For most authors – even quite successful ones – having widespread retail distribution is a pipe dream. So how do you buy their books?

With Angela Petch’s sumptuous descriptions of the landscape, people and food, it was certainly worth the wait to get to Sicily.

Please can I go on a Caroline James holiday every year? Her books are so full of joy, feeling, and wonderful characters I just want to be part of them.

The Cowgirl Nanny is the perfect heart-warming read, with characters who’ll live with me for a very long time.

Writing as Maisie Thomas, Susanna Bavin excels at creating incredibly well researched novels of female friendship during the Second World War, and this book is no exception.

If you read only one First World War saga this year – make it Wartime on Sanctuary Lane.

More absolute brilliance from one of my favourite authors.

If there’s a fifth main character in The Dubrovnik Book Club, it’s Knjizara Svih Nacija, the bookshop itself. It was named by my Croatian collaborator, Darko, and translates literally as The Bookshop Where All Are Welcome. Isn’t that lovely?

Like the Great War before it, the Second World War opened up women’s lives to work possibilities that would never have been possible in other circumstances.

My, but this book is good. It treads in so many places where angels would fear to, tripping across difficult and heart-breaking issues with just the right weight of feet.