THE MATCHSTICK BOY

Auteur

I grew up in Ripon, Yorkshire with five brothers and sisters and a horde of pets. My mother liked to rescue animals so apart from the usual selection of rabbits, cats and dogs, we also had two bushbabys, a barn owl and a runaway tortoise. Keen on travelling my first job was with Lufthansa in Stuttgart, Germany.After bringing up three children and a few more pets, I began writing in the nineties. I wrote various freelance articles for magazines in England and Germany and several non-fiction books for Frech Verlag. An avid reader myself, I began to think that I might also be able to entertain readers and enlisted in fiction writing courses, provided by Kendal Publishing Limited.My special area of interest is history. After researching my ancestry and finding family roots in Ireland with the Dalriada clan, particularly this era. My debut fiction novel titled "The Missionary" is a historical novel about the dramatic life of St. Patrick. It was published by Pegasus Elliot MacKenzie Publishers Ltd./Vanguard Press on Apr.29th, 2021, and has been highly appraised by The Scotsman, The Yorkshire Post and the Irish Times.My second novel "The Scots of Dalriada" centres around Fergus Mór, the founder father of Scotland and takes place in 5th century Ireland and Scotland. It was published by Pegasus Publishers on Jan.26th, 2023.I live happily with my husband, Franz, in Bodman-Ludwigshafen, Lake Constance, Germany. In addition to our three fantastic children we have been blessed with six gorgeous grandchildren.We travel to the UK several times a year.

Texte du rabat

This new novel takes place in a remote Swiss valley in the mid-19th century. It is based on a true story. When eleven-year-old Josef is killed by a rock avalanche, his brother is convinced it is murder. He had seen someone on a rocky outcrop above the scree before it began to roll. But who would want to kill an eleven-year-old boy, and why? Jakob suspects the privileged son of the owner of a matchstick factory, but nobody takes him seriously and he is powerless to obtain justice. Thirty years later, Jakob's profoundly deaf daughter is raped by the same man and becomes pregnant. Jakob is determined to get justice for his daughter, at no matter what cost. He unearths a myriad of well-kept secrets in the tight-lipped community, but is anyone willing to tell the truth? Just as he thinks he has uncovered the facts, he realises he has made a vital mistake all along. Nothing is really as it seems.