Words for the Wounded’s Award winning children’s picture book  author Richard Middleton has produced another winner: Big Teeth.

Big Teeth carries  a different pictorial style to his enormously successful  Little Hoglet’s Egg Race,  in that Middleton has swung into big, bold and broad stroked illustrations. A style that is  almost audacious and mirrors the massive, and probably misplaced  fear that consumes Tiny Shrew when she has to chase after her lunch which does a bunk into Scary Wood.

Frost loved the whole vision of this book. Tiny Shrew’s hair looked rather like mine when in a rush, higgledy piggledy, and indeed she’s in a rush.

Scared though she is, Tiny Shrew has to decide whether to  face her fears and follow her lunch, or go hungry. Once in pursuit she encounters Scary Fox, Scary Bear and Scary Wolf who all have BIG TEETH. But when Tiny Shrew discovers the amazing power of her own smile, she is able to face down the scary trio with new confidence.

It really is a useful book for parents to read with their young children, a book  which bolsters confidence, and is  inspiring,and  is such fun.

A vibrantly illustrated story  for younger children. From the author of the ‘Little Hoglet’ books and ‘The Stinky Hippobottomus’.

Big Teeth by Richard Middleton. Paperback. Amazon. £3.99

I chaired a panel of historical fiction authors last year at the lovely Yeovil  Literary Festival (Diney Costeloe was one of the speakers) and met up with Diney for lunch first. Great fun was had but what about the books?

The Married Girls  is the sequel to A Girl With No Name.and those readers who love Diney Costeloe’s novels, and there are many,  will love this follow on. And those who haven’t yet read them, do so. There are lots of twists and turns in The Married Girls, which is well researched and evocative of the period, just what we have come to expect from this author.

Set in the small Somerset village of Wynsdown in 1949. Charlotte Shepherd is happily married and settled into her adopted home having arrived from Germany on the Kindertransport as a child during the war.

However, the squire’s son, Felix, returns to the village with a fiancee in tow. Daphne is beautiful, charming but, much  the same as Charlotte, has secrets. But secrets as we all know have a habit of being unearthed. Characters enter, disruption occurs, how will it all end?

I have no intention of telling you. Read it, immerse yourself, and then, if you haven’t already read all of Dyney’s novels, do so. They’re belters.

Best to read The Girl with No Name first.

The Married Girls by Diney Costeloe. pb £7.99

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Adapted by Nick Lane

presented by Blackeyed Theatre, in association with South Hill Park

UK Tour: September 2017 – March 2018

Greenwich Theatre from Wednesday 4^th to Saturday 7^th October.

This sounds a thrilling, chilling new adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s noir psychological fantasy, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is adapted by Nick Lane, and presents a unique take on this  classic Gothic horror story..

Doctor Henry Jekyll is a good man. Successful within his field and respected by his peers, he’s close to a neurological discovery that will change the face of medical science forever. However, his methods are less than ethical and when a close friend and colleague threatens to expose and destroy his work, Jekyll is forced to experiment on himself, whereupon something goes very wrong…or very right. Suddenly Jekyll has a new friend, the brutal Edward Hyde.

This gripping production is particularly interesting as it takes inspiration from Lane’s own personal journey. Injured by a car accident at the age of 26 that permanently damaged his neck and back, Lane imagines Jekyll as a physically weakened man who discovers a cure for his ailments, a cure that also unearths the darkest corners of his psyche. Lane says, If someone offered me a potion that was guaranteed to make me feel the way I did before the accident, but with the side effect that I’d become ruthless and horrible – would I drink it?

Combining ensemble story-telling, physical theatre, movement and Lane’s razor-sharp script, alongside a new musical score by Tristan Parkes, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde remains true to the spirit and themes of the original novella while offering modern audiences one or two surprises, including a major female character, Eleanor, who drives Jekyll on in the same way Stevenson’s wife urged her husband to complete the novel.

Lane, who was Associate Director and Literary Manager at Hull Truck from 2006 to 2014, comments, I’m incredibly excited to be working with Blackeyed Theatre on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. To be given the opportunity to revisit a book that I love and adapt it for four terrific actors is an absolute gift for me, and I couldn’t think of a better venue to launch the tour than the Wilde Theatre. I hope people book their seats, and then spend the entire show on the edge of them.’

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (

Running time 120 minutes (including an interval)

Notes Ages 11+ Box Office Tickets are available from individual theatre box office. See www.blackeyedtheatre.co.uk.

Twitter @Blackeyedtheatr, #JekyllandHyde

As a child I had dreams of swooping and gliding across the stage as a world famous ballerina. All rather a damp squib for one utterly without talent and let’s face it – someone who moved rather like Dumbo the elephant. However I must tell you  I was a scarecrow in a school production,  the one who stays motionless in the centre, whilst others perform around them.

Well, far more inspirational than this tale of my ballet adventure  is the collaboration between London Russian Ballet School (LRBS) and the world-famous Bolshoi Ballet and Theatre.

On 18^th September Romantic Revolution is to be  performance at the London Palladium. 800 children from Lambeth, Brent, South West and West London, who have never visited a theatre to see ballet and most of whom have never heard of the Bolshoi Ballet, will join the audience for free, with transport provided.

You can see the result of this collaboration in a rather fine video, filmed last month when  LRBS brought a performance to the indoor space at the Kia Oval to entertain local schools with the power of dance and music. Tune into this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NlFfbyZhbo) and see just how much children appreciated this opportunity and how important LRBS’s philanthropic endeavour is to engage these young children in ballet and impart the richness of this art.

I can’t dance but I love watching. I reckon you will too. We need more of these collaborations.

• Tickets available from London Palladium Box Office and www.londonpalladium.co.uk .

Occasionally Frost Magazine has a treat and receives a review of a book they’ve already featured. It’s good to see another take, and The People at Number.9  seems to please most people.

Penny Gerrard has this to say: Felicity Everett’s first book “The Story of Us” was hugely enjoyable, and I have been looking forward to her second, though have  had to wait four years while she has been in Australia.

The wait was worth it because this is a fascinating book dealing with the complex interwoven relationship between two very different couples.    Sara and Neil are conventional  – Sara a copywriter and Neil a manager for a Housing Association.   Sara suspects that she has a novel  inside her and Neil is hoping  to rise up the ladder to the top of the housing association tree.     The other couple are new neighbours Lou – a glamorous and unpredictable maker of art films and her husband Gavin – a successful artist.    To the more staid couple Neil and Sara, Gavin and Lou’s lives seem wild, free and exciting and increasingly they find they are being taken over by the overpowering newcomers.

Most of us expect that making friends with another couple will be a positive experience but  this compelling novel certainly raises doubts about whether that’s always the case.   Can a friendship with a demanding and unusual couple lift a steady but rather unexciting marriage, or will it damage it beyond repair?  I can guarantee that you won’t be able to wait to find out as you read this well-crafted and satisfying book.

The People at Number 9 by Felicity Everett pub HQ hb £12.99/eBook £5.99/Audio Edition £12.99

Frost reviewed the hardback of The Caller not so long ago, or rather, I did, and now the paperback is on the shelves – grab it. It’s a hide behind the sofa read, but unputdownable: after a tough week – we’ve all had them – a shower and then relaxation seems like a good idea. Tanya Kaitlin thought so too, until her phone rings …  And it’s the start of it all.

The video call request comes from her best friend, Karen Ward. Tanya takes the call and the nightmare begins. Karen is gagged and bound to a chair in her own living room. If Tanya disconnects from the call, if she looks away from the camera, he will come after her next, the deep, raspy, demonic voice at the other end of the line promises her.

As Detectives Robert Hunter and Carlos Garcia investigate the threats, they are thrown into a rollercoaster of evil, chasing a predator who scouts the streets and social media networks for victims, taunting them with secret messages and feeding on their fear.

Frost Magazine caught up with author Chris Carter and bombarded him with questions:

Margaret: Chris Carter, I was totally hooked, but it’s not bedtime reading. It was more a ‘I need to hide behind the sofa and peek out from time to time’
type of book.

Is it based on a real case, or has it come from the inner you? Please tell me it’s a real case or I can never ever be in the same room alone with you. Presumably you have to alter the case to some extent so it isn’t recognizable?

Chris: Sorry to disappoint you, but The Caller is not based on a real case.  The idea for the plot did come out of true facts.  I can’t say which facts those are, as they are one of the revelations I make towards the end of the novel concerning the killer, but it was after reading a very concerning statistics on a new research conducted in the USA that I began working on the idea for The Caller.

Margaret: It was deftly handled and the tension was like a tripwire. Are you a prolific reader, and learned your writing trade in that way, or did you do as the rest of us, and work with a mentor, or some sort of creative writing support?

Chris: I’m definitely not a prolific reader at all.  Far from it.  My “to read” shelf is turning into a “to read” library because I never get to read much.  I also never had a tutor or mentor.  I never took part in any creative writing courses or read any books on the subject.  The truth is that I had never planned on writing a book.  I never though about a career in writing and I never spent any time thinking up stories or developing characters in my head that I would one day want to write about.  My submersion into the world of books – writing books that is – came out of a dream I had back in 2007.  In the morning I mentioned the dream to my girlfriend at the time and when I was done she said  – ‘You know what, Chris?  You should write that story down.  It’s a good idea.  And I really like the twist at the end.’

So I decided to do exactly that.  With absolutely no experience whatsoever, I began writing it.  Until then, I had never even written a short story in my life.

To make a very long story short, that dream turned out to be The Crucifix Killer, which became the first book in the Hunter series.

Margaret: I find, as an author with Random House, that the world I create is the only thing of which I am in control. The rest of my life seems to spin off as it will. Would you agree that one of the empowering things about writing is that we are able to create whole worlds that discuss and resolve issues as we wish – basically our worlds are shaped.

Chris: Yes, I would agree with that statement.  As authors of fiction books, in our stories, we are God.  We can do anything we please, talk about anything we like and resolve any issues as we wish – which can also be quite dangerous.
Margaret: How do you work? Do you plan? Do you have a strict time table?

Chris: I do have a strict timetable, but I plan almost nothing.  All of my stories are pretty organic.  All I have is a “one-line plot idea” and I start writing, for example – for The Executioner, my second novel, all I had in my had for the plot was – a killer who uses his victims fears to kill them.  With that I sat down and began writing the book.

I never really know who the killer will be until usually past halfway through writing a novel. The same goes for how Hunter will figure out who the killer is and why the killer is going around killing people.  The basis of my writing is – I will write one chapter and as I get to the end of it I ask myself – “OK, so if this just happened, what would happen next?  If I were involved in this case, what would be my next step?”  And that’s how the next chapter develops in my head.  It can get pretty confusing at times.  Actually, it gets confusing all the time, but it works for me.

Margaret: Do you actually enjoy writing?

Chris: I absolutely love it.  I love the whole process of it – I love the writing.  I love the researching.  I love coming up with characters, with villains, with crazy murders, etc.  The only bit I’m not very keen on is the editing at the end.
Margaret: I interviewed Frederick Forsyth at my charity’s (Words for the Wounded) Literary Festival a few weeks ago, and we were discussing writers – what they are? We came to conclusion that we are observers, that even when we’re out socialising, or working at something else, we are somehow not fully present. We’re assessing, observing and somehow disengaged.
Worse, even as life is turning upside down we’re thinking how we can use it. What are your thoughts on that?

Chris: I would totally agree with that statement as well.  I would just add that as authors we also have to be a tad schizophrenic.  We have to be able to think like more than one person at any time, regardless of conviction, belief, race, status, gender, or anything else for that matter.  If we are writing an argument scene between a deeply religious old man and a totally agnostic young woman, we have to tap into both of those lines of thoughts and be convincing.

Margaret: What next? Another unputdownable book?

Chris: I am more than halfway through writing my next novel, so yes, there will be a new book in 2018.  I can only hope that my readers will enjoy it as much as they have enjoyed all the previous books in the series. 

Margaret: As a p.s. Chris, congratulations on your huge success, keep the books coming, keep me scared to death. Bravo.

Chris: Thank you so, so much for your more than kind words.

The Caller by Chris Carter        –        pb  Simon and Schuster UK £7.99

David Leadbeater has been crowned the winner of the inaugural UK Kindle Storyteller Award, with his Crime Thriller The Relic Hunters securing him the £20,000 cash prize. Alongside the money, David will receive a marketing campaign to support the book on Amazon.co.uk, access to a mentor and the opportunity to have his book translated.

The Relic Hunters’ is an archeological action adventure story that follows relic smuggler Guy Bodie across the world as he tracks down famous objects throughout history, with the help of his team along the way. Before this book, Leadbeater, from York, had already written twenty three Kindle International Bestsellers reaching readers across the globe.

LONDON, ENGLAND – JULY 25: Lily Cole (L) poses with David Leadbeater, 
Pic Credit: Dave Benett

“Winning the Kindle Storyteller Award has been a life-changing experience,” said David Leadbeater. “It’s an honour to be chosen as the winner and truly wonderful to have The Relic Hunters selected from such a strong shortlist. It is thanks to my readers that I have won this prize and for that I am truly thankful. I am excited for the next chapter in my storytelling career and hopefully with the profile this prize has given me, my stories will reach more readers.”

What made this prize truly unique was the customers’ role in the process. From thousands of entries, a shortlist of six authors was selected based on a number of factors driven by customer interest in the titles. Alongside the winning title, the shortlist included a range of genres from historical fiction to fantasy to non-fiction.

The panel of judges who decided upon the winning book included actress and literacy campaigner, Lily Cole; best-selling author Rachel Abbott; Irish author, former literary agent and founder of The Alliance of Independent Authors, Orna Ross; the Metro’s Books Editor Claire Allfree; as well as members of the Amazon Books team – UK Head of Kindle Singles and Chair of Judges, Andrew Rosenheim; UK Kindle Content Director, Amy Worth; and UK Editorial Director for Amazon Publishing, Emilie Marneur.

Lily Cole said of her involvement: “”I love the democratic accessibility of this prize. It has encouraged more people to write and independently publish, and invited readers to participate in rewarding new writers!”

For more information visit www.amazon.co.uk/storyteller

I have to confess to being something of a traditionalist when it comes to wine. Reds in winter, whites in summer and never the twain shall meet.

So you can imagine my reaction when I was asked to sample two new summer wines, perfect for the barbeque season. The weather did little to help, as no sooner had I dusted off the barbeque than the heavens opened. Perhaps it was a sign not to mess with tradition but I cannot allow superstition come between me and a good wine.

Dark Horse is an excellent name for these wines as it does seem to be a rather well- kept secret and at around £8.50 a bottle, frankly they are a bit of a steal. Both bottles have satisfyingly deep punts (the dimple at the base of the bottle) making pouring a pleasure.

I loved the Californian Sauvignon Blanc with its crisp citrus flavour, hints of grapefruit and a refreshing clean finish reminiscent of the popular New Zealand wines perfect with a summer salad or grilled fish and very affordable for those of us who enjoy a glass or two sitting in the garden on a warm summer’s day. With its screw top this would definitely be my first choice of picnic wine.

Still smacking my lips over the white it was time to turn my attention to the Dark Horse Merlot. This was no light weight, it had guts and was robust, dark and jammy, with sophisticated flavour notes. I could imagine it being paired it with the mouth-watering richness of barbecued ribs and to be honest if you like your red to have bite you will love this whatever is on the table. However, I can’t help thinking that it needed time to open out and I would be tempted to decant this wine an hour before I wanted to drink it. I also wondered how it would taste lightly chilled.

So forget tradition these are definitely two dark horses well worth a punt.

Dark Horse Californian Sauvignon Blanc & Dark Horse Merlot  available nationwide. £8.50 each RRP