Charlotte Betts

Welcome to guest author Deborah Swift, who writes here about her new book The Poison Keeper. Over to you, Deborah! My main character Giulia Tofana was supposed to have caused the deaths of 600 men in 17th Century Italy. To find out why, I had to research women’s lives at the time and find out…

I was completely swept away into the shadowy and dangerous world of Giulia Tofano in Renaissance Italy.

Darjeeling Inheritance is a meticulously researched story set in Darjeeling in the 1930s. The descriptions are beautifully written and give the reader a real sense of the atmosphere of the place and the beauty of the landscape.

My mother taught me to use a sewing machine when I was eight years old and I began to make my own clothes straight away. At first I used my grandmother’s treadle Singer and when I was ten my mother gave me her ornate but ancient hand-cranked Singer.

Carol McGrath is my guest author today, writing here about medieval gardens.