Buying a holiday home in France was something Penelope had wanted to do for years, but the experience doesn't go as smoothly as anticipated.Trouble starts when Penelope's boyfriend leaves her for the attractive French woman living next door. On top of the chaotic situation developing abroad, there are family and work issues at home to be dealt with. Penelope comes face to face with a pressing need to re-organise her life - including the distinct lack of romance.

When the opportunity arises to leave damp and dreary 1980s England, they would be foolish not to take it. So they do. Loaded up, complete with the family cat, the Yull family head off on an adventure to the South of France.Their love affair with the "Midi" was first ignited almost ten years before, and when the chance to "live the dream" presents itself, they do not hesitate.The dream, at times, turned into a nightmare, with snakes, cyclones and mudslides to contend with, b...

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I had seen all those TV programmes. The dream of living in France was only a ferry ride away.But months later, my life was a nightmare. I didn't fit in with either the expats or the French, my husband had taken refuge in Star Trek and I had adopted a crazy dog that ate anything he could find, including my slippers.Faced with loneliness and very homesick for my family in the UK, I began to write a journal of my life.This is a war...

In her previous books Chris tells of her move to the tiny Feudal Island of Sark, in the British Channel Isles with her husband Ken, to run their guest house and smallholding. They then journey out to New Zealand to explore and finally settle there. Over the years the marriage starts to falter and in the opening chapter of 'So You Returned to Sark' it comes to a dramatic head. Chris returns to Sark with 'the love of her life,' Peter, and begins a very different existence. She becomes involv...

This novel is the third in the A Plane Tree in Provence Series. The women have arrive back home ready to assume life for the better.Sarah Stafford, of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, is a famed artist whose paintings hang in galleries as well as prestigious homes throughout the country. Her days are spent painting at the beach or in her home studio. Although she rarely contributes to housework, preparing meals, or taking care of her teen-age sons, it is a good and comfortable life, thanks t...

France, the ever popular dream target. To live, to visit, long holidays, weekend breaks, France and especially the south eastern area with it's fantastic and varying countryside; everything from mountains to plains, huge rivers and the glorious Mediterranean sea. The pull is there. This book goes from one Scotsman's long time dream, encouraged by his teenage daughter, though the search to fulfillment encompassed in vivid descriptions of the wheres and the hows of wandering about this entic...

Five women, four forty years old, and one matron of sixty-one take a holiday to France anxious to escape their robotic lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.Wendy, the travel agent, Penny, owner of a needlework shop, Sarah, accomplished artist, Vernie, executive director of the Portland Symphony, and Rose, who is a recent widow all wind their way through Provence with adventures conflicts, and a generous portion of food and wine.Each evening they gather around the large plane tree...

An experienced house-swapper, I was used to living in other people's houses. But this was an unusual proposal. Exchanging houses and the kids' school places with a family in France....It was true I had 'itchy feet''. The idea of a family adventure - living a different life in a different place - had wriggled its way into my imagination a while back, and fidgeted around there restlessly.OK, so this wouldn't be South East Asia, and it would be for only a month, but hey, why n...

Chris tells of her years as a district nurse, first in London in the early sixties and then New Zealand in the late seventies. She tells of the rough living conditions in London, where we meet people like the solo mother dying of cancer and longing to give her children a good Christmas and the 90 year old blind lady who refuses a proposal of marriage. In New Zealand she has a large area, is on 24hour call as the only nurse and where most of the roads are not tar-seal. We meet the disfuncti...

Penny Wilson, owner of the Designers Pen needlework shop in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, lives in a large rambling home with her husband, Michael, and two sons. Life is good until Penny accidentally spots Michael with another woman. An affair? Or a harmless encounter?Unraveling an explanation is not easy, but Penny has her friends in The Cape Elizabeth Ocean Avenue Society to lean on. While she wants her marriage to succeed will she ever be able to forgive Michael if he is indeed having a...

Peace and tranquillity. For once nothing terrible is happening. After years of dodgy moorings, ankle-deep mud, exploding toilets and all the other normalities of live-aboard life, the Brownes now seem to have found the perfect spot in which to park Minerva, their aging narrowboat. Marie and family finally find the time to work on the outside of the boat and even take a holiday or two. It looks as though life has finally taken a turn toward 'normal'.Not a chance.From the bal...

"Oh, you live on a boat? That must be really cold in the winter. . ." Or, "Oh, you live on a boat? It must be great being so close to nature . . ." Or, "Oh, you live on a boat? It must be fantastic to be able to go wherever you like, whenever you like . . ."Narrow Escape sets out to dispel these commonly held public myths.From how to avoid assassination by ninja stealth ducklings, through definitive proof that kittens are aliens and the best way to sleep at forty-five degre...