WONDERFUL by LOUISE BEECH – coming 1st June!
A Hollywood idol.
The Virgin Mary.
An everyday girl from Hull.
Three women, three eras, surprising things in common…
On 4th August 1962, the night she should have died, Marilyn Monroe has a visitor who changes her destiny. The Virgin Mary appears in her kitchen with a message. Inspired, Marilyn abandons her home, her life, her fame, and disappears into the night…
Fifty-four years later, in a Hull kitchen, Flora Baker finds Mary, bathed in light. She has a similar message for the working class woman dreaming of a better life…
But do Marilyn and Flora have more in common than Mary’s visit? Are they linked across time? And is Mary’s message for all the women of the world?
Wonderful is about the way women are portrayed in both history and the world of celebrity, about women not being quiet, and about women united by the shared stories that shape them.
LIGHTS OUT by Louise Swanson
Here’s the blurb: A state of emergency has been declared in the UK. A complete night-time switch off has begun. From now on, at 8pm every night, all electricity cuts out.
The Government promises it’s a temporary measure. They promise they are always thinking of your safety.
But for Grace, the darkness is anything but safe.
Someone is coming into her house under its cover every night while she lies in bed upstairs, too terrified to sleep. It’s something who knows her past, who knows why she has more reason to fear the dark than most…
And every morning she wakes to a new note from the intruder:
I have you in my sights. Love, The Night.
But how can Grace hide, when there’s nowhere left that’s safe?
The play version of my debut novel – How to be Brave – is coming to the stage in October 2024. Watch for a full list of the dates. It’s touring East and North Yorkshire, with a week’s run at Beverley’s East Riding Theatre, and two nights at Hull Truck.
END OF STORY:
YOU MIGHT KNOW HOW THIS STORY BEGINS.
Once upon a time, there was a writer named Fern.
She was a bestseller. An award-winner. Loved by readers and critics alike. With her words, she changed the world.
Until her story took a turn.
Now Fern is a cleaner in a hospital. Condemned to anonymity. Because reading books has become a crime.
Only, Fern doesn’t plan on going down without a fight. She’ll keep writing, no matter the consequences. She will make her voice heard.
Because Fern’s story is only beginning.
BUT CAN YOU GUESS HOW IT WILL END?
Eighteen Seconds: Family is the best thing in your life. And the worst.
My mother once said to me, ‘I wish you could feel the way I do for eighteen seconds. Just eighteen seconds, so you’d know how awful it is.’
I thought about it. Realised we could all learn from being in another person’s head for eighteen seconds. Eighteen seconds inside Grandma Roberts’ head as she sat alone with her evening cup of tea, us girls upstairs in bed. Eighteen seconds inside one-year-old Colin’s head when he woke up in a foster home without his family. Eighteen seconds inside the head of a girl waiting for her bedroom door to open.
Writer, Louise Beech, looks back on the events that led to the day her mother wrote down her last words, then jumped off the Humber Bridge. She missed witnessing the horror herself by minutes.
Louise recounts the pain and trauma of her childhood alongside her love for her siblings with a delicious dark humour and a profound voice of hope for the future.
DAFFODILS: A Memoir
Louise has revealed the harrowing story in which she reflects on her life and the bridge incident that shook her family to the core.
Content warning: suicide.
2019. Dawn. The River Humber. A misty February walk. Surprise early daffodils. A picture taken. Then forgotten. Because five hours later my world shattered.
My mother jumped off the Humber Bridge. Had those yellow flowers not delayed me, I might have been there. Could I have stopped her?
In the aftermath of this violent act, I turned to my writing, to my beloved siblings, to our only uncle. I was forced to look at events that led to this suicide attempt. At relationships wrecked by alcoholism. At chronic depression. At our care records. At my childhood. At my mother. At buried trauma never fully explored before. At myself …
When I much later found the picture of those surprise daffodils, I knew it was time to write about that day. I began typing the story that inspired so many of my fictional characters, that shaped the testing things they endured.
My own story.
NOTHING ELSE
A professional pianist searches for her sister, who was taken when their parents died, aided on by her childhood care records and a single song that continues to haunt her.
Heather Harris is a piano teacher and professional musician, whose quiet life revolves around music, whose memories centre on a single song that haunts her. A song she longs to perform again. A song she wrote as a child, to drown out the violence in their home. A song she played with her little sister, Harriet.
But Harriet is gone … she disappeared when their parents died, and Heather never saw her again.
When Heather is offered an opportunity to play piano on a cruise ship, she leaps at the chance. She’ll read her recently released childhood care records by day – searching for clues to her sister’s disappearance – and play piano by night … coming to terms with the truth about a past she’s done everything to forget.
An exquisitely moving novel about surviving devastating trauma, about the unbreakable bond between sisters, Nothing Else is also a story of courage and love, and the power of music to transcend – and change – everything.
THIS IS HOW WE ARE HUMAN
This Is How We Are Human is my seventh novel and was released in 2021. It was inspired by my dear friend BBC presenter, Fiona Mills, and her son Sean, who is autistic. He was having trouble finding love, meeting girls, and navigating sex. I knew this was something that should be explored, and they gave me their blessing to create a fiction inspired by these experiences. It was a Clare Mackintosh August Book of the Month 2021. Read on for the blurb…
Sebastian James Murphy is twenty years, six months and two days old. He loves swimming, fried eggs and Billy Ocean. Sebastian is autistic. And lonely.
Veronica wants her son Sebastian to be happy … she wants the world to accept him for who he is. She is also thinking about paying a professional to give him what he desperately wants.
Violetta is a high-class escort, who steps out into the night thinking only of money. Of her nursing degree. Paying for her dad’s care. Getting through the dark.
When these three lives collide – intertwine in unexpected ways – everything changes. For everyone.
A topical and moving drama about a mother’s love for her son, about getting it wrong when we think we know what’s best, about the lengths we go to care for family … to survive … This Is How We Are Human is a searching, rich and thought-provoking novel with an emotional core that will warm and break your heart.
I AM DUST
I Am Dust is my sixth novel and was released in 2020. It was a Top Six Pick in Crime Monthly, a LoveReading Monthly Pick, and featured as the main book at the Festival of Words 2020. In many ways, this is a very personal book. I wrote it this year during a difficult time in my life. It was my saviour. I explore some dark themes – what happens after we die, obsession, art as therapy, self-harm, and love. Always love. I really hope you all enjoy it. Isn’t this cover beautiful? Read on for the blurb…
The Dean Wilson Theatre is believed to be haunted by a long-dead actress, singing her last song, waiting for her final cue, looking for her killer…
Now Dust, the iconic musical, is returning after twenty years. But who will be brave enough to take on the role of ghostly goddess Esme Black, last played by Morgan Miller, who was murdered in her dressing room?
Theatre usher Chloe Dee is caught up in the spectacle. As the new actors arrive, including an unexpected face from her past, everything changes. Are the eerie sounds and sightings backstage real or just her imagination? Is someone playing games?
Is the role of Esme Black cursed? Could witchcraft be at the heart of the tragedy? And are dark deeds from Chloe’s past about to catch up with her?
Not all the drama takes place onstage. Sometimes murder, magic, obsession and the biggest of betrayals are real life. When you’re in the theatre shadows, you see everything.
And Chloe has been watching…
CALL ME STAR GIRL
Call Me Star Girl was released in 2019 and is my fifth novel. It was a big change for me as it’s a dark, psychological thriller, but it was a blast to write. It got to Number One on the Kobo chart. It was a Thriller You’ll Love in Prima, one of the Six Best Pacy Page-Turners in Woman and Home, a Must Read in the Saturday Express magazine, and called The Dark One in Heat magazine. The Irish Independent called it a unique psychological thriller packed with tension and suspense. It was a Book of the Month at LoveReadingUK, longlisted for the Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize, and won the Best magazine Book of the Year in the Big Book Awards 2019.
And here’s the blurb…
Tonight is the night for secrets…
A taut, emotive and all-consuming psychological thriller, reminiscent of Play Misty for Me … from the critically acclaimed author of Maria in the Moon and The Lion Tamer Who Lost…
Pregnant Victoria Valbon was brutally murdered in an alley three weeks ago – and her killer hasn’t been caught.
Tonight is Stella McKeever’s final radio show. The theme is secrets. You tell her yours, and she’ll share some of hers.
Stella might tell you about Tom, a boyfriend who likes to play games, about the mother who abandoned her, now back after fourteen years. She might tell you about the perfume bottle with the star-shaped stopper, or about her father …
What Stella really wants to know is more about the mysterious man calling the station … who says he knows who killed Victoria, and has proof.
Tonight is the night for secrets, and Stella wants to know everything…
With echoes of the Play Misty for Me, Call Me Star Girl is a taut, emotive and all-consuming psychological thriller that plays on our deepest fears, providing a stark reminder that stirring up dark secrets from the past can be deadly…
THE LION TAMER WHO LOST
The Lion Tamer Who Lost is my fourth novel and was released in 2018. It was a LoveReading Star Book, and was highly praised by the Daily Express and Good Housekeeping magazine. It shortlisted for the Popular Romantic Novel of the Year at the Romantic Novel Awards 2019, and longlisted for the Polari Prize 2019.
And here’s the blurb…
Long ago Andrew made a childhood wish. One he has always kept in a silver box with a too-big lid that falls off. When it finally comes true, he wishes it hadn’t…
Long ago Ben dreamed of going to Africa to volunteer at a lion reserve. When he finally goes there, it isn’t for the reasons he imagined…
Ben and Andrew keep meeting where they least expect. Some collisions are by design, but are they for a reason? Ben’s father would disown him for his relationship with Andrew, so they must hide their love. Andrew is determined to make it work, but secrets from his past threaten to ruin everything…
Ben escapes to Zimbabwe to finally fulfil his lifelong ambition. But will he ever return to England? To Andrew? To the truth?
A dark and poignant drama, The Lion Tamer Who Lost is also a mesmerisingly beautiful love story, with a tragic heart…
MARIA IN THE MOON
Maria in the Moon, my third novel, was released in 2017. It got to no 22 in the WHSmith chart, was a bestseller on Amazon, a Must Read in the Sunday Express, and a Book of The Year 2017 at LoveReading. The Irish Times compared it to Maggie O’Farrell. Prima magazine called it a ‘beautiful and compassionate read.’
Here’s the blurb…
‘Long ago my beloved Nanny Eve chose my name. Then one day she stopped using it. I try now to remember why, but I just can’t.’
Thirty-one-year-old Catherine Hope has a great memory. But she can’t remember everything. She can’t remember her ninth year. She can’t remember when her insomnia started. And she can’t remember why everyone stopped calling her Catherine-Maria.
With a promiscuous past, and licking her wounds after a painful breakup, Catherine wonders why she resists anything approaching real love. But when she loses her home to the devastating deluge of 2007 and volunteers at Flood Crisis, a horrifying memory emerges …and changes everything.
Dark, poignant and deeply moving, Maria in the Moon is an examination of the nature of memory, of truth, and of the defences we all build to protect ourselves, when reality is too disturbing to contemplate…
And you can order it here – Maria in the Moon
HOW TO BE BRAVE
How to be Brave – my debut novel – was released in 2015, and is available on Kindle, in paperback and as an audiobook, read by the amazing Finty Williams, daughter of Judi Dench. It was a Guardian Reader’s Pick 2015 and got to Number 4 in the Amazon Kindle Chart. The Irish Times called it ‘deft and full of emotion.’ It has almost 200 reviews on Amazon, 87% of them 5*, and over 350 ratings on Goodreads.
Here’s the blurb…
All the stories died that morning … until we found the one we’d always known.
When nine-year-old Rose is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, Natalie must use her imagination to keep her daughter alive. They begin dreaming about and seeing a man in a brown suit who feels hauntingly familiar, a man who has something for them. Through the magic of storytelling, Natalie and Rose are transported to the Atlantic Ocean in 1943, to a lifeboat, where an ancestor survived for fifty days before being rescued. Poignant, beautifully written and tenderly told, How To Be Brave weaves together the contemporary story of a mother battling to save her child’s life with an extraordinary true account of bravery and a fight for survival in the Second World War. A simply unforgettable debut that celebrates the power of words, the redemptive energy of a mother’s love … and what it really means to be brave.
Here’s where you can order it…
Here’s a wonderful picture of Grandad Colin, one of the inspirations behind the book, and his lifeboat at the moment of the amazing rescue.
THE MOUNTAIN IN MY SHOE
My second novel, The Mountain in my Shoe, was released in 2016. It longlisted for the Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize, and was a bestseller on Amazon.
Here is a trailer…
And here’s the blurb…
A missing boy. A missing book. A missing husband. A woman who must find them all to find herself.
On the night Bernadette finally has the courage to tell her domineering husband that she’s leaving, he doesn’t come home. Neither does Conor, the little boy she’s befriended for the past five years. Also missing is his lifebook, the only thing that holds the answers. With the help of Conor’s foster mum, Bernadette must face her own past, her husband’s secrets and a future she never dared imagine in order to find them all. Exquisitely written and deeply touching, The Mountain in My Shoe is both a gripping psychological thriller and a powerful and emotive examination of the meaning of family … and just how far we’re willing to go for the people we love.
Order the book here…
Louise Beech/Louise Swanson 