Tickled Pink [Paperback]

The wonderful new novel from the author of Nothing to Lose.

A large village somewhere in Britain, with church, pub, shop, school and bus shelter for the young to hang about in, its people coming to terms with life and work in the new century, and three maverick characters give Christina Jones the opportunity to create a vivid, frequently hilarious, sometime poignant picture of unusual partnerships and changing small town life.

Posy Nightingale, Lola Wentworth and Flynn Malone are strangers to each other and all seem to be in losing situations, but their chance coming together in a struggling B&B gives each of them an unlikely opportunity – will they have the guts to take it?

Christina Jones, whose most recent novel is Nothing to Lose, has created a wonderful cast of characters set in a lively unusual country background, which one is very sorry to leave at the end.

I'm - er - tickled pink by Tickled Pink, and I really hope you will be, too. When I'm asked what it's about and I say - well, it's an everyday story of carnival queens and karaoke kings; of traction engines and tattooists; of love and friendships; of carnivals and village pubs; of Adam Ant and the Orient Express, - I get some very odd looks. Really, it's simply a very happy book about a village and villagers, and I loved writing it and hated finishing it - and now my lifetime's ambition is to live in Steeple Fritton and drink at The Crooked Sixpence and drool over Ellis and Flynn and... yeah, okay, sad, I know - but we authors are a strange bunch... I wrote Tickled Pink as an antidote to all the bleak and unhappy things that are going on in the world - so, yes, it's pure escapism, and a bit wacky (think Miss Read meets H.E. Bates in Ambridge and goes completely mad, and you may get the picture), and real feel-good fiction, but hopefully you'll enjoy a wallow in the company of Lola and Posy (and Flynn and Ellis who both have a very high phwoar factor in my opinion, of course, but then I'm a bit biased...) and Tatty Spry and Rose Lusty and Glad Blissit and the Pinks (Martha, Mary and Neddy)and all the other characters who scamper merrily across the pages. If you're kind enough to buy Tickled Pink, and read it, I'd really, really love to know what you think of it - and I hope it at least makes you smile.
With thanks,
Christina.

Never heard of Steeple Fritton? That's about to change…

When Posy planned her wedding, she assumed that she would be at the altar, not skulking in the last pew wishing premature death on the bride.

And Lola planned her happily-ever-after for 28 years. When a sudden death makes her homeless and jobless, she must leave the fancy biscuit trade without so much as a custard cream for the journey.

With radical rethinks needed, Posy and Lola have to utilise their assets or go under. But when the assets are a showman's traction engine, an ailing pub and a village full of eccentrics, the new life plan is not immediately obvious.

Christina Jones gives a vivid, frequently hilarious, sometimes poignant picture of unusual friendships and changing village life. Never heard of Steeple Fritton? You won't forget it in a hurry.

Christina Jones, brought up in a circus family, wrote short stories for some time before being encouraged to write her first novel, Going the Distance, which became a highly successful WHS Fresh Talent entry. She is married and lives outside Oxford.