Mistakes We MakeSometimes you have to dig deep to discover what you really need.
Marketing events manager Molly Keir doesn’t realise how much she still cares for her ex until she meets him with another woman. Her answer is to seize the chance of a glittering job in London – even though this will mean leaving behind her aging father and pregnant best friend Lexie Gordon.
Adam Blair is in the wrong job. Pressured by his father to join the family law firm, the stress of work helped break his marriage. Now Molly is moving to London, and he knows he needs to move on – but events soon overtake his best intentions.
A year ago, Caitlyn Murray quit her well-paid job to avoid becoming a whistleblower. Now she is stuck at home with her overworked mother and four needy step-siblings. Tempted by the offer of a good wage, she returns to her old firm – where her nightmare comes back to haunt her.
Molly and Adam seem to have gone too far to recover the love they once had, and when Caitlyn finds the courage to speak out, she brings all their worlds tumbling down.
Between FriendsThey thought he belonged safely in the past. His return threatens everything.
Marta, Carrie and Jane have been friends since they were at school. Now one is bringing up her family, another is desperately trying for children of her own, and the third is focused on her career – and each takes the support of the others as a given.
But when generous Marta offers out-of-luck actor Tom temporary shelter, her act of kindness sets in motion a tsunami of destruction. Marta’s marriage comes under threat. Timid Jane is haunted by the secret she has been hiding since she last saw Tom. And ambitious Carrie finds herself at the mercy of a man who can ruin her career.
Only by pulling together can the friends rid themselves of this menace. But is Tom too clever at sowing mistrust?
Sand in My ShoesHeadteacher Nicola Arnott prides herself on her independence. She has successfully juggled motherhood and career, coping with early widowhood by burying her emotions somewhere deep inside herself. When a cancer scare shakes her out of her careful approach to life, she finds herself thinking wistfully of her first love, a young French medical student.
She decides to revisit the sleepy French town she remembers from her teenage years – and is astonished to meet up with Luc again. The old chemistry is still there – but so is something far more precious: a deep and enduring friendship.
Can it turn into true love?
People We LoveA year after her brother’s fatal accident, Lexie’s life seems to have reached a dead end. She is back home in small-town Hailesbank with her shell-shocked parents, treading softly around their fragile emotions.
As the family business drifts into decline, Lexie’s passion for painting and for her one-time mentor Patrick have been buried as deep as her unexpressed grief, until the day her lunch is interrupted by a strange visitor in a bobble hat, dressing gown and bedroom slippers, who climbs through the window.
Elderly Edith’s batty appearance conceals a secret and starts Lexie on a journey that gives her an inspirational artistic idea and rekindles her appetite for life. With friends in support and ex-lover Cameron seemingly ready to settle down, do love and laughter beckon after all?
People We Love is available as an ebook and for preorder as a paperback. The paperback edition is due out on 26th August 2015.
Maximum ExposureAdorable but scatterbrained newspaper photographer Daisy Irvine becomes the key to the survival of The Hailesbank Herald when her boss drops dead right in front of her. And while big egos and petty jealousies hinder the struggle to save the paper, Daisy starts another campaign – to win back her ex, Jack Hedderwick.
Ben Gillies, returning after a long absence, sees childhood friend Daisy in a whole new light. He’d like to win her love, but discovers that she’s a whole lot better at taking photographs than making decisions, particularly when she’s blinded by the past.
When tragedy strikes Daisy’s family, loyalty drives her home. But it’s time to grow up and Daisy must choose between independence and love.
Maximum Exposure is available both as an ebook and a paperback.
Loving SusieScottish politician Susie Wallace is under pressure. She risks censure from her Party for her passionate and outspoken views on arts funding. A charity she’s involved with runs into difficulties. And a certain journalist seems to have it in for her. Susie stumbles across some information that rocks her world but not, apparently, her husband’s – Archie has been in on this particular secret for thirty years. Now Susie wonders if she can trust him at all. Soon, unemployed son Jonathan and successful daughter Mannie begin to feel the fallout too, fracturing the family and leaving Susie increasingly isolated. Troubled by mounting pressure from her family, her Party and the Press, Susie goes into hiding. The Party needs her back for a crucial vote, but more importantly, Archie knows he needs to find his wife quickly if they are to rebuild their relationship and reunite the family.
Loving Susie is available on Amazon, both as an ebook and in paperback.
Face the Wind and FlyAfter fifteen happy years of marriage, Kate Courtenay discovers that her charismatic novelist husband is spending more and more of his time with a young fan. She throws herself into her work, a controversial wind farm that’s stirring up tempers in the local community. Sparks fly when she goes head to head against its most outspoken opponent, local gardener Ibsen Brown – a man with a past of his own. But a scheme for a local community garden brings the sparring-partners together, producing the sort of electricity that threatens to short-circuit the whole system. Face the Wind and Fly is available both as an ebook and a paperback from Amazon.
‘The Eighth Promise’, a short story in Truly, Madly, Deeply, which is available in ebook and in paperback.
‘Where angels fear to tread’, a short story in Let’s Hear It For The Boys
My writing career took off In the 1980s and 90s. I wrote countless newspaper and magazine articles, for a range of publications from World of Interiors and Country Living through to The Herald and The Scotsman. You would also have been able to see innumerable articles for company journals on subjects as diverse as rubber glove working (for the electricity industry!!), horizontal drilling or the conservation of palaces and castles. Thankfully, I was eventually able to escape the corporate world and return to the creative writing that I love best. Here are a few books I wrote under the name Jenny Carter. A few are still available second-hand from Amazon: The Scottish Field Colour Book of Scotland, Mainstream The Highland and Islands of Scotland, Batsford The Sleeping Train, Hamish Hamilton Only your Warm Heart, Messenger Books (under a pseudonym) With Child, Birth Through the Ages, Mainstream Traditional Crafts of Scotland, Chambers Now I’m back and writing fiction!
Awards
I was runner-up in the BBC Woman’s Hour/Woman’s Weekly ‘Romantic Novelist of the Year’ competition in 1983, and in 2006, on my return to fiction writing, I won the Elizabeth Goodge Award of the Romantic Novelists’ Association .