to her. Mommy says it must be hidden under her pillow for the tooth fairy to collect in the night. Mollie goes to bed and talks to her teddy bear. What, she wonders, does the tooth fairy do with all the teeth? Will Mollie meet the tooth fairy, Miss Pearlwirl, and find out?

Four to eight-year-olds will love the tale of Mollie’s magical tooth. Jana Buchmann takes the tooth fairy myth and builds a whole new story on it. After all, why does a fairy prize teeth so much? What does Miss Pearlwirl do with them? The answers evolve into the tale of a problem that requires Mollie’s help and its happy resolution, all written correctly so it’s easy for an adult to read as a bedtime story and perfect for older children to practice reading skills. Mollie’s Magical Tooth: A Tooth Fairy Magic Land Adventure by Jana Buchmann is more than a picture book. It’s a journey in a coach – drawn by unicorns, of course – that will pull youngsters in, hold their attention, and be treasured for a lifetime.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4797551#ixzz6XRMni9ek

Writing historical fiction

The inside story of historical fiction.

Rebecca Bryn

I fell into historical fiction writing quite by accident, but once there, I was totally hooked on the events in the past that made us who we are today. Writing this genre follows much the same basic rules as any fiction writing:

The inspiration for the story – what got my juices going.

The characters – who they are, their back stories, their relationships with one another, how I relate to them, and how they develop as people.

The setting – when and where.

The tone – is this a cheery novel, a humorous one, serious, or dark? I suppose most are a mixture.

The plot – how the story unfolds and whether it is character driven or plot driven. In my case, it’s my characters; they throw the plot out of the window and do their own thing leaving me to dig them out of impossible situations. Obviously, when…

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Celebrating Lesley Hayes, author of Written in Water Trilogy

Strange Eventful History is the final book in the Written in Water Trilogy. Amazingly, it can be read as a standalone, but I would recommend reading Exits and Entrances and Better Strangers first, otherwise, how can you be intrigued by the sameness, and yet time-changed differences, in Cordelia, Beatrice, and Rosalind?

Children of the “swinging sixties”, young women in the mid-seventies, the threesome reappear in the nineties, and age over twenty-five years to the moment when Paddy – and what a delight it is to be reacquainted with Paddy – suggests to Rosalind that she spends her retirement writing a book “about us”. My dread, the death scenes, could be pushed aside?

All of Lesley Hayes’ writing is incredible. Accurate settings our mothers talked of leading to nudges of half-remembered facts and onward to the EU Referendum build-up. Some of the characters have firm views on everything, rarely agreeing with one another, and others are too troubled with their own affairs to notice unless they impinge violently into their lives.

Most of all, after reading of youngsters and young women, the ageing of Cordelia, Beatrice, and Rosalind is a feat perhaps only a psychotherapist could achieve so brilliantly.

Strange Eventful History has been a long time coming but it was worth the wait and to all those readers who are looking to add a book, or books, to their collection, look no further until you have all the works by Lesley Hayes; they earn both their cost and their place a dozen times over, always there to be reread.

All Lesley’s Books on Amazon

Treasure of Indian Music – Meet the Author, Jaykishan Hariharbhai Kapdi

Jaykishan, my friend from a country I’ve never visited, but nobody who follows my blog will be surprised; music flows through my writing, and this is a very special time.

 

An Editor’s Pick! Congratulations my friend. 

Jaykishan grew up in a family to which music is a blessing from God. Music is hereditary to him. He has learned music from his grandfather Shri Mohanlal Ramdasji Kapdi and father Shri Hariharbhai. He has an experience, how to teach music. He is “Upantya Visharad” in “Tabla” (rhythm).

His grandfather Shri Mohanlal Ramdasji Kapdi has established a non professional music class “Shree Saurashtra Sangeet Vidyalay” in 1935 in the Bhavnagar city-364001, Gujarat State, India, to spread & serve music.

 

This book is organized into three parts.
Part one addresses the musical terms generally used in vocal & instrumental Indian music. Topics covered include Understanding Indian and Western musical notation method, Signs of Notes used in Indian music, Classical & Non-Classical Indian musical forms, Construction of “Thaat”, Construction of “Raga”, and description of 155 Indian classical “Ragas”.
Part two addresses the musical terms generally used in the Indian rhythm. Topics covered include Understanding the Indian rhythm method, signs of rhythmic words and terms, tempo, “Gharana” (different schools of Indian rhythm), and descriptions of 60 Indian rhythms.
Part three covers a spiritual emancipation through music &“Nad-Shashtra” (Acoustic).
I hope this book will open a new window in the field of Indian music and will be useful for personal study and in the field of education
How to use this book :
You can use this book
1] As a reference :
This book is organized / designed as a reference that you can refer to most of the concepts of Indian Music. A complete index of the book can also help you look up features and topics.
2] As a tutorial :
I have designed this book to be comprehensive guide to Indian Music and to include most of significant features of Indian Music that enables you to use the book as a tutorial – from beginning to end.

  Amazon

I also found some Indian music     YouTube

Please feel free to leave comments. Sarah

 

 

Grant Leishman’s Review of One Alone in the World

​Having read the first two books in this series and having enjoyed the different style of romance involved, I was keen to read One Alone in the World and see what the world would continue to do to our erstwhile heroes in this latest iteration. I was not disappointed. This was a continuation of the fascinating story crafted by a talented author in Sarah Stuart.
Richard and Maria, now married and with a young child, are managing the hotel left to them but things are tight financially, work is almost 24/7 and Maria wonders if their commitment to the business is causing her to be the sort of bad mother for their daughter Eleanor, that her mother was, for her. Richard, meanwhile, still dreams of the singing career that never quite happened and although he does get to sing in the bar of an evening, it isn’t the same as being a singing superstar and Richard feels that lost opportunity keenly. Eleanor has an idea that she thinks will solve everyone’s problems, if only she can discover who and where her maternal grandmother is. Everything is building towards a cataclysmic financial, emotional and familial disaster for our characters.

As with the first two books, the story is full of twists and turns as we watch Eleanor grow from a naive, young girl, in an equally naive, young woman. The author shows us clearly what happens when business or a career takes priority over family and how little things and small misunderstandings can be amplified to the point where they become crushing problems. Stuart always has something a little odd in her romances and One Alone in the World is certainly no exception. I was privileged to be able to satisfactorily conclude a story that I have been engrossed in since I read the first page of the first book in the series. Stuart has a conversational style of writing that sucks a reader in and allows them to quickly identify and empathise with her characters.
This is just a feel-good story that rounds off a fantastic series, or one that can indeed be read as a stand-alone novel. The author does a great job of filling in the backstory of the previous two books in the series, as we read along. I can highly recommend this for readers who like a bit of adventure and challenge in their romances.

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