Melinda Hammond
Personal Information
Description
Born in Bristol, England, UK, she grew up telling stories. She would make up adventures to relate to her school friends during break times and lunch hours, and she was once caught scribbling a story instead of listening to the French lesson. As a punishment, her teacher made her translate the story into French! She left school at sixteen and worked in offices as varied as stockbrokers, marine engineers, insurance brokers, biscuit manufacturers and even a quarrying company. She married at nineteen, but continued to work until the birth of her first child. It was at that time that she decided to try her hand at her first love—writing, and shortly after the birth of her daughter she had her first book, Fortune's Lady, published under the pen name of Melinda Hammond. This was quickly followed by two more historical novels, Summer Charade and Autumn Bride, but with the birth of her twin sons the demands of family life meant that writing had to take a backseat for a few years. A compulsive scribbler, she never stopped writing and continued to work on research for her novels, experimenting with contemporary scenarios as well as writing pantomimes for her children's school. In 1989 the family moved to an isolated Pennine farmhouse in West Yorkshire, not far from Brontë country, where the family expanded to include a dog, two gerbils and a dozen chickens. The growing family needed funding and she went back to work full-time. The writing had to be put on hold. Then, in March 2000, Sarah stepped off a curb and landed in hospital with one ankle broken and one badly sprained. This laid her up on a sofa for twelve weeks and gave her the time she needed to finish a novel. She wrote as Melinda Hammond and Maid of Honour was published the same year. Since then she has never looked back. She's published more than a dozen books under this pen name and has won the Reviewers' Choice Award in 2005 from Singletitles.com for Dance for a Diamond. Her novel Gentlemen in Question was a Historical Novel Society Editors' Choice Title in November 2006. In 2012 her novel The Dangerous Lord Darrington won the Love Story of the Year by the Romantic Novelists' Association. She is now concentrating on writing romantic historical adventures for Mills & Boon.
Books
The Belles Dames Club
Miss Clarissa Wyckenham comes to London to join her pretty stepmama - only to find that Mama-Nell has formed a 'discreet club for ladies' ...! Soon she is pitched headlong into the deliciously wicked antics of the Belles Dames Club, and finds herself in conflict with the disapproving Lord Alresford. But when one of the Club's members, Lady Dorothea Gaunt, takes her pursuit of excitement to the point of indulging in a little highway robbery, what is Clarissa to do ...?
A Lady at Midnight
When Amelia Langridge accepts an invitation to stay in London as companion to the beautiful Camilla Strickland, her thoughts are merely to enjoy herself a little before settling down as the wife of the dull but dependable Edmund Crannock. Camilla's intention is to capture a rich and noble husband, and when she attracts the attention of the pleasure-loving Earl Rossleigh it seems that she will realise her ambition, but the earl is intent on another, much more dangerous quarry, and it is the level-headed Amelia who finds herself caught up in the earl's tangled affairs
Fortune's Lady
THEY GAMBLED ALL THEY HAD ON THE PROMISE OF EVERLASTING LOVE... Left to raise her young son all alone, spunky Suzanna Prentice took a job as a dancehall girl in Dodge City's roughest saloon. But coping with the hard work and lewd remarks from drunken cowhands was easier than dealing with Jared Cain. One burning glance from the handsome gambler set Suzanna's blood racing with desire. And when fate and a gunman's bullet placed the silent drifter into her tender care, the widowed beauty vowed to minister to Jared's lonely heart as well as to his wounds - following passion's call into his guarded, secret world of danger ...and breathless ecstasy!
The Dream Chasers
Vivyan Lagallan has decided to put adventure aside and marry lovely and respectable Helen Pensford. But fate intervenes by dropping the lively Miss Eustacia Marchant directly into his arms. Eustacia is determined to marry Rupert Alleyne but cannot manage to keep out of one scrape after another. To say nothing of her outrageous schemes! Regency Romance by Melinda Hammond; originally published by Robert Hale [London]
The Bargain
The Bargain is an expansion and rewriting of The Would-Be Widow. To keep her fortune, a beautiful heiress impulsively weds a penniless officer dying of wounds received at Waterloo. But when the blasted man hasn't the grace to die, she suddenly finds herself with a healthy, vibrant husband who wants to renegotiate the terms of their bargain -- and ultimately possess the heart of his bewildered bride.