A
seasonal easy read romance, Christmas in
the Cotswolds is Jenny Kane’s festive sequel to Another Cup
of Christmas. (It can also be read as a stand alone story.)
Blurb:
Izzie Spencer-Harris,
owner of the Cotswold Art and Crafts Centre, is due to host the prestigious
Cotswold Choir’s annual Christmas carol concert in her beautiful converted
church. Or at least she was, until a storm smashed a hole right through the
chancel roof.
Days from Christmas,
Izzie suddenly finds herself up to her neck in DIY, with her last dodgy workman
having walked off the job. She does the only thing she can … calls in
her best friend Megan to help.
Leaving Peggy and Scott
to run Pickwicks Café in her absence, Megan heads to the Cotswolds for
Christmas. Within minutes of her arrival, she finds herself hunting down anyone
willing to take on extra work so close to Christmas. It seems the only person
available to help is Joseph Parker – a carpenter who, while admittedly
gorgeous, seems to have ulterior motives for everything he does …
With Izzie’s bossy
mother, Lady Spencer-Harris, causing her problems
at every turn, an accident at work causing yet more delays, and the date for
the concert drawing ever nearer, it’s going to take a lot more than Mrs
Vickers’ powerful mulled wine to make sure everything is all right on the
night …
~ * ~
Extract:
Izzie closed her eyes and counted to
ten as the door of the Cotswold Arts Centre slammed shut.
There was no point in panicking. She
simply didn’t have time for such luxuries if her converted church was going to
be ready to host a Christmas carol concert by the renowned Cotswold Choir in
nine days’ time.
Bored of being propositioned by men
who weren’t remotely interested in her until they discovered she was a daughter
of the gentry, Izzie had ejected the carpenter through her front door before
he’d quite had time to work out just how insulting her rejection of his latest
lurid suggestion was.
Now, her hasty tongue having deprived
her of a desperately needed pair of tradesman’s hands, Izzie sat with a heavy
thump onto the nearest pew. She knew she had to find fresh help, and fast. A
task that wouldn’t be easy so close to Christmas.
‘Although,’ Izzie addressed the image
of Noah, who smiled benevolently at her from his stained-glass window, as if
grateful he hadn’t been smashed to pieces by the tree branch that had come
through the top of the chancel and caused so much seasonal inconvenience, ‘I’m
damn sure I’m not asking my mother to help out ever again!’
Reaching for the offending package of
invitations that had arrived by courier first thing that morning, Izzie emptied
it onto the table. The invitations were supposed to have been posted by now. As
soon as she’d seen them, Izzie understood why her mother had left them to the
last minute.
Unfussy, cost-effective, and with a
medieval Christmas flavour in keeping with the spirit of the converted
fourteenth-century church where the concert was to be held. That’s what she’d
asked for.
What she’d got was decadent
Victorian-style gold-edged invitations which weighed so much, Izzie was sure
that posting them alone would break the bank. And if that wasn’t bad enough,
her mother had done the one thing that she had expressively forbidden. She’d
put Izzie’s full name on the invitations.
Lady Perdita Spencer-Harris had been
unable to comprehend why her daughter didn’t want to use the family name to
help sales. She simply didn’t understand that Izzie wanted people to come to
hear the choir for its own sake, or because they wanted to see what she’d done
in her art centre; not because she was a young and single female member of the
landed gentry.
Miss
Isadora Spencer-Harris
cordially
invites you to a magical festive evening at
The
Cotswold Arts Centre, Chipping Swinton
to
hear the renowned Cotswold Choir’s
Christmas
Carol Concert
Saturday
21st December
7
p.m. for 7.30 p.m. start
£25
per ticket
Refreshments
provided
RSVP
by 18th December to Harris Park
Wrapping her stripy woollen scarf
more tightly around her neck, Izzie breathed warm air over her cold fingers.
Deciding it wasn’t cost effective to heat the church this late at night just
for her, she gathered up the invitations, and with one last check that the
polythene sheeting would keep the rest of her chancel roof in place overnight,
Izzie headed home.
Izzie scooped up three Christmas
cards from her doormat. A smile replaced her frown as she opened the first
envelope to see a cartoon robin wishing her a Merry Christmas. Inside, beneath
the seasonal greeting, her friend Megan had written Must meet up SOON! I’d
love to see your new art centre.
‘Should I?’ Izzie was sure her
dearest friend from college would help. Megan always helped. Izzie addressed
the picture of the robin, ‘But won’t she be hugely busy at Pickwicks café this
close to Christmas?’
Switching on her laptop, Izzie
started to hunt for a replacement tradesman to help repair her church roof.
Half an hour of searching later, and her quest was looking increasingly
hopeless by the minute.
It was no good, if she wasn’t going
to be forced to ask her parents to bail her out – which was an ‘over her dead
body’ situation as far as Izzie was concerned – she needed alternative
assistance. Izzie picked up her mobile before guilt at disturbing her friend’s
life at Christmas overtook her.
‘Megan, thank goodness you’re there!
How can I put this … help!’
Buy links:
~ * ~
Bio:
With
a background in history and archaeology, Jenny Kane should really be sat in a
dusty university library translating Medieval Latin criminal records, before
writing research documents that hardly anyone would want to read. Instead,
tucked away in the South West of England, Jenny Kane writes stories with one
hand, while working for a Distance Learning Company with the other.
Jenny
spends a large part of her time in the local coffee shops, where she creates
her stories, including the novels Romancing
Robin Hood (Accent Press, 2014), the best selling contemporary romance Another Cup of Coffee (Accent Press,
2013), and the novella length sequels Another
Cup of Christmas (Accent Press, 2013) and Christmas in the Cotswolds, (Accent Press, 2014)
Jenny’s
next full length novel, Abi’s House,
will be published by Accent Press in 2015.
Jenny
Kane is also the author of quirky children’s picture books There’s a Cow in the Flat (Hushpuppy, 2014) and Joe’s Letter (Coming soon from
Hushpuppy)
Keep
your eye on Jenny’s blog at www.jennykane.co.uk
for more details.
Twitter
- @JennyKaneAuthor
Facebook
- https://www.facebook.com/JennyKaneRomance
Jenny
Kane also writes erotica as Kay Jaybee. (www.kayjaybee.me.uk)
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