Groundsman’s Cottage
A novel of old vows, new loves, and second chances. Available, October 2026 (paperback and ebook)
After redundancy and her mother’s death, sixty-two-year-old Zoe remakes a rural West Sussex cottage into a field-to-fork restaurant. Success brings Jack, a married retiree whose help becomes love. Meanwhile, Jack’s wife Susan reconnects with an Italian past, and buried choices surface.
As business opportunities, injuries, and loyalties collide, all must decide whether late-life reinvention means preserving what remains—or risking everything for a second chance.
The story is set in contemporary England from 2022—2025, primarily between Groundsman’s Cottage in the rural hamlet of Mudberry Hatch, West Sussex, and Jack and Susan’s Edwardian home in Angling, Berkshire. While the world is recognizably modern, it is deeply rooted in older English landscapes: downs, villages, pubs, farmers’ markets, vineyards, antique shops, gardens, and historic buildings.
You may like this book if you enjoy reading upmarket women’s fiction about domestic drama, second careers, retirement crises, divorce, long marriages, emotional and later-life reinvention after sixty. The book explores themes of love, fidelity, and self-permission.
The book may also resonate with people who are interested in food, wine, gardening, vintage clothing, interiors, English villages, and objects as identity.
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