Friday 22 November 2019

A Practical Arrangement

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It is a very strange feeling, approaching the end of a series. Part of me is delighted to be bringing the overall story to a satisfying conclusion. Part of me is looking forward to moving on to something new. Part of me is feeling just the teeniest bit bereft.

I have had the characters from the Furze House Irregulars in my head for two years now. Some of them - like Verity and Charles from A Rational Proposal - were very real to me right from the start. Others - like Ned from A Scholarly Application - didn’t exist at all until I began to write his story. The rest developed over the course of the books. One of the joys of writing this series has been the space it has given me to find out about all these people, to let them grow and deepen in character, to let them surprise me and take on a life of their own.

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The fourth and final book, A Practical Arrangement, will be out on New Year’s Day 2020, making it two years exactly from the start to the finish of the series. I’m going to miss them all.


When Benedict Fitzgilbert’s sister’s absence from London exposes him to society husband-hunters, Lilith suggests an assumed interest in her friend Julia Congreve as a practical arrangement to keep the Marriage Mart matriarchs off his back. But beautiful Julia is the epitome of a society butterfly, and Benedict is far too focused on hunting for the criminal mastermind ‘Flint’ to waste time on a masquerade.

Unfortunately, it seems the only way to distract Flint from the net closing in around him is to make Julia’s and Benedict’s attraction appear real.

The Furze House Irregulars: women of spirit, women of courage, women who don't see why, in this male-dominated Regency era, they should not also play their part in bringing wrong-doers to justice.
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