FICTION · HISTORY
Pamela Belle
Also known as: Alice Marlow
Belle, who also writes contemporary fiction as Alice Marlow, always wanted to be an author. As a child the books she read were adventure stories like "Treasure Island," "Swallows and Amazons," and the novels of John Buchan and CS Forester. She wrote her first book at the age of twelve and having visited the site of a lovely Elizabethan manor house called Rushbrooke and observing the bare, moated island which was all that was left, she wanted to bring Rushbrooke back and chose to do so in print. Over the next few years 'The Epic', as it became known, grew and grew. Belle drew up a huge family tree and a plan of the house very like Rushbrooke. Married and a teacher of a class of six-year-olds, she wrote in longhand and, while publishers made encouraging noises, no one was prepared to risk publishing a large book by an unknown author. Eventually the agent Vivienne Schuster was wonderfully enthusiastic about it and found a publisher. "The Moon in the Water" and its two sequels were published in the UK and the USA with considerable success. Belle gave up teaching in 1985 to spend more time researching and writing. She plans to write a book about Alfred the Great if she can fit it in between looking after the children, dogs, cats and husband.
Most acclaimed
The Moon in the Water
A new life awaits… The year is 1635 When her close family are carried off by the smallpox, the small, ferociously independent Thomazine Heron finds herself an orphan at the age of ten. Not only an orphan, but a considerable heiress. Thomazine is sent to live with her Heron family cousins in the beautiful rose-coloured sprawling home of Goldhayes in Suffolk. She finds herself torn from all that she knows and thrown into a completely different world. However, she soon falls in love with the romantic house and the Heron family who live in it. There is serious, prudish Simon, loyal Edward, clever Francis, the impetuous young Jamie and their romantic sister, Lucy. When Thomazine finds herself and her fortune betrothed to her cousin Dominic Drakelon while still only a child, she knows there is something she doesn’t quite trust about the sly, handsome boy. And when she realises she is deeply in love with one of the Heron brothers and he with her, can she find a way of releasing herself from the engagement? But just when she’s starting to settle into her new life the clouds of civil war loom on the horizon, and Thomazine’s whole world – not to mention the whole of England – threatens to change forever. The bloody battles could tear the Heron family, and many others, apart for good. The Moon in the Water is a page-turning, epic, historical romance from a skilful writer of the period.
Wintercombe
Sometimes we find light in the darkest of places… Tortured by a cold, Puritan father, Silence has learned to conceal her passionate nature inside a prison like shell of passivity. Her eventual marriage does not offer her the escape that she longs for and she craves some semblance of autonomy. It is only the sweep of history that finally offers Silence the freedom she so desires. Civil war has raged and her sombre husband has been away for two years. During this time Silence – now Mistress of Wintercombe – has enjoyed a harmonious time with her children. Yet this sheltered world is shattered when enemy Cavaliers invade, causing havoc in the town. Wintercombe, once a tranquil bastion of family virtue, is transformed into an unruly, drunken, and licentious garrison. As the ugliness of war continues, Silence must learn to shed the submissive nature that life has forced her to assume and draw upon the inner strength that she has always possessed. From this turmoil a still more subtle threat dawns in the handsome shape of Captain Nick Hellier. As the battle for England is matched by the struggle within her soul, it’s not long before Captain Hellier starts to slowly unlock the chains around Silence’s fragile, Puritan heart…
Alethea
Alethea, pursuing a career as a painter, is herself pursued by three men--Jasper Sewell, an idealistic doctor, the rakish John Wilmont, Earl of Rochester, and Kit Drakelon, the obsessive, twisted, cruel tormentor of her childhood.