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Jojo Moyes wins Romantic Novel of the Year award
10th March 2011 | 2 comments | 1 person likes this
One book stood out a mile on the shortlist for the 2011 Romantic Novel of the Year award. The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes is, as I wrote in the Daily Express last week, “everything a romantic novel should be.” By the time I got to the last few pages of Moyes’s heartrending tale of passion, adultery and lost love, I was a complete wreck. Tears poured...
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“Never trust a man with two mobile phones”
11th February 2011 | 0 comments | 1 person likes this
I once had to spend a month lying on my right-hand side after an eye operation. I couldn’t read, use the internet or watch TV but funnily enough, the days flew by – mainly thanks to the novelist Marian Keyes.
To pass the time, my daughter downloaded hours of audiobooks for me to listen to. And that’s when I discovered the wonderful Keyes. I stopped worrying about my eye as I... -
My favourite books of 2010
6th January 2011 | 1 comments | 2 people like this
January is always a dreary month – but it’s even worse than usual this year. VAT’s gone up, it’s freezing cold outside and most of my time is spent chivvying my teenage son to revise for his impending exams. If you’re fed up with January and dread the thought of yet more snow, then the most cheering answer to the winter blues is to draw the curtains, light the fire and...
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A modern family Christmas – India Knight’s insightful new novel
2nd December 2010 | 1 comments | 2 people like this
On the last day of November every year I hang a faded purple velvet advent calendar up in the kitchen and fill the 24 pockets with sweets. My daughter’s at university now and at 16 my son thinks advent calendars are babyish, but I’m still doing it. And he’ll gobble up the sweets before he leaves for the school bus every morning.
I’m not particularly keen on tradition most of the... -
Cocktails, handbags and designer heels – celebrating the RNA’s 50th birthday
4th November 2010 | 0 comments | 1 person likes this
Which romantic novelist helped Jews to escape from Nazi Germany? What did WAG mean back in 1974? Who was the first man to win the Romantic Novel of the Year award?
These are just some of the thorny questions posed in Fabulous at Fifty, an enthralling history that’s just been published to celebrate the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s 50th anniversary. From Barbara Cartland through to chick-lit, the book scrutinises the fans, the... -
Great autumn reads – and only two weeks to wait for Jilly Cooper’s new book
8th September 2010 | 0 comments | 1 person likes this
With the nights drawing in and an autumn chill in the air, I escaped to a remote Lake District farmhouse with a stash of new books to read. There are some great new reads out this month – including novels from two of my favourite authors, Elizabeth Buchan and Rosie Thomas. Elizabeth Buchan should be far better known than she is. Once a blurb writer for Penguin, she’s written ten novels, including...
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Hooked on Lynda La Plante
8th June 2010 | 0 comments | 1 person likes this
Crime has never been my favourite fiction genre. I’m absurdly squeamish and hate reading anything gory.
But over the last three years I’ve become hooked on Lynda La Plante’s compelling Anna Travis stories. I was gripped the moment I read the first one, Above Suspicion, and read the rest the moment they were published.Silent Scream, out in paperback this week, is the fifth in the series. And yet again, despite the gruesome... -
My top ten books of the year
15th December 2009 | 2 comments | 2 people like this
Newspapers are busy filling their pages with their top tens of the year. 2009 has been a vintage year for fiction so here are a few of my Christmas must-reads. High-brow, low-brow, you name it, it’s an eclectic list. In no particular order (as they say on The X-Factor), my favourites include:
1: I've bought Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows (Bloomsbury, £7.99) for almost everyone I know. An ambitious, epic novel, it...
CONTRIBUTOR
Emma Lee-Potter
Emma Lee-Potter is a journalist and author of four novels. She has two teenage children and spends her spare time worrying about the ramshackle farmhouse she bought in the south of France. The wreck has half a roof, assorted wildlife and an alarming damp problem but her friends assure her it all be perfect by 2020. She writes a weekly blog for Easy Living magazine.
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