The latest in the series, Book 17, ‘Millie’ came out as an ebook in January 2025 and is available from Amazon Kindle here at  amazon.co.uk in Britain, amazon.com in the US, and world wide. The next book, ‘Rosemary’ should be out later in 2025.

The ‘Saltbury Chronicles’ tell the story of two women, Hazel Fauld and Tina Burns from their time as best friends at school and on into adult life. Both are lesbians, but they are not lovers, even though their friendship is closer than many marriages. Both are loyal, loving and intelligent, but they are very different personalities. Hazel has had a gilded childhood as the daughter of a wealthy Rock star and an internationally known fashion designer. Tina, on the other hand, comes from a prosperous but far more conventional middle class background. Hazel is a rather plump and giggly lover of Goth clothes and music. She plays Rock drums and worships her big sister Roisin. Redheaded Tina is more serious, ambitious and studious. She grows up to become a spectacular beauty but continues to see herself as the awkward mid teen she once was. She smokes too much, is not always good at holding her drink and, unlike her friend, she is deeply in denial at first about her sexuality.

The first three books in the series, ‘Haze’, ‘Annie’ and ‘Daughters’ show the girls in their final years at school, and just starting to come to grips with their natures, but the series then splits into two main streams, with ‘Rachel’, ‘Sisters’ and ‘Roisin’ following Hazel, while ‘Red’, Carol’ and ‘History Girls’ follow Tina through University and beyond. The story lines interact, however, as the two women remain very close and many of the characters and places are the same in both. The books follow a chronological framework, but they do not necessarily need to be read in order and any of the series should make perfect sense on its own.

The Chronicles are essentially love and coming of age stories, but you most certainly don’t need to be gay to appreciate them. They are romantic, but often funny. They try to address serious LGBTQ+ and other issues, but hopefully without being Po-faced. They are character rich and build their own little world set mostly in the little market town of Saltbury, and the pretty rural village of Wyeburn. And there are smaller worlds within that world, such as the staid, still semi Victorian, St. Ann’s School for Girls, which has the world’s most hideous school uniform. Supporting characters range from near psychopathic Games teacher, Miss Baxter, to Hazel’s two Mums: a same sex couple thatinclude Debbie Stewart one of the best and most beautiful guitarists of all time, but also an absent minded workaholic muti-millionaire who is so bad with money that she is never quite sure she can pay next month’s bills.

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Here is the definitive list of Saltbury Chronicles to date. At the moment there are at least 16 books and shorter stories scheduled in the series, but there should be more to come after that. Again the books can be read on their own, although they are probably even better when read in sequence.

Book 1. In which we first meet our heroines: Hazel Fauld and Tina Burns. It came out in June 2019. It is published on amazon.com, amazon.co.uk and worldwide.

Bubbly Hazel Fauld, or Haze to her friends, is sweet 16.  Well, at least, she is as sweet as any self-respecting Goth and aspiring Rock drummer would ever wish to be.  Cheerful and confident, with an impish sense of humour, she lives a charmed life as the daughter of a Rock star and a fashion designer, while her beloved older sister is becoming an increasingly big name model.  There are only two small clouds in her sky.  The first is her near psychopathic Games mistress, Miss Baxter, and the other is her non-existent love life.  She is happily gay, except that she has never managed to find an actual girlfriend.  She has crushes, most notably on her best friend Tina and new girl in town, Annie Roberts – but both only have eyes for the boys.  It is starting to get on her nerves, but what is a girl to do?

Book 2. Haze’s Story Continues with ‘Annie’, which came out in December 2019. It is published on amazon.com, amazon.co.uk and worldwide.

Cheerful and loving Goth drummer Hazel Fauld, has finally found her true love: Annie, the girl she knows she wants to spend the rest of her life with.  The feeling is utterly mutual even though the pair are still in their teens, and through idyllic days at school their love only deepens.  In the meantime, her mother – one of her two mothers, anyway – Saltbury’s favourite Rock goddess, Debbie Stewart, is pregnant and Hazel is eagerly looking forward to becoming a big sister for the first time at seventeen.  Her best friend Tina has also found love.  Evil Games mistress, Miss Baxter continues to be the bane of her life.  An enemy might just be becoming a friend, and St. Ann’s School for Girls is rocked to its core by scandal.

Book 3.  In ‘Daughters’ Hazel and Tina are now seniors at school.  It came out in April 2020 and is available on Kindle on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk and worldwide.

Everything seems rosy in the garden for impish Goth, Hazel Fauld and her beloved girlfriend Annie.  Their love grows ever deeper and families who were once sceptical about what they saw as puppy love come increasingly to believe that the two are made for each other.  They dream of a future life together and in the meantime they dote on more than just each other as Annie in particular adores the Faulds’ new baby.  But then fate drives the lovers apart.  St. Ann’s School for Girls suffers a crime wave.  Hazel herself is faced with temptation and events in the Fauld family’s past return to haunt them while rock goddess Debbie Stewart draws Hazel into helping her to make her disturbing new solo album.  Can our two heroines survive a forced separation and bring about their very own happy ever after?  And will Mr. Tootlins’ gearbox ever recover from Hazel’s attempts to learn to drive?

Book 4.  In ‘Rachel’ we follow Hazel to University via a Rock tour with Goth band ‘Dark Portal’.  It came out in August 2020 and is available in the US from amazon.com, in the UK from amazon.co.uk and worldwide.

Our favourite young Goth drummer, Hazel Fauld and the love of her life, Annie are looking forward to being reunited after surviving a year apart.  Everything is ready and the girls are excited as the day of Annie’s return approaches and the life of togetherness they have yearned for can finally begin.   But then a single foolish act threatens all their plans.  How will Hazel cope with being almost the widow of a lover she adores and who is still alive?  Will she heed the advice of others to forget her true love and try to start life again?  Or will she stand loyally by Annie and hope that love really can conquer all?  In the meantime, just who are the dangerous group of women that some call the ‘Dockers’?  Why is design student Hazel so often to be seen on a Thames river tug called the ‘Anne Lister’?  And what is the sinister Zara really after?  Thank goodness for Hazel’s wicked sense of humour, her beloved big sister Roisin, her precocious baby sister Sofie, her friends Tina, Aimee and, most especially, for the shy new bass player in her band, Rachel.

‘Sandie’ is ‘Red’ the prequel: a Saltbury short story.

School’s out and our friends from ‘Haze’, ‘Annie’, and ‘Daughters’ are heading to University – and if you join my email list you’ll get this one free.

Book 5. Fast forward to the end of Tina’s first year at University and her story continues with ‘Red’, published as an ebook in September 2019 and available from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com and worldwide.

What would happen if someone fell in love with a person they had always bitterly hated?  Our old friend Tina Burns is now 19 and a promising Law student at Saltbury University.  She longs for the day when she can work with her father in his legal practice.  But this usually happy and increasingly beautiful young redhead has become a virtual recluse after being jilted by the girl she had thought was the love of her life.  Eventually she starts to rebuild, and plucks up the courage to go dancing at a once cherished haunt, the ‘Gemini Club’.  But here she sees a face she had hoped never to encounter again.  Both old enemies feel the same draw and as her cheerfully hedonistic drama student friend, Katie, puts it: they start to live the story of Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’.  But if Tina is playing Beatrice, who could be her Benedick? or, as Tina is gay, her other Beatrice?

Book 6: ‘Carol’, published as an ebook in November 2020 and available from amazon.co.uk, amazon.com and worldwide.

Our favourite redhead – Law student and budding fashion model Tina Burns – has finally found true love with a girlfriend who utterly adores her and a very perceptive cat.  She is blissfully happy until events start to take an increasingly strange turn.  Is she imagining the mysterious blonde who seems to be spying on her?  Who is sending poison pen letters about her to her old headmistress?  And why is her irascible but oh so passionate girlfriend gradually becoming reluctant to let Tina even touch her.  All is not quite well in the garden and if Tina is to protect her partner and save their love, she must try to find out why.  The trouble is that her beloved doesn’t seem to want to be saved, and sore temptation is put in Tina’s own path when an old flame tries to win her back.

Book 7: ‘Sisters’, published as an ebook in March 2021 and available from amazon.co.uk, amazon.com and worldwide.

         Loveable Goth, Hazel Fauld is now a 20 year old design student in London, while her supermodel big sister, Roisin is blissfully happily married and trying for a baby.  With two other talented musicians, they have founded a Rock band called ‘Fauld’ after their surname, and are now gigging widely, firmly on the road to success.  Hazel has recovered from the tragic loss of her first love, Annie, and is now madly in love with Fauld’s bassist, fellow Goth, Rachel Holmes.  Her studies are going well.  She has good friends and a loving family who adore her new girlfriend.  Indeed her incorrigible little sister, Sofie, is besotted.  Life is good again and everyone Haze knows is happy.  So where is the drama?  What could possibly go wrong?

Book 8: ‘Roisin’, published as an ebook in July 2021 and available from amazon.co.uk, amazon.com and worldwide.

All-woman Rock band ‘Fauld’ is going from strength to strength. Led by bubbly Goth, Hazel Fauld and her supermodel sister Roisin, they are successfully building a fan-base and sensing the dawn of fame. They make their first record, and then supergroup ‘Xeroed’ ask them to be support act for a series of huge gigs. It’s a wonderful opportunity, but dangerous stresses develop. The keyboard player is pregnant to the guitarist’s husband. The drummer breaks up with her fiancé, the bass player. Friendships suffer such terrible misunderstandings that the band seems hell-bent on self-destruction. Everything they’ve built is threatened. So can ‘Fauld’ survive to reap the rewards they’ve worked for so hard?

Meanwhile, Hazel and her friends Aimee and Michelle must design the world’s most terrifying Goth dress. Her girlfriend Annie is recovering well. Her old school friend, Weird Brenda, wants Haze to model for a book on female mischief spirits, and her precocious little sister Sofie has a play-group boyfriend. As ever the story takes place in a world of bittersweet humour and gloriously eccentric characters.

Book 9: ‘History Girls’ published as an ebook November 2021 and available from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and worldwide.

Everyone in Saltbury has heard of the town’s great Victorian philanthropist, Sir Jeremiah Prodnoze. His statue stands proudly in the Market Square because, after all, he erected the thing himself, to save everyone else the trouble. With help from his more modest sister Elizabeth and her fabulously wealthy husband George, he founded Saltbury University, the town museum and, of course, St Ann’s School for Girls. But when an impressive cache of Prodnoze family papers comes to light a scandal is revealed which even after a century and a half has the town abuzz with gossip. In particular, it causes ructions amongst the local aristocracy, not least the Earl of Dowchester and the last of the Prodnoze line, the irrepressible Dame Evadne Jackerman-Prodnoze. Meanwhile our favourite law student, Tina Burns, finds herself in almost embarrassingly high demand as a model, while her maddening but ever adoring girlfriend gets closer to her dream of making the Olympic athletics team by attracting sponsorship from what even Tina says is the law firm of Burns & Son’s most eccentric client. Her cat springs a surprise. Her ever mischievous friend Katie writes a play to subvert the form and her absent minded ex-girlfriend Rosie is at the very heart of the Prodnoze affair.

‘Book 10: ‘Saltbury Tales’. Published as a ebook in March, 2022 and available from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, and world-wide.

The ‘Saltbury Chronicles’ have always centered on Hazel Fauld and Tina Burns, but there are so many other wonderful characters hovering in the wings. How did working-class Carol Baxter find herself in a (dysfunctional) relationship with the daughter of an Earl, years before she even met Tina? And then there’s that most unlikely of couples, Penny and Hazel Clearwater, Martine Fauld’s two business partners. How did loud, brash and beautiful Penny fall for her shy little wife? Aleyse and Ruth Guptah are another unlikely pair. How did an East End beautician even meet a would-be Rock musician from the fringes of Dartmoor? And what was the role of a disturbing childhood dream? Then there’s thuggish Yvonne Wright, one-time St. Ann’s School bully. What really happened between her and the evil but beautiful Zara and how did she find herself the girlfriend of a mother called Julie and the adoring stepmother of her little girl? There are the parallel tales of teenage sweethearts Tina and Rosie as they leave school and drift apart. Then finally we have Chantel Barham, or the ‘Skipper’ as so many call her. She’s the middle aged Sappho’s ‘Docker’: a cockney Miss Haversham, still determined never to love again twenty years after her heart was broken. That is until seeing Hazel Fauld’s devotion to a desperately ill Annie inspires her to re-think her life. The seven shorter tales in this book answer these and other questions as a few of my favourite characters finally get their own voices heard.

‘Book 11: ‘Martine’. Published as a ebook in July, 2022 and available from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, and world-wide.

Back in the mid 1970s, long before our usual friends, Hazel, Tina, Annie, or even the dreaded Miss Baxter were born, future Rock goddess Debbie Stewart had seemed well on the path to global stardom.  But then came a terrible tragedy and for a while she left music altogether.  Future design icon Martine Fauld, meanwhile, was serving a gap-year internship with a well known London fashion house before starting a University design course.  The two moved in separate circles and both were avowedly straight.  So how did two such very different young women even meet, let alone find a love that would last the rest of their lives?  Never fall in love with the straight girl they say, but both of them did.  This prequel to the Saltbury series reveals all and also tells the story of one of the all time great Rock albums: ‘Camp David’ by ‘Xeroed’.  It wasn’t all plain sailing to say the least and the book describes the pain as well as the joy, as Deb faces homophobia and astonishing sexism even within her own band. And then an obsessed fan very nearly destroys it all.

‘Book 12: ‘Debbie’s Gift’. Published as a ebook in December, 2022 and available from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, and world-wide.

Global Rock mega-stars ‘Xeroed’ have been together since they were at Saltbury High School in the 1970’s, but only two of the original members, guitarist Debbie Stewart and drummer Charlie Hides, are still alive in their late forties.  They are each the other’s oldest and dearest friend, or very nearly, and Charlie is also the devoted god-father of Debbie’s daughter Hazel, his best-ever drum student.  There’s almost nothing that one wouldn’t do for the other and when Charlie’s marriage to Stevie starts to unravel, Deb volunteers to give them the most precious gift imaginable: a bombshell dropped by Hazel’s incorrigible baby sister, Sofie, who’s been eavesdropping again.

In the meantime, Hazel’s beloved fiancé, Annie, continues her slow recovery from a poisoning.  Her equally beloved big sister, Roisin, becomes ever more a supermodel.  Their band, ‘Fauld’ stands on the cusp of stardom.  A certain film company wants to recruit Haze and her design student friend Aimee, while Brenda wants Haze to be a goddess: in fact a whole crowd of goddesses.  And that’s an offer you don’t get every day.

‘Book 13: ‘Fracture’ sees Tina and Carol now living together’. Published as a ebook in February, 2023 and available from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, and world-wide.

Athlete Carol Baxter is training harder than ever before as the 2007 World Athletics Championships approach.  Aided and abetted by her coach: her father Gordon, she seems certain to qualify to run for Great Britain again and has every confidence not just of winning her event, the 1,500m, but of breaking the world record.  Meanwhile her beloved girlfriend Tina is finishing her final year as a Law student and is so close to achieving her ambition to join her father in his legal firm.  She’s also making an increasingly good income modelling.  It promises to be a wonderful summer: that is until one particular race.

Tina has moved in with Carol and is so far resisting the urge to strangle her.  Their cats aren’t exactly helping the peaceful life.  Cassie and Ash are so sweet, but Seth and Tim seem much less so.  Hazel and Annie celebrate a major event, and what does the evil Lia want as she returns to Saltbury when everyone thought they were rid of her for good?  Oh, and ever incorrigible Katie is distinctly confused.

Book 14: ‘Gold’ Published as a ebook in July, 2023 and available from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, and world-wide.

 When Carol Baxter wins two Gold medals at the Olympics she makes the grandest of romantic gestures to her beloved girlfriend Tina.  Her friend Svetlana, a runner from the former Soviet republic of Mourania, also gives her a precious gift: the baton she carried to victory in the 4 x 400m relay.  Carol is fêted as the homecoming heroine with a mayoral parade in Saltbury.  But then strange things start to happen.  Someone burgles Carol and Tina’s house and tries to steal the baton.  Svetlana dies in mysterious circumstances, and Carol and Tina’s cat, Leather, turns out to be very clever indeed.  Meanwhile, Katie gets even more outrageous.  We meet Saltbury’s most eccentric Police duo.  A disreputable photographer and a domineering secretary are both getting firmly on Tina’s nerves, and a diminutive, snooty, but extremely sexy blast from Carol’s past makes a distinctly unwelcome comeback.  ‘Gold’ is a romantic (and sometimes comic) thriller Saltbury style.

Book 15. ‘Wyeburn Station’ Available from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and world-wide.

This is a story of true love and healing. Hazel Fauld is twenty-six now and a huge success.  The Rock band she started with her sister and named ‘Fauld’, after their surname, has a million-selling third album out and has just completed a triumphant European tour.  But as well as being a Rock star she’s also a brilliant designer in her mother’s fashion empire, and she’s both partner and nurse to her beloved wife, Annie, who adores her.  It all sounds like bliss, except that much as she tries to conceal it, she’s totally overworked and it’s starting to show as she tries to please everyone, from wife to fans to her Mums.  She’s drinking too much and getting dangerously close to a breakdown.  She’s also increasingly homesick: a country girl born and bred, living in London but longing to be back in her pretty home village of Wyeburn.  Meanwhile, she’s at that stage of life when all her friends are having babies, even her big sister Róisin (well sort of), along with someone else who inexplicably tears at her very soul.  There is a solution though, one that Hazel had never even thought of, but which fills her true love with delight.

And what of her incorrigible little sister Sofie?  She’s nine now, a dyed in the wool tomboy, obsessed with music, football, oh and her primary-school friend Andrew.  Meanwhile seven-year-old Danielle has just discovered Elgar much to the surprise of her Rock fixated family.

Book 16. ‘Sofia’ Available from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and world-wide.

Remember Hazel Fauld’s mischievous baby sister Sofie?  Well she’s all grown up now at 20, although just as incorrigible as ever.  Like her mother, Debbie Stewart, she’s turned out to be a hugely talented musician and is trying to establish herself professionally.  But unlike Deb, and her two older sisters, she doesn’t want to be in a band.  She’s ferociously self reliant and determined to make it as a solo artist.  On the whole, she’s a happy and confident young woman, but she’s haunted by the loss of her first love, Amber, who abandoned her for, of all things, a man.  Other relationships don’t exactly go well either, especially when she dates the evil Jade.  Even so, she remains best friends with her old school-mate, Andrew, who she’s a little bit confused about.  She becomes very close to Hazel and Tina’s friend, Katie, now a famous actress, but whose own love life is as bewildering as ever.  A wealthy theatre owner takes her under her wing and her music career starts to really take off.  Then she begins recording her second album and gets to know a distinctly eccentric sound engineer.  As ever in Saltbury there are laughs and tears throughout while Martine, Sofie’s other mother, tries hard to keep some sort of order.

Book 17. ‘Millie’ Available from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and world-wide.

 We finally meet, Millie, Carol and Tina’s daughter, properly.  It’s the start of the long school summer holidays and eleven year old Millie, is bored, bored, bored.  Her best friend Nidhi is almost as bad, but it seems to have become uncool for either to show an active interest in anything.  All they want to do is sit in their bedrooms, playing with their phones and worrying ex-athlete Carol by refusing to take any exercise.

But Millie’s become a particular concern.  Her two mums are used to her pre-teen angst and rebellion.  It’s part of being a parent.  But she’s now outright aggressive.  She even refuses to be bridesmaid to one of Tina’s closest friends, because it’s a lesbian wedding.  Why this sudden hostility?  She’s never shown any before.

 But all is not what it seems, and our favourite redheaded lawyer soon finds herself dealing with a very dark situation that’s put another girl’s very life in danger.  And much to her wife’s disapproval, Tina finds herself acting for her daughter’s worst enemy the girl who’s been bullying her at school.

Meanwhile, Carol has become a sports TV star.  Miss Bryony is still bossing her bosses about and refusing to retire.  We see more of Katie, Jenny, Sofie and Tara.  Amber may have a new love.  Annie and Hazel are sweet but, of course, Yvonne is as grumpy as ever.  With added steam trains and rowing boats, it will be a summer they’ll never forget.