EARLY REVIEWS FOR THE SECRET LIVES OF THE DOYENNE OF DIDSBROOK
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The remote village of Didsbrook is thrown into turmoil after its best-known resident, the former actress turned best-selling novelist Jocelyn Robertshaw, is found dead under mysterious circumstances.
Villagers are appalled to learn that the charismatic Jocelyn died from Hemlock poisoning. Police claim she shot and ate a quail that had ingested hemlock. A theory disputed by all who knew her well. The animal-loving Jocelyn would never kill anything, but due to the lack of forensic evidence, police rule death by misadventure.
Jocelyn’s young protégée, Lucy Fothergill, determined to discover the truth about what happened to her mentor, discovers a hidden stash of Jocelyn’s notebooks, revealing jaw-dropping secrets from Jocelyn’s past. The impression Jocelyn gave the world that she lived a near-perfect life was an Academy Award-winning performance.
Believing the events from Jocelyn’s past may have led to her death forty-eight years later, Lucy begins to piece together the clues that lead to the truth.
The sleepy village of Didsbrook is about to wake up!
The humour shines through in this bittersweet family drama!
Just Say It is the debut novel by Tessa Barrie and was released in June 2021.
'A bittersweet family drama about what it means to love unconditionally and grow
from the past.' Lauren Jones of Turning Another Page
Turning forty, Lisa Grant is broke, alone and living in rural Gloucestershire, hurtling towards an inevitable midlife crisis.
Romantically, she pushes people away. She cannot say, "I love you." Jack, the only love of her life, put the Atlantic Ocean between them after they fell out the last time and now lives in New York.
Fearing for her sanity, she addresses the problem she has carried with her for the past forty years - her narcissistic mother, Elizabeth.
When Lisa was six years old, her father disappeared, and her mother kept the truth about why he left the family home hidden. When starting her journalistic career, Lisa reconnects with her father and discovers grim truths about her controlling mother.
After four decades of sparring with her impossible mother, Lisa cultivates a more rational and sympathetic approach to discovering why her mother lacks empathy. Believing childhood trauma may be responsible, Lisa harnesses her journalistic skills to investigate her mother's past and is shocked by what she finds.
This is the story of my late stepfather’s career.
Brian Trubshaw was the chief test pilot for BAC before he became the chief test pilot for the British prototype Concorde 002 during its development phase.
He was regarded as one of Britain's most famous names in aviation. As a test pilot for Vickers-Armstrongs, he test-flew the Viscount, the Valiant, the VC10 and Super VC10.
I believed it was important for Brian to record his lifetime achievements in aviation, and I take all credit for persuading him to do it. It wasn’t an easy task because, despite his exceptional career, he was a very modest man.
Once he agreed to do it, the least I could do was offer to help him put it together, which I took tremendous pride in doing, and I miss him every day.
In Brian Trubshaw - Test Pilot, Brian describes his early days as an RAF bomber pilot in World War II, followed by service with Transport Command and the prestigious King's Flight. Brian’s career took off after he left the RAF in 1950 to join the Vickers-Armstrongs (Aircraft) staff at Weybridge as a test pilot.
During the following years, Brian was closely involved with the flight test programmes for the Vickers Valiant nuclear bomber and the BAC 1-11 and VC10 airliners.
In 1965 he became Chief Test Pilot for BAe and later piloted Concorde 002 on her maiden flight on 9th April 1969.
Brian's descriptions are interwoven with insights into the manoeuvrings of politicians, industrialists and trade unions, ultimately leading to the decline of the British aircraft industry in the 1970s.
ABOUT TESSA BARRIE
Tessa Barrie was born in Harrogate, Yorkshire. She had a maternal Greek grandmother she adored, and her DNA results confirm her heritage is a diverse European mix. Tessa's genes are 59% from East Midlands, Yorkshire & The Humber and North East England, and 41% from Greece & Albania, Northern Italy, Ireland, Norway and Iceland. She now lives in Jersey, Channel Islands, UK.
She recalls her early life as more Little House on the Prairie than The Waltons because it was fraught with drama. However, intermingled with the emotional disruption, she remembers humour squeezing its way through the frayed feelings. Incorporating bittersweet humour in her writing is very important to Tessa, who believes a subtle sprinkling of humour is essential... however dark a story gets.
Tessa left secondary school at sixteen, branded the class clown, saying she 'wanted to write.' At seventeen, she took a brief journalism course in London before freelancing for provincial newspapers and magazines.
Realising that if she wanted to live somewhere more salubrious than a leaky writer's garret, she had to knuckle down and get a 'proper job,' she worked in Jersey's finance sector for many years but never stopped writing.
Tessa's early writing influence was Sue Limb, whose Dulcie Domum's Bad Housekeeping sewed the seed in Tessa's brain that she might like to write novels. Then along came Helen Fielding and the gorgeous Bridget Jones, which made up Tessa's mind.
In 2017, Tessa met the late Barbara Large, the founder and, for 34 years, Director of the Winchester Writers' Conference, who, together with the author and public speaker Adrienne Dines, gave Tessa the confidence to forge ahead with her first novel. After featuring on the odd longlist and a few false starts, Just Say It, a bittersweet family saga, was published in 2021.
More recently, Tessa has drawn inspiration from participating in Beth Kempton's writing sanctuaries and the BBC Maestro online classes.
Tessa believes that starting to write novels later in life has made her more determined, and her third novel, a psychological drama, The Rebuilding of Freya Michaels, which by her own admission is "a bit of a diversion,' will be published in 2026.
Website: https://tessabarrie.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TessaBarrieAuthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TessaBarrie
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tessa_barrie/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tessa-Barrie/e/B096RQ62YG
Cassie the Blog Dog
Cassie the Blog Dog is my constant companion and right-hand paw.
She started blogging as a young pup and became my chief editorial advisor during Lockdown, a role that drives her barking mad.
She is always by my side when I write, before taking me for walkies.
When her busy daily schedule allows, she writes the occasional blog on Facebook.