"Heartbreaking drama of lost innocence, deceit and a scandal that shook Australia." Jill's Book Cafe Cover by JD Smith Design It is difficult for any Australian born after the feminist movement to understand the plight of being sixteen, pregnant and unmarried in 1970. The sanctity of marriage was still the vital cornerstone of society and it was impossible to envisage raising a child outside this union blessed by church and state. For a girl bringing such disgrace to her family, it was an unforgiving world. Rather than being able to rejoice at bringing forth this new life, these gi ..read more

By JJ Marsh Beatrice Stubbs is back! The old girl retired at the end of Bad Apples, but there's no way she'll stop having adventures. By JD Smith Design This book has been coming for a long time. I always wanted to write an homage to the Golden Age of Crime and its literary ladies: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, Josephine Tey and Georgette Heyer. Even as a kid, I loved all that intrigue masked as innocence and the mucky truth behind the public façade. Locals have their own traditions and codes of honour, creating a wall of secrecy outsiders rarel ..read more

The Winner of the Triskele Books/Words with JAM 2018 Big 5 Mentorship Competition is ... Philippa Scannell!! An incredibly strong field of entrants led to much wrangling over the shortlist. But once chosen, we were absolutely sure any one of the finalists would be worth a year of support, advice and shared expertise. Over to judge Roz Morris, whose job was even tougher. Here's her report. How to choose a winner in such a breadth of entries? There were narrators who were unreliable or dreaming; narrators who were hiding or tormented or unsure if they could trust their senses. Narrators who ..read more

By Gillian Hamer For a small country, Wales certainly has a huge amount of literary clout - not only in the talents of Welsh authors but as setting for some superb fictional triumphs. Below, I list six of my personal favourites. THE MABINOGION No foray into Welsh literature would be complete without a mention of this book; it is the original, earliest and probably the best collection of Welsh prose stories. Legend tells that the stories of the Mabinogion were carried down from oral versions and were translated and compiled in the 12th and 13th century into a collection of eleven stories t ..read more

by Catriona Troth You could often be forgiven for thinking – at least as far as fiction is concerned – that British urban life begins and ends at the boundaries of Greater London. In the immediate postwar period, books like John Braine’s Room at the Top and Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning featured northern cities. But it is hard to find modern equivalents. Birmingham is relatively well served, with books such as Nice Work by David Lodge, Jonathan Coe’s The Rotters Club, Meera Syall’s Anita and Me or – more recently – Kit de Waal’s My Name is Leon. But my beloved Coventry ..read more

    Triskele Books and Words With Jam are happy to announce the six shortlisted entries of our Big 5 2018 Mentorship Competition –– from manuscript to publication –– worth over £5000! Pleased with the multitude and quality of the entries, three members of the Triskele team read each and every one before finally coming to a joint decision. We enjoyed reading through the variety of genres: everything from non-fiction to young adult, crime thrillers, sci-fi-fantasy, historical and literary fiction. The winners have been contacted and invited to send the first 1 ..read more

by JD Smith We have all heard of Cleopatra, Boadicea, Helen of Troy, Elizabeth I. They are famed for their  prominence in a man's world, but what of those who are lesser known yet equally influential, powerful and dominant. Here's a peek at my top six lesser known women in history: Grace O'Malley (1530 - 1603) O'Malley became lord of the Ó Máille dynasty in the west of Ireland following the death of her father, Eoghan Dubhdara Ó Máille, despite having a brother, Dónal an Phíopa Ó Mháille.  Marriage to Dónal an Chogaidh Ó Flaithbheartaigh brought her greater wealth and influe ..read more

By Liza Perrat The French village in which I live originally inspired me for the first novel, Spirit of Lost Angels, of my French historical trilogy, The Bone Angel. An exhibition in a museum in Saint-Martins-en-Haut, a neighbouring village, gave me the idea to base the second novel of the trilogy, Wolfsangel, around the French Resistance to the Nazi occupation during WW2.  I realised that this region, like many others in France, was a hotbed of French resistance. During my research, I was fortunate to speak with several members of the Resistance, who were only too happy to relive t ..read more

By JJ Marsh “That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.” – Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake Dubrovnik, Croatia For someone like me, born in Wales who spent formative years in Africa and Asia, continental Europe has a attraction like nowhere else. There lies history, romance, culture and stories. It has a wealth of geographical attractions such as Portuguese beaches, Swiss mountains, Italian lakes and French vineyards. But my passion is for the cities. Amsterdam in January: discarded Christmas trees beside canals; bikes, bridges and gables. Madrid at Easter ..read more

A friend once told me I could write, and so I did. The Rise of Zenobia wasn't the first novel I wrote, nor the first I published, but it was one of my earliest pieces of work and was put through its paces on various peer review sites before finally being enshrined on the page. The stories of lesser known heroes have always intrigued me. There are many reasons they are untold, barely noted in the tombs of history, a footnote here and there. Zenobia was one. Popular in the Arab world, she was lesser known to westerners. I first read about her in Antiona Fraser's Warrior Queen, giving me ..read more