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My Works The fourth in the series featuring ghostwriter- turned-sleuth Lee Bartholomew  The third in the series featuring ghostwriter-turned-sleuth Lee Bartholomew Following HOW TO SEDUCE A GHOST, HOW TO MARRY A GHOST and KILLER DATE, now comes HELD TO RANSOM, the fourth book in the Lee Bartholomew series - published by Piatkus/Little Brown on January 15th 2009.
At the beginning of HELD TO RANSOM, ghostwriter Lee Bartholomew returns to her old stomping ground of The Hamptons on Long Island. But there is a difference in her status. Newly married, she is on her honeymoon - but finds herself accompanied by her mother-in-law and not her husband. As soon as she arrives, Lee is asked to babysit a 7 year old boy to whom her step-brother Rufus has offered a summer vacation as part of the Fresh Air project. Raised in the urban squalor of the Manhattan projects, Kimothy Moses (Mo), has never been to the beach before, but on his first visit - and on Lee's watch - he is kidnapped. Soon it appears that Mo was not the target - he has been mistaken for the adopted son of a celebrity actress - and indeed he is soon found locked in a bedroom in a rental cottage off the beaten track. But he is not alone in the cottage. In the bathroom next door lies the body of a woman. And so, far from relaxing on her honeymoon, even when her husband finally turns up, Lee is drawn into the escalation of fear that spreads throughout the neighborhood as she begins to suspct a link between the kidnapping and the murder, a link that could pose a threat to her own life. * * * * In KILLER DATE (Piatkus paperback, published January 15th 2009 - formerly published under the title HOW TO COOK FOR A GHOST in hardback) Lee visits her cousin Gussie deep in rural Devon where Gussie has gone to recuperate from a disastrous marriage. But now Gussie appears to be in worse trouble than ever. In the restaurant where she is working, she has served a salad dressed in peanut oil to a woman with a peanut allergy and the woman has subsequently died. Gussie is held responsible for her death and fired. The dead woman was on a blind date with an internet suitor who never showed up. His online name was "Mr Wright". When the body of another woman scheduled for a date with Mr Wright is found at the bottom of a quarry, Lee resolves to track down the identity of the mysterious internet lover and clear her cousin's name.  The first and second books in the series featuring ghostwriter-turned-sleuth Lee Bartholomew HOW TO SEDUCE A GHOST
HOW TO SEDUCE A GHOST is the first in a series of mysteries featuring Lee Bartholomew - a neurotic 38-year old with a curious reluctance to settle down with her boyfriend of eight years. Lee is a ghostwriter whose assignments have an unnerving tendency to land her in trouble. She lives alone - by choice - in her parents' towering London house in Notting Hill yet every night she lies awake quaking with fear at the thought of the violent crime erupting just the other side of her front door. Someone is setting fire to houses in the area - along with their occupants and Lee's neigbour, children's TV presenter Astrid McKenzie, is the first victim. And when she lands the plum job of ghosting the authobiography of American soap star Selma Walker, Lee finds herself unwittingly not only at the centre of the arson/murder investigations, but also in the arms of a new and highly dangerous lover. HOW TO MARRY A GHOST
In the second book in the series, Lee Bartholomew is excited to be travelling from London to The Hamptons on Long Island where not only will she will be the maid of honour at her mother's beachfront wedding to a billionaire, but she is up for the job of ghosting the memoirs of aging rock legend Shotgun Marriott. But nothing goes as planned. First she loses the ghostwriting job to Bettina Pleshette, an ambitious - and younger - go-getter in the ghostwriting world. Then the body of a man wearing a wedding dress is washed up on the beach following Lee's mother's ceremony and he turns out to be none other than Shotgun Marriott's estranged son. And when Bettina Pleshette is also murdered, Lee finds herself stepping into the dead woman's ghostwriting shoes - and trying to solver the murders before the killer strikes again. THE BOATHOUSE
Molly Page is only 11 when she tells her father she’ll look after him forever. Since her mother died years before, it’s been just the two of them, caring for each other. Then the Murphys move in next door to their home in the London suburbs. Nora Murphy is Molly’s dream of what a mother should be – then there are her sons: irrepressible Warren with his soft heart and grand ambitions; Pete with his poetic soul and gorgeous voice; and best of all, Billy, the oldest, with the charm and looks of the screen idol he’s determined to become. Molly announces she’s going to marry the boy next door but, as her father points out, it’s a question of which one. Just as she’s made up her mind, an invitation to visit Mitzi Alexander, her American godmother in The Hamptons, changes everything. A summer at the Boathouse brings Molly face to face with her mother’s drowning and Mitzi’s hard-headed take on romance will force her to rethink not only her relationship with the Murphy brothers but also her entire future. GRACE AND FAVOR
Grace and Favor are sisters but they’ve never met. Their mother died at Favor’s birth when Grace was five years old and their father, the rogue and charmer Lucas Cammell, abandoned her to be raised by foster parents on a Welsh farm, taking the infant Favor to live with him in London. Although he is never to see Grace again, Lucas leaves her his fortune when he dies. Thirty years later, Grace, sophisticated, wealthy in her own right and a best-selling novelist has moved to The Hamptons, leaving a trail of disastrous love affairs behind her. Favor, a contented London housewife and mother, could not be more different. Both are aware of the other’s existence but their father’s presence has always come between them. Now Favor resolves to track down the sister she has never met, taking the opportunity to accompany her husband on a business trip to New York – little realizing that Grace has in fact been spying on her. They meet as strangers on the wild Atlantic coast where Grace lives. They have absolutely nothing in common other than the blood they share - one reaching out to strengthen family ties, the other determined to sever them – and only two weeks in which to capture thirty years. FALLING FOR MR WRONG
Polly de Soto wakes up one morning to find that her husband Johnny has left her in the middle of the night, creeping out of the house in search of what he thinks will be a more successful high-profile life without her. Johnny is a film producer and Polly is a literary agent who has just started up her own business from an office in their London house. When one of her clients writes a bestseller called MR WRONG and Johnny wants to acquire film rights in the book, he has to buy them from Polly. And in a gesture of consolation, he offers her a vacation to watch the filming in the South of France. But it is here that Polly meets her next Mr Wrong: Hector O’Neill, the star of the movie, who seduces her right in front of Johnny. THE VISITORS’ BOOK
Orlando Manners, heir to the beautiful Cotswolds estate of Laybridge in the English countryside, meets Lindy on a Caribbean beach and takes her home to be his bride. Lindy has won her holiday in a competition in a magazine she read at the hairdresser’s. Lindy is a hard-working middle class girl whose career is all important to her. She is not prepared for her life as Orlando’s wife where she is expected to host weekends for his debauched aristocratic circle of friends at The Cottage, his weekend retreat atLaybridge. Then she is presented with The Visitors’ Book by Orlando’s formidable godmotherVictoria Hissey – a journal begun generations earlier and continued by Orlando’s late mother, Daisy, whose entries reveal a cruelly destructive flirt completely unlike the saint Orlando remembers. But it is The Visitors’ Book that holds the key to the estate’s tragic past – and neither a marriage nor a woman’s heart may survive its revelations. |
