A Story to Tell; A Secret to Keep

Family secrets are never a good thing – or are they?

A Story to Tell: A Secret to Keep is the compelling debut novel by Fiona Rich. This domestic noir is full of emotional depth, that slowly builds suspense leaving the reader hungry to delve deeper into the complex and challenging lives of Tim, Libby and Josh and learn more about the secrets that the family hold. It is a story full of intrigue and plot twists that will keep you guessing until the end.

Each of the main characters have faced something traumatic in their lives, they all have their own dark secret that impacts on them psychologically; a secret that could damage the relationships of those closest to them. But will the choices that each of them make to resolve their personal crisis and overcome their psychological traumas release them from their inner turmoil, or lock them in an endless conflict of guilt and deception?

A Stranger's Keep

Michael’s world crumbled the week after his honeymoon; his wife was murdered, his best friend betrayed him, and in his line of work, no trust meant death.

With no one to trust, Michael lived in peaceful solitude, till a stranger stumbled into his home and led him to the truth behind his wife’s murder.

Chased by those who murdered her parents for reasons she couldn’t explain, Abigail found shelter in the house of a stranger, unbeknownst to her, she had just stumbled into the lion’s den.

Could he love her and his late wife together? Could he forgive her connection with the death of his wife? Did they ever have a chance at all?

Life gives us chances, it’s our choice to make use of them, or hold on to the past…

A Tale from a Promised Land

This novel tells the story of three generations of an Australian-Sri Lankan migrant family. After a bomb explodes near two leading schools in the city of Colombo, he persuades his wife that for the sake of their children they must leave and start a new life in Australia. After her mother passes away, her father — a retired school principal — agrees to join them in Australia.

The novel identifies the travails that beset new migrants from traditional conservative Asian backgrounds to a western oriented materialistic culture, which now accepts migrants from multi-cultural and multi-lingual backgrounds but expects the new arrivals to assimilate and integrate with the society of which they now form a part.

This novel provides deep insights into socio-cultural and psychological barriers encountered by a first generation of Sri Lankan migrants after their arrival in a new country. Through the combined interactions of a few protagonists, the novel depicts the struggles of socio-cultural adjustments, gains and pains of a South Asian migrant family who try to adjust their lives in a country with western socio-economic and cultural values.

A Tale from All My Sisters

The seventy-two individual short stories in the book are based on the tales of seventy-two real women. 

These tales are a reflection of the diverse lives and dilemmas that many women all over the world today face, and the inner strength that women can have to overcome adversity. 

The book begins with a story of a woman who leaves everything she has behind and takes the leap of faith in moving to England in the early 1960s. It then follows different women, covering issues such as homelessness, cancer, adoption, death, motherhood and transgender. It highlights the reality that age, race, religion and class are not the only difficulties that women all over the world encounter.

A Tale of Crystal Visions

There’ll be song and laughter, music and dance

This night is so young, dreamer of sweet dreams

There be playful romantic song per chance

Before the morning where the dawning gleams

Our souls are like diamonds

with facets cut by the masters

We are capable

We expect the unexpected

And we think the unthinkable

And each time we stay connected

Life becomes more incredible

We do undoable doing

And find the unfindable

And time in mindful thinking

We reach, grasp the unreachable

We stand amazed at new meaning

At new found realizations

At new found paths we are treading

And always there are new questions

We then learn the unlearnable

Question the unquestionable

We achieve the unachievable

And find that, we are capable

A Tale of Two Pixies

A story of, how at times, people shoot themselves in the foot, metaphorically speaking, only to wonder who inflicted the wound.

Then, wouldn’t you know it, along comes help from an unusual quarter...

But, of course, many things can happen in a quasi-world.

You never know who your neighbours are these days, but you always know when there’s something odd about them.

Funny that...

A Time in Paris

In the sweltering Indian summer of 1870, a young Englishman is sent to Paris as Prussian invaders advance on the French capital with the largest siege army ever assembled. The City of Light is cut off from the outside world, the population trapped behind its tall ramparts. As the siege continues for a month, then a second, a hungering third, a frozen fourth and into a starved fifth, the Englishman, a stock young gentleman of his Victorian times, falls in love with a radical French enchantress who by chance saves his hide. The lovers’ fate is entwined with those of a tormented French general appointed to defend Paris and an impatient Prussian grandee (Otto von Bismarck) hell-bent on bringing the ‘capital of civilisation’ to its knees. The unlikely love story turns upon true events that have shaken our world through to the present.

Praise for David Lawday’s recent book Danton: Giant of the French Revolution:

“Spirited and highly readable… Lawday creates some great set pieces and striking turning points… He is able to capture the atmosphere of the early revolution: its inflammable mix of devilment and righteousness, reckless selflessness and flagrant self-promotion. He sees that Danton was more than the sum of his crimes, the sum of his secrets; he celebrates his ‘large heart and violent impulses in an irresolvable conflict’.”

Hilary Mantel, The London Review of Books.

A Time of Flames – Book One

‘There is a void within me; a darkness that no amount of booze, sex or drugs, can heal. Each morning, I wake with a name on my lips. Always a girl’s name. Always the wrong name.’

An abducted boy and an imprisoned girl, separated by space and time, are destined to be lovers and saviours of a broken world.

Sebastian is privileged, handsome and lost. He struggles with depression and substance abuse as he desperately tries to come to terms with a world he doesn’t understand.

Sebastian paints to quell the darkness. His work depicts a sombre world full of decaying gothic buildings. One night, as if guided by another’s hand, he paints the portrait of a beautiful woman. He gazes into the jade green eyes that mirror his own, and there he finds a reason to live. With every quickening beat of his heart, he knows he has painted a living, breathing woman. The woman who will heal the void within him. The woman he must find. The woman whose name is on his lips at the break of each new day.

As he begins his search, the path Sebastian treads is more mysterious and dangerous than he could have ever imagined. It leads him to a strange house where he discovers horrifying secrets and learns the truth about the woman he seeks and her link to the ruthless man who called himself his father.

A Vanished Hand

What do you do when the ghost of a serial killer taps you on the shoulder and follows you home? Haunted and accused of her secretary’s murder, Kate turns to her glamorous, psychic friend Jane and the mysterious witch Diana. Can they uncover the identity of the nineteenth century serial killer so that celestial justice may take its course? Snow is falling on the ancient walls of Kate’s home town; darkness descends and time is running out…

A Walk in "Wild" Wales with George Borrow

In his Welsh classic, Borrow provides an account of his walk from Llangollen to Swansea in 1856, a walk which at the time would have been a pursuit of epic proportions. Borrow’s literary musings, historical anecdotes and experiences along the way, presented in the form of a journal, provide an insight to Welsh life as it was in the middle of the 19th Century.

In a world immersed in the industrial revolution, Borrow was undoubtedly struck by the magnitude and pace of change that was happening around him. But it would not have been evident to him that the world could be anything like it is today. A world without motor cars, no electricity, no telephones, no aeroplanes, no police force anything like we know it today and the wonders of a technological revolution that has turned the world on its head not even a figment of the imagination, that was the world of Borrow.

A Walk in “Wild” Wales with George Borrow compares Borrow’s Wales with Wales today and captures events that have impacted on towns that Borrow passed through and some of the characters they have produced who have helped shape a Welsh culture built on a unique language and a hardiness of spirit descendant from its farming and mining heritage.  

A Way to Go

An intense romance developed out of an illicit and highly sensual affair of more than 10 years which survived many hurdles.

Freed from the ties of work and family by retirement and bereavement, the couple embark on a trip of a lifetime around the coasts of Europe, with its idyllic beaches, historic cities, fascinating art galleries and ancient sites.

This is a gripping and highly readable novel full of wit, fun and escapist pleasures, but with disturbing happenings which raise serious issues of love, estrangement and loss.

A Word of Hope

Each of us are on the journey of mortality. A journey in which no one is spared a handful of heartaches, a time of trial, or a darkest hour. And though our time on Earth is a time for joy, love, and life– there will come a time, or many, of shadow when a simple word of hope is all that seems to part the darkness surrounding us. A time when it is only hope that is light enough to keep us moving on our path. Where this hope can be found is a question whose answer is too individually unique to capture in a simple phrase.

A Word of Hope is a collection of poetry that explores some sources of hope and the faith required to find them. Other poems in the collection paint a picture of the hardships of mortality as these are the times hope is most needed. These poems serve as reminders that no matter what may darken our lives, there is some light that will always shine. There is always hope to be had.