1–What is the title of your latest release? My latest book is called GOOD TASTE. It came out in paperback in the US in November. 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? It’s set in 1932, at the time of the Great Depression, and the main character is Stella Douglas, a food journalist who has been commissioned to write a history of English cookery. Stella’s publisher wants this to be a book that will raise morale, that will make people feel good about their national story and their cuisine. But as she sets out on her research, travelling around the English countryside and speaking with the public, Stella discovers that this history is rather more complicated – and then she comes under the influence of certain people who have their own agendas and want to manipulate what she’s writing. It’s a book about food, about what it means to be English and it’s the story of a career-minded young writer trying to make her way in a society which still has lots of boundaries for women. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? This book takes the reader on a culinary tour around England,…

As we turn the page from a miserable 2020 into what everyone hopes will be a much better 2021, we’ll look at fiction that involves people trying to rebuild their lives after the even-greater tragedy of World War I—which traumatized the world by adding the first global pandemic on top of an already-horrific war.  In settings varying from England to France to Italy, this month’s collection of stories demonstrates that nothing is stronger than the human spirit’s will to survive. We’ll begin in England with THE POPPY WIFE by Caroline Scott.  Three brothers, Harry, Will and Francis, head off to war, leaving behind family and Francis’s wife Edie.  Only Harry returns.  But while Will’s death is confirmed and Harry was present when Francis was wounded and was convinced the wound was mortal, Francis is only “presumed” to have been killed in action.  When Edie receives a photo of Francis that appears to have been recently taken, she’s convinced he must still be alive.  She enlists Harry, who is working in France for grieving families who hire him to photograph the gravestones of the men they’ve lost, to help her look for Francis. As the story moves back and forth between…