Book Launch

Last night the very lovely Pam Hartshorne, aka Jessica Hart, kindly invited me to the launch of her new book Time's Echo. Fittingly for a book partly set in Tudor York, she held the launch in the Medieval beamed splendour of the Merchant's Adventurer's Hall and treated us to delicious canapés and fizzy wine. Very civilised indeed.

Of course I bought a copy of the book and started reading it the second I got back home. I love Pam's romances and was really curious to see how she would tackle a completely different genre. Time's Echo is a timeslip, a genre I know very little about, and was described at the launch as part Philippa Gregory, part Barbara Erskine and part ghost story. Grace, who hasn't stopped moving since she was caught up in the Boxing Day tsunami, has ended up in York where she is sorting out her late godmother's affairs. She has never been to the city before so why does it seem so familiar and yet so different? And who is Hawise, the Tudor maidservant who she keeps hallucinating she is? She can't be possessed, can she?

I don't know the answer to those questions by the way because I am only on Chapter Five but so far it is totally enthralling and very atmospheric with a real sense of menace - and I am hooked!

York being the village masquerading as a city that it is, there were several guests at the launch that I knew, some I expected to see including fellow students from Pam's creative writing course, and a couple I really didn't, including a much loved colleague from years ago. It was lovely to catch up with Donna Douglas who is also a York writer. Her latest book The Nightingale Girls is currently flying high in the charts. This one I have finished reading and can thoroughly recommend. It's an engrossing read, set in a 1930s hospital with a huge cast of brilliantly written characters and with a brilliant sense of time and place.

I feel very lucky to know such talented writers who are so generous with their time, wisdom and advice. And who write such eminently readable books. So, if you'll excuse me I have an armchair to curl up in and a book to finish.