Tulips in the Snow - Softcover

A winter's fireside tale: Anna is terrified at the thought of her Uncle being caught up in a snowstorm of treachery, bigamy and murder, but what can she do, with her own life in a precarious state? For a while, Anna’s attention is turned to the cause of saving her marriage from ruin as the heartless, callous drunkard, Violet De Vine guesses the truth of the hidden secret between Anna and Raphael. Deceit, betrayal and cruelty threaten to destroy Anna, but before she can conquer these demons a more menacing terror enters her life, one which desires to enslave her forever... Meanwhile, village life in Georgian times rolls on: Millie pours forth everlasting gossip; Retty still needs watching, if there’s a bottle of brandy about and Abraham and Emmaline still row and glare at each other before always making their peace. In Heartbourne, only Anna and her Uncle Christopher understand the depth of the darkness which surrounds them all, as the snow falls steadily about them.

Cay Towner was born the fifth of six children, ‘A jolly good way to have your corners knocked off and not grow up with any airs and pretensions!’ she comments. She remembers being told by her English teacher, at the age of twelve, that she had ‘a flair for the subject’ and with such encouragement, she went on from Portsmouth High School to read English Literature at Queen Mary and Westfield College (London) where her own son is now a student. Cay spent her early adult life wandering around various occupations from accounts work, to donning the overall of a fish wife at Billingsgate Market, where, upon her departure due to pregnancy, she was presented with a bill for £1 and six pence, owing to a side law which banned a wife from selling fish, unless her husband was at breakfast. The officers had counted the number of occasions on which Cay had been seen serving fish, with her husband there beside her, and had totted up the appropriate fine at the princely sum of one penny a day! Cay went on to have two further children, both daughters, who still live with her today, in a quiet and much loved Sussex village, down an unmade lane which leads to a farm... Among Cay’s more recent exploits, much to her teenage children’s embarrassment, she lists an appearance on 'Cash in the Attic' which she undertook in order to raise funds for a trip to Uganda, where she spent the summer of 2010 working with women’s self-help groups in the development of micro businesses, such as chicken farming and goat rearing. She was also involved in a project to plant a million trees. Cay has spent over ten years as an English Lecturer at Sussex Downs College in Lewes. Recently short listed for the prestigious Asham Award, she is delighted to be publishing her first novel, 'Tulips in the Snow'; a satirical romantic comedy, set in a mid-eighteenth century Sussex village.