A new version of this highly acclaimed and award-winning medieval murder mystery series has been rewritten with an adult fiction market in mind, and The Janna Chronicles will be published and released by Momentum Books Australia, one every month, as from mid-January 2015. For more information, please go to separate pages for each title:
Please note that the series will still be suitable for a YA readership.
Spies, treachery, a dangerously attractive pilgrim and a murder at Stonehenge test Janna’s courageJanna Mysteries Book 4 – Willows for Weeping and ingenuity to the limit as she continues the search for her father in the company of pilgrims and jongleurs. She learns the meaning of betrayal, treachery and heartbreak, while her quest brings her ever closer to the royal court and the dangers of the civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda.
Willows For Weeping won the Biennial Book Award, Society of Women Writers, 2009.
The Janna Mysteries are listed on the Victorian Premier’s Reading Challenge.
Teachers: Discover how you can match my novels to the English and/or History curriculum. You’ll find a comprehensive description of themes, topics for discussion, class activities and associated articles of interest for all my books on the For Teachers page.
“My research for Willows took me to Stonehenge. I was there in June, in time for the festival for the summer solstice. This is celebrated by thousands of people every year. They camp out under the stars and watch the first rays of sunlight shine down ‘the Avenue’ to the Heel Stone and into the heart of the stone circle.
I also spent several weeks in Winchester, one of my favourite places. I used to walk beside the River Itchen and watch the swans, just as Janna does almost a thousand years ago in my novel. I stayed at a B & B which looked down onto the ruins of Wolvesey Palace, which was the bishop’s stronghold during the civil war.
I wandered among the ruins hoping the stones would speak to me – but they stayed obstinately silent! So what I’ve written comes either from my imagination or from the old chronicles I use as a reference base: the Gesta Stephani (Life of Stephen, author unknown) and William of Malmesbury’s Historia Novella.
The authors were eye-witnesses to what was going on at that time. I just wish they’d thought to write their accounts in a bit more detail! It would have made my task so much easier and I could also be sure that what I was writing was absolutely accurate”.
Other books in the series:
