Penny for Them

My latest novel
is now available as an
EBook download from

Amazon.com       for Kindle

Amazon UK        for Kindle

Smashwords        for all other EBooks and Kindle


Her teenage prostitution and habitual theft are not the only secrets that the privately educated, talented linguist Penelope Kendall-Wilkes is about to reveal. Even after thirty years, Penelope has known a secret that has kept her in hiding... Penny discovers her stepfather too has a secret… it’s a secret that started a war… and knowing it was her death sentence.

The adventure begins the day she met Jim Pansy – and Jim Pansy tells her about the man who had killed her father over ten years before. In the guise of a German student, the former prostitute sets off in pursuit of Sean Moran, arriving in Ireland just in time to find him leaving for New York. Not about to be left behind, Penny snatches an American passport and the pursuit begins.Penny’s adventure takes her to Peru for danger, to Chile for love and then to Argentina for deceit… Penelope feels safe now; safe because her thirty year ordeal is over. Her stepfather is dead, but be warned. Look over your shoulder when you read this book. Make sure you know whose watching… because the danger is still out there…

“No one should ever underestimate my stepfather or the extent that he would go to extract revenge.”

This novel also includes a chapter or two involving the character Mike Newman, the former policeman who has adventures of his own in the Mike Newman Mysteries. The first chapter briefly describes a robbery in Hartingham which is featured in the third Mike Newman Mystery, "Penalty for Murder."
Penny for Them is a work of fiction but mentions some political and world events as they occured in 1982.

I forgot my password.....

Great news ... It has taken over two months but at last, I have discovered which EMail address and password I used with this blog page! Now I can start using it again!

The main character in my novels, Mike Newman, received a blow on the head when he was 30, which left him half paralysed with a stroke. I'm trying to keep the character realistic. I had a stroke myself at the same age, so I have first hand experience, but everyone's stroke experience is different. My own is described in C.V.A. A hard way back. Please feel free to comment about the characters in my books, but please.... as you will see if you read C.V.A. A hard way back, you will realise why I can't discuss your stroke. If you want to describe your own stroke experience, please write your own book!

On Tuesday, Rosalind Kim Nazilli  issued a challenge to the Facebook group, Beta Readers Writers Club:  Fifty words ending with the line.... 'With that - She shot him!'
Here is my answer to the challenge.

The dreaded moment had finally arrived. She knew it had to happen one day. Years of training had prepared her for it. Looking once more into those soulful, deep brown eyes, she guessed that his broken leg no longer caused pain. He whinnied once again. With that - she shot him.

Click here to visit the group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/thebrwc/:

Rather than giving my full length work away for free on Amazon, Andra Parnell gave me a great idea - write a prequel! So here it is .... Free for all time . https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/168145                       

Does anyone know how to list an EBook FREE on Amazon? I don't mean the KDP Select program but my short ROMANCE which is an introduction to the some of the characters in my acclaimed crime series. I have listed it FREE on Smashwords, but I can't seem to do the same on Amazon. Does it have to be Public Domain?                   

Before I had my Kindle, I was buying around 30 paperbacks each year - mainly crime and Napoleonic stories. Not as many as some, I know, but more than many. My Kindle cost less than a single year's reading. Thanks to the Kindle Select programme, I have now downloaded over 300 FREE books on promotions by contemporary authors. I read at around 30000 words a day, around a hundred conventional pages so each of these books is going to take about three or four days to finish. So I have three years reading ahead of me and each day, more of my fellow authors insist on putting their work out there for free. Why? My wife bought many more books and read far more than I did, but now has a Kindle and has a hundred FREE books to read. Both my daughter and daughter-in-law have done the same. Between the ...four of us, in the age of paper, we would have bought around 200 to 300 books in a year. Since authors have been so willing to give their hard work away for zilch, they, like me, have not bought a single one! As I have not taken part in the Amazon Select Scheme, can someone please explain what the advantage is. I accept that books are listed in the online libraries and royalties are paid if the are borrowed, but I would like to know if anyone other than Amazon has benefitted from giving their work away for free? As far as I can see, giving your books away for free spells the death of the writing profession. Who is going to buy while the freebies are out there?

Review on Goodreads

This review for my book says it is worth 10 stars!