Thorns

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Traumatised by what he witnessed in the streets of Sarajevo during the 1990s siege, newsman James Lambert flees back to England, seeking peace and recovery in the beauty and apparent tranquillity of the countryside. He'd narrowly escaped death from a Serbian shell and watched his Bosnian lover die Haunted by memories and the reverberating clamour of guns he takes on a small farm in the Welsh Marches, with a commission to write about the conflict. Though entranced by the unspoiled beauty of the landscape he settles slowly into a community which seems to him a time warp of ideas and behaviour. His seclusion is disrupted by a vulnerable girl's appeal to find a home for her young horse and his kindness to her drags him into the mesh of her family's secret guilt. A letter draws him back to Bosnia and he becomes involved in covering the ongoing search for the bodies of the missing. His relationship with the girl is threatened by the enmity of her ex-boyfriend but it develops into a love which brings with it dreadful consequences.

Frances Brand lives in Shropshire, in the west of England among the glorious countryside of the Marches where a raven can fly quickly over the border into Wales. Her second novel deals essentially with the results of what we have done to this beautiful planet, envisaging catastrophic flooding a decade into the future when high land is the only refuge for those fleeing the rising water. She says: "We need to take these changes very seriously and perhaps reading Adam's Ark might make people more aware of the consequences of doing nothing to stop the damage to our Earth." She was formerly the editor of a farming newspaper, working closely with farmers and others involved in agriculture until she and her husband opened their hilltop home as a bed and breakfast, giving her more time to write. She lives a largely outdoor way of life, in tune with the natural world. Her passion for nature, the landscape and the power of the elements is often reflected in her writing. At one time she and her husband stood a stallion at stud and for several years she evented successfully with a home-bred horse. She finds running a guest house often gives a fascinating insight into human behaviour and sparks many trains of thought. Some guests inspire immediate empathy while others can sometimes seem alien. Her life is also kept busy caring for dogs and elderly horses.