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.

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...

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...

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...

It's two decades since Chris Stewart moved to his farm on the wrong side of a river in the mountains of southern Spain and his daughter Chlöe is preparing to fly the nest for university. In this latest, typically hilarious dispatch from El Valero we find Chris, now a local literary celebrity, using his fame to help his old sheep-shearing partner find work on a raucous road trip; cooking a TV lunch for visiting British chef, Rick Stein; discovering the pitfalls of Spanish public speaking; 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...

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...

"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...

'A splendid romp. Vive la France!'Peter Mayle, author of 'A Year in Provence' and many other bestsellers'Mike Buchanan is the best kind of opinionated, middle-aged, middle-class Englishman abroad: the funny kind.'Andy Heslop'If you have a sense of humour, this book will put a big smile on your face. I laughed out loud many times. A refreshing absence of political correctness.'The lovely Maureen PadleyPolitical correctness is a curse of the modern era. This book is not politically correct. ...

In this hilarious collection of cautionary tales and anecdotes, George East discusses all the delights and drawbacks of finding, buying and restoring French property. HOME & DRY IN FRANCE follows the early adventures of George and Donella East as they make every mistake in the (not-then-written) book about how and how not to buy a second home across the Channel. Tellingly subtitled A YEAR IN PURGATORY, the book is much more than a listing of all the awful ...

Narrow Margins – a laugh-out-loud book which proves that lean times can sometimes be a very positive thing.Faced with the loss of everything following the collapse of the Rover Group, Marie Browne moved her long-suffering husband Geoff, chaotic children and smelly, narcoleptic dog on to a houseboat in search of a less stressful, healthier, alternative way of life.Strapped for cash, the family buy a decrepit 70ft barge called Happy Go lucky which had been run as a floating h...

The second book in the best-selling Mill of the Flea series, continuing the often farcical and always entertaining adventures of the author and his wife as they attempt to make a new life in rural France. Totally unlike any other book in travel literature.Following on from Home & Dry in France, René & Me sees the author and his wife moving across the Channel to try and live off the land and their wits in an isolated corner of Normandy. They arrive at the ruined Mil...