It’s that time of year when I dust down my Facebook password, recall my Twitter handle, flick through the Instagram filters and start bribing the dogs to pose for click-bait pictures. My access-all-areas jaunt onto social media can mean only one thing: there’s a new Fiona Walker novel coming out this month!

(Cue public displays of authory dancing to Elvis Costello’s Every Day I Write the Book.)

Country Lovers is published in hardback and e-book on Thurs 14^th November. It’s my eighteenth novel, and the second book set in the village of Compton Magna, a Cotswold hotbed of hunky heroes, rebellious women and party-loving locals that put the ‘shake’ in Shakespeare country. If you could sum everything that makes a Fiona Walker book unique in one beautifully wrapped package, I hope you agree it would be this one:

Here’s the all-important appetiser from inside the flyleaf (complete with some humblingly generous quotes from writers I love and admire):

Love affairs, village rivalries, horses, jealousy and secrets…

There’s no such thing as bad timing, only timing. Supposing you met your perfect match on the worst night of your life?

‘An all-encompassing whirlwind of activity, wit, fun and frolic. I loved it!’ JILL MANSELL.

‘If it’s brilliant country fun you’re after, but you can’t afford your own horse (or even if you can), read Fiona Walker immediately!’ JENNY COLGAN.

‘Fiona Walker is a class act, the best of her genre. Witty, clever, fabulous and fun, she’s a natural storyteller.’  SANTA MONTEFIORE

Glamorous Ronnie Percy has been back home in the Cotswolds for a year. But not everyone has forgiven her for abandoning her family twenty-five years ago.

Ronnie’s daughter Pax is fighting for custody of her small son as her own marriage disintegrates. Now she is furious to have to spend New Year’s Eve waiting to meet some stranger, invited by her mother to help run the family stud farm. The staunchly loyal head groom, Lester, is even more annoyed. Does Ronnie think he’s lost his touch?

Luca O’Brien, Irish charmer and reputed heart-breaker, is known throughout the countryside as the Horsemaker. But what happened to Luca’s beautiful stallion, Beck, now broken and unrideable in the Compton Magna stables? And what is Luca running away from?

Passionate, sexy, gripping, and laced with wicked humour, this is bestselling Fiona Walker at her dazzling best.

(I hasten to add that final summary was written by my fabulously enthusiastic editor at Head of Zeus, not your blogger, but if dazzling is required, the Walker fairy lights are on max for this one).

More Country Lovers updates soon, including some exciting audiobook news, blog tour dates, the ubiquitous celebrity-reading-my-new-book deep fake photo op and the home-made professionally produced promo video across all my social streams.

There’s also a chance to come and get Country Lovers signed by yours truly at the Cotswolds’ loveliest Christmas Fair the day before publication. I’ll post about that in the next couple of days, so please check back…

 

For now, in time-honoured tradition, I’ll round off with a pet packshot. For The Country Set, Max the Shetland stepped nobly up to the plate in the garden after we lost my late great companion and regular house model, Pudding the Weimaraner, who quite often ate the books she was asked to pose with over her sixteen years in the job. This year, sharing top honours are Zara the greyhound – who also stars above – and Percy the cat:

You can pre-order Country Lovers at all good bookshops or online via this link, and you can read an extract from the novel and the story behind it here. If you’d like to follow me on Twitter or Instagram or like my Facebook page, please click the links below. I’d love to see you there!