It was my mum who introduced me to Karen Swan’s books, my first being Christmas at Tiffany’s, about Cassie, whose marriage falls apart and spends the next year living with each of her best friends, in Paris, New York and London, in order to decide what she wants to do with her life. I also really like that she doesn’t have a lot of surplus characters, each is there for a purpose, a tip many authors could take. She is a very skilful writer who brings both characters and places to life. Of her stand alone novels my favourite is The Midnight Rose spanning four generations of the Astbury family and takes us from England to the palaces of India. I have reviewed the first four in this series on my blog: The Seven Sisters, The Storm Sister, The Shadow Sister and most recently The Pearl Sister. Lucinda has written several stand alone novels as well as currently writing the fifth book of her Seven Sisters series, which is my favourite series of the moment.

I first found out about her books when Hothouse Flower was chosen for The Richard and Judy Book Club. Lucinda Riley has gradually become one of my favourite authors at the moment. I am sure many of you will disagree with some of my choices, if so please comment so I can see some of your choices and add them to my ever growing TBR pile. I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that this is my personal list, of authors I have read. I am not saying any of these books cannot be read by men, of course they can, I have simply gone on what genre the books marketed for.

This genre does seem to encompass a wide range of books ad can be interpreted in different ways. I have separated women’s contemporary fiction from romantic fiction (chick lit), which will feature in a later blog post. This is the third in my series of genre specific top ten authors.

The librarian salley vickers amazon