Katy longed for freedom but never expected the price would be so high.

Daffodils
(Book One in The Katherine Wheel Serie)
By Alex Martin

 

Publication Date: 14th January 2024
Publisher: Kindle Direct Publishing
Page Length: 384 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction

Book One of the award-winning Katherine Wheel Series catapults Katy and Jem into the global arena of World War One and changes their lives forever.

Cheadle is a sleepy village in rural Wiltshire, England. Nothing much changes and little family dramas provide the only food for scandal and gossip. Then WW1 erupts into the lives of these country people, leaving no one unscathed.

We meet Katy as a young maidservant, restless for more than domestic service can offer and reckless to a fault. Katy has to develop and mature, as life throws joys and tragedies across her path and the war lures Jem away.

Another man tempts her to stay home but in the end, she too signs up for the war. Katy joins the WAAC and goes to France to help the fight.

There, she finds her true self and discovers that the only thing that matters is, after all, simply love.

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Daffodils
HERE!

Alex Martin

'The Plotting Shed' was my first writing space at the bottom of my Welsh garden. Now I split my time between Wales and France and plot wherever I am. I still wander aimlessly in the countryside with my dog and my dreams and I can still be found typing away with imaginary friends whispering in my ear, but these days I have the joy of seeing my stories published and the treasured feedback from readers who've enjoyed them. 

Now I have nine novels on Amazon and a collection of 3 short stories, called Trio (a free copy of which is available at The Plotting Shed).

My first novel, The Twisted Vine, is based on my adventurous escape from real life when I picked grapes in France in the 1980s. I met some amazing people there but none as outrageous as those that sprang to life on my screen. 

Award-winning Daffodils, the first in "The Katherine Wheel Series", is quite a different book based in Wiltshire where I grew up. Katy's life and the rigid social order that confined her were radically altered by the catalyst of the First World War as it slowly eroded the age-old way of English country life. The sequel, Peace Lily, takes the characters into 1919 after the armistice. They each have to carve out new lives in the aftermath of the Great War and find their way into the new modern age. The next book is Speedwell, when the four protagonists race into the motoring era of the roaring 'twenties. Willow, a novella, bridges the gaps between the generations in Speedwell and the next two books, Woodbine and Ivy. The children in Willow are on the brink of both adulthood and the Second World War in Woodbine, and this conflict will dramatically impact on their lives, just as the First World War did on their parents'. The Katherine Wheel Series concludes in Ivy, the sixth volume where Lottie is trapped in occupied France, Isobel is torn between love and duty and Al flies planes for the ATA. All the disparate threads of the previous five books are drawn together into a surprising climax. 

I've also published something totally different. The Rose Trail is a ghost story with the English Civil War as its backdrop. The story slips between the time of the English civil war and the present day and is woven together with a supernatural thread in a ghostly voice. I'm happy to add that The Rose Trail has won 2 awards since publication: Chill with a Book award and a B.R.A.G Medallion. Now its sequel is published, Triskelion, Book Two of The Spirit Level Series, where Fay and Percy take on their first professional assignment in the wild lands of Anglesey, an island off North Wales. A rock star's creativity is frustrated by a ghost who lived near his music studio 2000 years ago. This Druid priestess is determined to be heard by everyone. 

I am currently working on a new novel about three friends set in the present day with only a hint of a ghost!

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