I love the settings – Australian wineries and small country towns juxtaposed against fast paced city living. For me a conspiracy of all the above elements meant I really needed a read that would energise not drain my emotions and make me smile. This is the prefect pick me up read when you have had a hard day, a hard week or just finished a few emotionally draining works of crime fiction. Just the sort of read I needed tonight! One to make me smile. And if it’s a little too sweet in some ways, what is wrong with that anyway? A great fun read and I will be interested to read more by this author. Maybe this story is not one that provokes deep thought, but it is enjoyable to read. As well as The Shingle Valley, the book contains some glimpses of Bondi. The story flows easily, and the reader gets a good sense of the setting and the community. I liked Rose and many of the other characters. This was just the sort of light, fun read I needed after my previous book. Readers will no doubt dislike her as she has the capacity to destroy all Rose’s dreams. But it is Isabella, Marks’ estranged wife who returns at one point that Rose finds hardest to deal with. Luisa and Leo are sweeties and then there is the enigmatic Mark. Violet and Vera, two elderly residents, were a delight. She finds herself falling in love with the valley and its people. Rose learns a bit about the problems of vineyards and the process of winemaking. The two young women end up becoming friends. As well there is the children’s nanny Astrid from Germany. So she agrees and ends up as an au pair to Mark Cameron and his two young children, Leo and Luisa.

Rose is not thrilled with the prospect but she needs to get away. Her brother Henry wants her to spy out the winery in the Shingle Valley known as Kalkari Wines. Intoxicating, haunting and inspired by the author's background, The Silk House is an exceptional gothic mystery.After her breakup with Giles, heartbroken Rose Bennett leaves London for Australia. A length of fabric she weaves with a pattern of deadly flowers will have far-reaching consequences for all who dwell in the silk house. In London, Mary-Louise Stephenson lives amid the clatter of the weaving trade and dreams of becoming a silk designer, a job that is the domain of men. She is thrust into a new and dangerous world where her talent for herbs and healing soon attracts attention. In the late 1700s, Rowan Caswell leaves her village to work in the home of an English silk merchant.

She is to stay with them in Silk House, a building with a long and troubled past. Australian history teacher Thea Rust arrives at an exclusive boarding school in the British countryside only to find that she is to look after the first intake of girls in its 150-year history. Haunting. The spellbinding story of a mysterious boarding school sheltering a centuries-old secret.

The silk house kayte nunn