Where I Found You (44 page)

Authors: Amanda Brooke

BOOK: Where I Found You

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8. Can you tell us about your next book?

My next book is about a married couple who are expecting their first child when David goes missing without warning. His wife Jo is left wondering what could have happened and more importantly why. Countless scenarios begin to haunt her in the tortuous months that follow his disappearance. Clues suggest one thing while her heart tells her something else and all the while, life moves on so fast that she becomes entangled in her own emotions.

Reading Group Questions

Discuss the friendship between Maggie and Elsie. What do they offer each other?
Why do you think Maggie is so desperate to help Elsie?
When Maggie announced her pregnancy, Judith was appalled. She couldn’t understand how a blind person would be able to look after a child. What was your response to her reaction?
Discuss Judith and James’ relationship. How does it change throughout the novel? How does this affect Maggie and James’ relationship?
Discuss the significance of the bench to both Maggie and Elsie.
Do you think Ted was right to stop Elsie going back to the park to relive her memories? Why did he do this?
Discuss Kathy’s role in the novel.
Do feel you have a greater understanding of blindness and Alzheimer’s? Do you feel these were realistic portrayals?
How did you feel after finishing the novel? Would you recommend it?

Amanda’s first novel,
Yesterday’s Sun
, was a Richard and Judy Book Club selection, and was inspired by the tragic death of her own son, at just three years old.

How could you ever choose between your own life and the life of your child?

Newly-weds Holly and Tom have just moved into an old manor house in the picturesque English countryside. When Holly discovers a moondial in the overgrown garden and its strange crystal mechanism, little does she suspect that it will change her life forever. For the moondial has a curse.

Each full moon, Holly can see into the future – a future which holds Tom cradling their baby daughter, Libby, and mourning Holly’s death in childbirth …

Yesterday’s Sun
9780007445912

Look out for Amanda’s next novel, ANOTHER WAY TO FALL, published September 2013

If you could write your own happy ending, what would it say?

This is the story of Emma’s life

For three long years, she has battled with illness, enduring everything with bravery and always with hope. Then one day Emma is told that they’ve reached the end of the road. While her family and friends are thrown into denial, anger and grief, Emma suddenly realises that with so much left undone, she must find a way to live the life she has always dreamed of.

This is a story about happy endings

So Emma begins to write the story of the life she has always wanted to live and something miraculous starts to happen. As her body starts to weaken, the lines between fiction and reality start to blur and her story takes on a life of its own. And as her story gains in strength, Emma and those who cherish her discover that even in death, there is life.

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And try Amanda’s short story:

On the surface, Elle has the perfect life – husband, child and a beautiful home. But sometimes a perfect facade hides the cracks beneath: Elle’s husband Rick seems determined to clip her wings at every turn, keeping her at home and away from her friends and from the world. When Elle’s father dies and she starts to clear his house, the cracks start to widen – and it’s only a matter of time before everything breaks open.

On a quest for buried treasure at the house, her young son, Charlie, finds a box underneath the apple tree, with love letters from the past that could tear her world apart.

As past and present collide, Elle must decide what is right – and what course her life should take.

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Published by HarperCollins
Publishers Ltd

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2014

Cover layout design © HarperCollins
Publishers
Ltd 2014

Cover images © Christiana Stawski/Getty Images (hills); Knaupe/Getty Images (tree); Shutterstock.com (figures, bench)

Amanda Valentine assert the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

These novels are entirely works of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed within are the work of the authors’ imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007511341

Ebook Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9780007511358

Version: 2014-03-12

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