Bøker av Allie Cresswell

Suddenly-widowed Maisie sets out to clear her late husband's collection; wonky furniture and balding rugs, bolts of material for upholstery projects he never got round to, other people's trash brought home from car boot sales and rescued from the tip. The hoard is endless, stacked into every room in the house, teetering in piles along the landing and forming a scree up the stairs. It is all part of Clifford's waste-not way of thinking in which everything, no matter how broken or obscure, can be re-cycled or re-purposed into something useful or, if kept long enough, will one day be valuable. He had believed in his vision as ardently as any mystic in his holy revelation but now, without the clear projection of his vision to light it up for her as what it would be, it appears to Maisie more grimly than ever as what it is: junk. As Maisie disassembles his stash she is forced to confront the issues which drove her husband to squirrel away other people's rubbish; after all, she knows virtually nothing about his life before they met. Finally, in the last bastion of his accumulation, she discovers the key to his hoarding and understands - much too late - the man she married.Then, with empty rooms in a house which is too big for her, she must ask herself: what next?

One evening, Viola goes missing.The explanation-a visit to her son-seems doubtful and her women friends' messages go unanswered. A spiky, caustic woman, Viola's heavy drinking makes her tiresome company, but they know nothing of her troubled past.Yet, Maisie misses Viola. Recently, their shared love of gardening has almost blunted Viola's barbs, and Maisie is much in need of a close friend. Her house is a building site, her daughter's wedding is looming. Most worrying is her friendship with handsome, formidable Oliver Harrington. She cannot work out what he wants from it, nor, really, what she wants, either. She barely has time to wonder where Viola has gone.As Maisie grapples with her present-day preoccupations, Viola's tale unfolds: a dark landscape of tragedy and suffering. Their two stories collide in an explosive finale. Can the two women rescue each other? This third book in the Widows series stands alone. A story of weeds and wildflowers, tenacity and tenderness, and containing potentially upsetting details of domestic abuse, alcoholism, and bereavement, this is ultimately an affirmation of the strength and power of women's friendships.

Burned-out author Dee needs fresh inspiration. Impetuously, she abandons London and her good-for-nothing boyfriend to go wherever her literary quest takes her. Journey's end is a remote village on the shores of a wild estuary, overshadowed by a ruined pele tower. She rents Winter Cottage and waits for a story to emerge.The bleak beauty of the whispering dunes, the jacquard of colour and texture of the marsh and a romantic tree in a secluded glade-The Trysting Tree-all seduce Dee. Nevertheless, the secretive behaviour of a handsome neighbour, lights across the marsh, a spurious squire and a bizarre, moonlit encounter all suggest there is something odd afoot.Local gossip and crumbling graveyard inscriptions give Dee the opening she needs. She begins to weave hints about the tragic history of a local family, feuding brothers and a fatal fire into a sweeping historical saga. Her characters clamour for a voice as the tale spools effortlessly onto the page-demanding to be told. Dee feels more like its instrument than its instigator.As she becomes enmeshed in the local community, Dee is startled to find her fiction unnervingly confirmed by fact, her history still resonating in the present-day.Is she being guided by echoes of the past?

A prequel to Jane Austen's 'Emma' - come and visit Highbury.

Previously published as Lost Boys, this quartet of over-layering stories introduces four strangers. The only thing they have in common is their dull English town and the unusual heatwave that broils its lack-lustre streets and wilting parks. They and their separate stories are drawn violently together when a young boy pulls them into the maelstrom of his fate.Each is at a crossing place. Matt must leap the gulf between adolescence and adulthood. Megan needs to find her way out of troubled waters. A family crisis propels Jade to set her foot on a tenuous path to faith. Mrs Fairlie knows the bridge she faces but refuses to cross without knowing the fate of her son.A pivotal events connects their narratives and their lives to demonstrate how fates intertwine and how the consequences of our choices can affect people we don't even know.