A new book club is being formed in Bowness, with a romantic novelist as the guest for the first meeting. The organisers hope that the book club, at the Burn How Garden House Hotel, will become a regular event.
Suzanne Snow is a Lancashire-based writer, a regular visitor to the Lakes for many years, who was shortlisted for an award by the Romantic Novelists’ Association for her first book, The Cottage of New Beginnings. She’s now working on a series of Love in the Lakes books for publishers Canelo.
The first meeting of the book club will be at the hotel on the evening of Wednesday March 22. Organiser Nicolle Evans said: “The Lake District has the finest tradition of writing in the whole of the country. We are surrounded by the heritage of great writers from the past, and poets, and we have so many modern writers setting their books here. And when you’ve read a book you love, isn’t it great to have the chance to talk about it with other enthusiasts.”
Many of today’s novels set in the Lakes feature gritty crime thrillers such as those by Paula Daly, Rachel Lynch and Martin Edwards. The Burn How team hopes to invite them to future events; Martin Edwards is already provisionally booked. “But it seemed appropriate to start with something a bit less harrowing as we come to the end of a long, bitter winter,” said Nicolle.
Suzanne writes “contemporary and uplifting” fiction with a vibrant sense of setting and community connecting the lives of her characters. Her work is inspired by a love of landscape, romance and rural life. She previously worked in financial services and retrained as a horticulturist to plant redesigned gardens. “I have an interest in Arts and Crafts gardens, and in particular those of Thomas Mawson.” By coincidence, Mawson designed the original garden at Burn How.
Her second book, The Garden of Little Rose, is set around the discovery of an abandoned Arts and Crafts garden on a Hebridean island. Her sixth book, Wedding Days at Halesmere House, has just been released and this is the second in a three-book series set in Cumbria, with the third due out in October. “The series is very much inspired by the landscape and the outstanding crafts, food and farming culture, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to write fiction set in the Lakes.”
The Burn How has a strong literary tradition. Vicky Robinson, wife of the proprietor Michael Robinson, has for many years chaired the Lakeland Book of the Year awards.The inaugural book club will be held in the hotel lounge at 7pm on Wednesday March 22. All welcome.
