Paperback, £7.99 ISBN 978-1-906451-52-3

available from spring 2012

orders will be taken from December.

ebook ISBN 978-1-906451-47-9

now available for Kindle 

Romance and adventure with

laughs, hair-raising dramas and a few tears.

Those of us who are not young, slim and beautiful will love Collette’s unconventional heroine. Penelope Toomey claims the right for middle-aged women to be sexy and adventurous.

Penelope Toomey – Pigs for short – is a heroine with a difference, tubby, debt-ridden and often calamitous. Her adventures range from Paris to Amsterdam, directed by an enigmatic spymaster with whom she falls in love. Romance, with a spice of danger and mystery, is the theme of many of the stories. They are balanced with descriptions of the author’s village in France that will appeal to Francophiles everywhere. 

The collection is completed by an exposé of the character of Louise Maigret, from the Simenon stories, and a follow-up to Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Victorian sensational novel. 

In the round, the collection challenges persistent conventional ideas of women, their lives and loves, their sexuality and their capacity for adventure.