Fresh Fiction excerpt from A SHORE THING     Muriel clambered over the wall and crouched beside the crumpled rider. He lay hatless, face down in the grass, and she put a tentative hand to his shoulder. “Are you all right?” she asked. “My friend is a doctor. Lie still, and I’ll fetch him. It will only be a moment.” The man rolled over, his palm and fingers pressed to his eyes. “Lucy?” he groaned. “No.” Muriel sat back on her heels. “Is that your wife? I’ll fetch her, if you like.” The man made a low, negatory sound of distress. After a decade of travels through harsh and varied terrains, Muriel had learned the rudiments of first aid. If necessary, she could clean and dress a wound, no matter how gruesome, trusting that her nerve wouldn’t fail. In this instance, there was nothing gruesome to confront. The man’s skull was intact. He’d given it a good knock, though—how good a knock she couldn’t say. James could say. But where was he? She looked behind her. Stone wall. Blue sky. Two white gulls hanging in the air. James wasn’t vaulting toward them, and those three artists weren’t either. Were they…

1–What is the title of your latest release? ARTFULLY YOURS 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? It’s a slow-burn Victorian romance about an art forger who gets dangerously entangled with the one man capable of seeing through her. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? I’ve always loved Pre-Raphaelite paintings and they inspired me to write a series of books set in and around the late 19th century London art world. The first book, The Duke Undone, follows Lucy, a painting student at the Royal Academy. She wants to paint dazzling pictures and make a name for herself. With Artfully Yours, I imagined a heroine with a very different relationship to art. Nina never signs her name to anything she paints. As a forger, she exists in the art world’s shadow. Scenes take place in galleries and auction houses and museums, but also in the forger’s workshop, where she fakes Rembrandts with her brother. 4–Would you hang out with your heroine in real life? I would, absolutely. I wrote Artfully Yours during the pandemic lockdown, when I was at peak loneliness and missing everyone. As a result, Nina feels more like a friend…