I’m a man. And a pretty old man as well. I did languages at university a long time ago and then lived and worked in France and Switzerland before going to Italy for seven years as a teacher of English. My Italian wife and I then came back to the UK with our little daughter (now long-since grown up) where I ran a big English language school for many years. We now live in a sleepy little village in Devonshire. I’ve been writing almost all my life but it was only seven years ago that I finally managed to find a publisher who liked my work enough to offer me my first contract.

The fact that I am now writing romantic comedy is something I still find hard to explain. My early books were thrillers and historical novels. Maybe it’s because there are so many horrible things happening in the world today that I feel I need to do my best to provide something to cheer my readers up. My books provide escapism to some gorgeous locations and, as a writer, I obviously have to go there in person and check them out first. I love my job…

Social Media Links –

Website: www.tawilliamsbooks.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/tawilliamsbooks

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Every year on the same day, on the anniversary, I receive a single black rose. Thirteen years of dark petals, jagged thorns, dredging up memories I’ve tried to forget…

I’ve packed up my life. All my belongings are carefully sealed in labelled boxes, my suitcases ready for my big move. I’m just days away from a new life abroad with my boyfriend, Ben.

No one knows the real reason I’m desperate to leave.

My best friend, Lena, is throwing me a leaving party. A celebration, to say goodbye. Champagne to toast my farewell. Speeches, full of fond memories.

No one knows what I’m running from.

Then another black rose appears, dragging up thirteen years of buried memories. My passport goes missing. The very people I am trying to escape from turn up to our house.

Someone knows what I did.

This party was meant to be the first night of the rest of my life – but now I don’t know if I’ll see tomorrow.

Someone knows my secret. They’re in my home, at my party, and they’re making me pay for it.

Psychological thrillers don’t get more addictive or gasp-worthy than this! Fans of K.L. Slater, The Girl on the Train and The Wife Between Us will love this unputdownable page-turner.

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Joe had long hair and John Lennon glasses and wasn’t her type at all. He looked as if he listened to old hippy music and played a guitar.

Our eyes meet and her smile flickers at me. It’s one of those unpleasant smiles that looks like it hides a mouthful of rotten teeth.

Our eyes meet and I bat away that sliver of uncertainty about her that wriggles inside me like a tapeworm.

My Review:

This slowly evolving tale was maddeningly paced and zigzagged through two timelines which were thirteen years apart, with frequent vague mentions of a significant event, although we aren’t given the exact details until much later of what that significant antecedent entailed.   And I was all about the knowing. So many shifty trick cards this canny author pulled from her sly sleeves. I was totally crushed amidst all the ruthless twists and turns to learn that no one was trustworthy, everyone had their own agenda, and most ended up a bit screwed over, hmm, sounds a lot like real life come to think of it…

When you lose the love of your life, how do you find yourself again?

For Tabitha, the day that changed everything started like any other.

She woke up, slid her feet into fluffy slippers, wrapped herself in a dressing gown and tiptoed out of her bedroom, leaving her husband Andy sleeping. Downstairs, she boiled the kettle and enjoyed a cup of tea as the sun rose.

Upstairs, Andy’s alarm sounded, and Tabitha took him a freshly brewed coffee, like every other morning.  Except today, the incessant beeping rang out and her husband hadn’t stirred. She called his name, she nudged his shoulder. But Andy wouldn’t wake up.

Three years later Tabitha is trying her hardest to get by in the shadow of her grief. She may have lost the love of her life but she won’t give up on the family they dreamed of. Fostering troublesome teenage girls and a newborn baby is a chance to piece together her broken heart.

But being a mother isn’t easy, and neither is healing the heartache she carries around. After losing everything, could saving these three children help Tabitha save herself too?

This stunning tale will make you laugh and cry in equal measure, hold your loved ones close and see the beauty in the little things in life. Fans of Jojo Moyes, Jodi Picoult and Diane Chamberlain will love this moving and uplifting story.

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She wished she could grab a handful of his ashes and scatter them in all the places they’d loved. She wished they were like seeds and in planting them, they’d bring him back. That in sowing them in the quarters of the world that they’d loved, she’d be able to capture moments as if they were happening all over again. That by bringing him back in that way she’d feel that she was being held by him once again and somehow his seed would settle inside her and they’d go on to have the family they’d dreamed of.

‘You don’t want to talk about it because it hurts. Some things are better left unsaid. Some things are better dealt with by eating ice cream.’ And just like that, Tabitha had been schooled by a fifteen-year-old. Because how could she argue with that.

My Review:

This was a slowly evolving and heart-squeezing women’s fiction tale of loss and family drama. This stubborn young widow must have lost her mind for taking on two obnoxious, challenging, and troubled fifteen-year-olds twins and a medically involved newborn as her first attempt at fostering children; in addition to living out in the middle of nowhere and without transportation. I would have needed a fully stocked wine cellar, bars on the windows, and an Uber and therapist on speed dial before even considering such an insane scheme. This was my introduction to the taut storytelling of Catherine Miller, and her angsty tale was thoughtfully and perceptively written with observant insights while teasing and poking at my curiosity as she doesn’t let us in on the actual events of the day that changed everything until 84% into the book, and by then, I had puzzled out the correct scenario that was, thankfully, far afield of my initial assumption.

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About the Author

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Her face was pale with a glistening sheen of sweat. She blinked like a mole in a sunbeam.

The decor was as Lena expected: the ubiquitous chintz of a house decorated in the seventies. It smelt of mothballs and loneliness.

I wish I’d never borrowed from those scoundrels! … I should have known not to get involved with them as soon as I went to their office. It was above a Turkish barbershop, you know. Men getting their ear hairs singed off with matches while they drink coffee sludge and home-brewed liquor and chain-smoke.

The sun had made Islington like an oven. As she’d walked through Islington Green, she’d seen usually conservative Londoners rolling up their trousers and removing their shirts, lying prostrated around the tiny stretch of grass as if victims of battle. Tomorrow they’d be an assortment of shades of angry pink, bad-tempered and painful to the touch as they crowded themselves into humid tube carriages.

A pity such a heavenly face has been installed on an empty brain. Like painting the Sistine Chapel with crayons.

 My Review:

I was pleasantly entertained by this amusing cozy mystery, I certainly didn’t guess the outcome and I liked that I couldn’t. A Clean Canvas was the second in a series, and while I would most likely enjoy reading the first book, it was not necessary as this volume had strong legs and could stand, walk, and run well enough on its own. I always find it interesting to be given the view of an outsider and Lena was a hard-working and ambitious Hungarian immigrant who struggled with the nuances of the English language as well as the customs and idioms. She endeavored to keep herself contained but her malapropisms and keen observations were clever, colorful, and humorous. Lena was proud, and I was proud of and for her to have established her own cleaning company, and she always had her “eyeball open” looking for sidelines to incorporate and expand her business. I enjoyed Ms. Mundy’s style and characters enough to continue on with the next in the series with A Messy Affair.

Sometimes love is unpredictable…

Twenty-nine-year-old Charlotte Rosen has a secret: she’s a widow. Ever since the fateful day that leveled her world, Charlotte has worked hard to move forward. Great job at a hot social media analytics company? Check. Roommate with no knowledge of her past? Check. Adorable dog? Check. All the while, she’s faithfully data-crunched her way through life, calculating the probability of risk—so she can avoid it.

Yet Charlotte’s algorithms could never have predicted that her late husband’s ashes would land squarely on her doorstep five years later. Stunned but determined, Charlotte sets out to find meaning in this sudden twist of fate, even if that includes facing her perfectly coiffed, and perfectly difficult, ex-mother-in-law—and her husband’s best friend, who seems to become a fixture at her side whether she likes it or not.

But soon a shocking secret surfaces, forcing Charlotte to answer questions she never knew to ask and to consider the possibility of forgiveness. And when a chance at new love arises, she’ll have to decide once and for all whether to follow the numbers or trust her heart.

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She’s wearing a size XL Slayer T-shirt as a dress with a choke chain and Dr. Martens combat boots. The cool thing about Los Angeles is that one man’s freak show is another’s fashion icon.

“Hey, can you hand me scissors from the junk drawer?” Casey instead pulls a switchblade from her bra and cocks it open with the flick of her finger. They must not happen often, but I can tell she lives for moments like this.

Not a single inch of her body jiggles, especially not her fake double Ds. That’s the difference between a New York girl like myself and an LA chick like Gemma. My closet has Spanx, hers does not.

He’s my late husband’s friend. Widow Code would say it’s a lane I should never swim in—even though I kind of cannonballed it once before.

My Review:

I struggled with this one a bit as the first person POV narrative was stuffed to bursting with observations and references to popular social trends, fashion, celebrities, text-speak acronyms, etc. I most likely would have gotten considerably more out of the tale if I were up to date on the cutting edge and viral influences, but alas, much of Ms. Belden’s cleverness sailed right over my unbleached head as I am long past the hip, chic, or cool brands and labels stage and have well and fully eased into the softly textured, comfortable, stiletto-free and gentle lifestyle that I plan to continue to indulge in between middle-age and the dirt-nap.   However, I understood the intent even though I was unfamiliar with much of the what or the who she was inferring half the time.

I also found it a rather arduous undertaking to fully appreciate the main character of Charlotte, as she was rather obnoxiously self-involved, driven and fraught with tension. Charlotte’s narrative frequently seemed to spin with a negative frenetic energy that kept me on edge, yet I couldn’t quit on her as, despite my lack of ease with Charlotte’s selfishness, and my ignorance of the current icons of popular culture, Ms. Belden’s storylines hooked me while her wit and snarky humor reeled me in and kept a smirk on my face. I was intrigued and needed to know the full story while hoping I wasn’t heeding a siren’s call that was luring me to meet my demise on the rocks… I’ve been fooled before.

I am glad I stuck with it as Charlotte’s tale was worth the effort as she finally retrieved her cranium from the dark recesses of her colon, gained some insight, and redeemed herself from her cold, uninvolved, and binary thinking. I enjoyed her epiphanies and evolution, although I was holding my breath for her HEA as I would have been stamping my little foot and creating new expletives for Ms. Belden had she not given her one.