Anna Sayburn Lane

Mystery and thriller author

1920s mystery

September newsletter: book news, pre-orders for The Midwinter Murder, and recommendations

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Anna Sayburn Lane and Grandpa Phil at St David's CathedralI’m writing with my windows open to enjoy the sound and scent of the first proper rainfall we’ve had for months. Outside, the green is more of a brown, with scorched grass and bare patches, the same colour as the stony beach beyond. We need plenty more, but I’m enjoying the cooler air and fresh scent of petrichor.

August was quite a month! I finished writing The Midwinter Murder, and sent it to my long-standing editor Alison Jack. It’s ready to pre-order from the Kindle Store now.

The audiobook of the previous mystery, Murder On The White Cliffs, went live on audiobook sites. This is the sixth book on which I’ve worked with actor Kim Bretton, who always does a lovely job. I like to keep her on her toes, so I threw in an epilogue set in Rome to test her Italian accents.

But all this activity was eclipsed by my highlight of the month: meeting my granddaughter, Minnie Penelope. She’s perfect: dark hair, blue eyes, clear skin, ten tiny fingers and toes.

Grandpa Phil and I travelled to Pembrokeshire in Wales, where my stepson Chris and his partner Amy were adjusting to the new arrival. We stayed in a picture-perfect holiday rental, a shepherd’s hut in a field with a view over St Bride’s Bay. A perfect weekend!

I’ve also spent a lot of time on my allotment (for non-UK readers, this is a patch of land I rent cheaply from the town council, where I can grow fruit and vegetables), which has produced a bumper crop of courgettes (zucchini) which turn into marrows the minute my back is turned, and lots of lovely tomatoes.

Read on for book news, audiobook news, offers and recommendations.

Book News

The Midwinter Murder will be published on November 12 and is ready to pre-order now on the Kindle Store.

Pre-orders are really helpful for indie authors like me. Plenty of pre-orders tell Amazon that people are interested in the book, so they suggest it to other readers. It’s also very encouraging for me!

A friend recently told me she’d recommended my audiobooks to a relative going through a difficult time, and that she’d found them a welcome escape. Knowing that someone has enjoyed my books is such a boost. After all, there’d be no point writing them if you didn’t read them!

I do hope you’ll enjoy Marjorie’s Christmas outing.

Do you know what a priest’s hole is?

That’s not a joke! In Elizabethan England, Catholic priests were outlawed and the families who held to the old faith of Roman Catholicism could be executed for harbouring a priest in their homes.

So many of the stately homes of England from that period, especially those belonging to Catholic families, have a ‘priest’s hole’ – a hidden chamber where priests could hide if the agents of the state came calling.

I found out about them as part of research for The Midwinter Murder. You can read more about them on my Substack publication, The Stories Behind The Story.

Recommendations

Verity Bright has a new book out! Lady Swift and her handsome husband are charmed when they visit Stratford-on-Avon. Everyone is abuzz with chatter about the upcoming production of Macbeth… But wait, is that a body backstage? Murder Stage Left is the 26th in the Lady Eleanor Swift series.

Other things I’ve enjoyed recently:

  • William Shaw’s Burning Tide. When temporarily-unemployed policeman Eden Driscoll is approached in his tiny Devon village by a man who says someone’s trying to kill him, he doesn’t want to get involved. But soon he is involved, deeper than he could possibly realise. And who’s taking care of his orphaned nephew Finn while Eden is off sleuthing? Shaw’s books are always well-constructed page-turners.
  • A little late to this, but the BBC TV comedy Ann Droid featuring Diane Morgan and Sue Johnson. Both actresses are terrific and I’ve loved Diane Morgan’s previous comedy. I found this wry and charming.

The Midwinter Murder: pre-order now for Christmas!

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The seventh in the Marjorie Swallow series sees Marjorie and Frankie hop aboard the Flying Scotsman for a Christmas mystery adventure. They’re headed for remote Ashwick Castle, where the Earl of Ashwick was murdered on Midwinter Eve, 1925. The local police think they know the culprit, but Marjorie is pretty sure they’ve got it wrong. Can she save an innocent man – and discover the true murderer?

The Midwinter Murder will be published on November 12. Pre-order The Midwinter Murder on the Kindle Store.

 

August newsletter: books, babies, and more!

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Well, August is only just upon us but the month has already delivered plenty of excitement! On August 3 my stepson Chris and his partner Amy welcomed their baby Minnie into the world. I’m beyond excited to be a grandmother. When you get this newsletter I’ll be visiting the family in Wales and I cannot wait to meet little Minnie.

Despite the excitement, I managed to finish the first draft of A Midwinter Murder this morning. I know I have quite a few ‘fixes’ to come back to with this one, but it’s always good to get the first draft finished. I’ll have it up for pre-order soon.

It’s been a hot, dry month by the seaside. I’ve enjoyed the flowers that grow along the shore: yellow poppies, fennel and viper’s bugloss, to name a few. I’ve also spent time growing fruit and veg on my allotment. And if you’ve ever wondered what happens if you leave the courgettes (zucchini) alone too long, I can show you! I’ve been begging friends and family to take a few marrows off my hands, and dusting down my recipes for stuffed marrow.

Read on for book news, audiobook news, offers and recommendations.

A Midwinter Murder

Cover reveal! Donna Rogers of DLR Cover designs has worked her magic again. I hope you like the cover for The Midwinter Murder as much as I do.

Marjorie is preparing for Christmas in Bloomsbury, when the unexpected arrival of Frankie and her Auntie Clara sent them rushing for the next train heading north.

The trio set off for a snow-bound Northumbrian castle to find out who killed the Earl of Ashwick on Midwinter Eve. His Lordship’s feuding family are all home for the holidays, but suspicion has fallen on his chauffeur – who happens to be Frankie’s cousin Will.

With Mrs Jameson away in the south of France, it’s up to Marjorie to save the day.

The Midwinter Murder is set in Ashwick Castle, which isn’t a real place but was inspired by the castles of Northumberland, several of which I visited on a cycling trip last August.

You might recognise the magnificent Alnwick Castle, seat of the Dukes of Northumberland, from the Harry Potter films, where it stood in for Hogwarts, or from some episodes of Downton Abbey which were filmed there. The castle dates back 900 years as a stronghold against the Scots, and the seat of the Percy family, dukes of Northumberland since 1309. The family still lives there.

I was also inspired by Bamburgh Castle, which sits on a rocky headland above the sea, and by the haunting ruins of nearby Dunstanburgh Castle, further down the coast. So although you can’t visit Ashwick Castle, you can visit plenty of the castles I had in mind when I created it.

Audiobook news

The audiobook of Murder On The White Cliffs is available on Audible now, and should be on Spotify and the other audiobook channels very soon.

Did you know you can borrow audiobooks via your local library? Why not ask them about it? I enable distribution of all my audiobooks through library services, so all of the titles in the Marjorie Swallow series published so far should be available.

Check out the audiobooks and listen to samples here.

 

 

Recommendations

August’s Mystery of the Month is Losing Leonard, the free prequel to Kelly Mason’s rollicking Lady Ellen Investigates series. In this introduction to the series, the newly-widowed Lady Ellen has to find out who she can trust in 1920s Somerset.

Other books I’ve enjoyed recently:

  • Olga Tokarczuk’s murder mystery with a difference, Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Set in the Polish plains, it tells a story of cruelty, friendship, and revenge.
  • LC Winter’s creepy Spider, Spider, a gothic Victorian story of witchcraft and revenge. I had the pleasure of meeting author Libby at an Arvon course a couple of years ago. I devoured the story in a couple of days.

July newsletter: a new Marjorie Swallow book is on the way!

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It’s been full steam ahead this month, after changing track to start work on a new 1920s murder mystery. The spy thriller is on hold while I write the next in my Marjorie Swallow series. I’d long wanted to write a Christmas mystery for the series, which meant a June start if I was to hit that pre-Christmas deadline.

So while we sweltered through the hottest June and July on record, I busied myself in researching Christmas in 1920s Northumberland. It’s rather disconcerting to emerge from a mental picture of a midwinter night, the moon glinting off the frost and the Salvation Army band cranking out Christmas carols, to find sunbathers stretched out on the beach and the sun blazing down!

I also took time out to visit the Walmer Castle Book Fair, where I gave a short talk about the process behind my 1920s mysteries. Thanks to everyone who came along. You can see what I talked about in this article, How I Research And Write My 1920s Whodunnits.

All Aboard The Flying Scotsman

My first research challenge for the new book was to get Marjorie to Northumberland, which involved a deep dive into the history of the famous Flying Scotsman. If you missed it, you can read about in this article, All Aboard The Flying Scotsman.

In other transport news, I came across a rather fetching Rolls Royce at the Walmer Classic Car Show, which takes place handily close to my flat. The car dates from 1930, so only five years after the new book is set. The owners let me have a good look around. I didn’t tell them I was thinking about how you might sabotage it in order to surreptitiously bump off a nosy sleuth.

A writer’s get-together

One of the pleasures of June was meeting fellow authors at the Self Publishing Show Live conference in London. It was particularly fun to meet author Rosie Hunt, who has been an online friend since I started writing the Marjorie Swallow mysteries. We enjoyed a good catch-up over tea, and I enjoyed hearing what she has in store for her 1920s sleuth Lady Felicity Quick.

If you’ve yet to meet Lady Felicity, here’s a good place to start: her first adventure, Murder At Afternoon Tea. It’s free when you sign up to Rosie’s newsletter.

Rosie kindly answered my questions about her historical novel research process last year – you can catch up on her answers here.

I also caught up with Joanna Penn, a best-selling author of dark thrillers who has long been a legend on the indie author scene. I published my interview with JF Penn last week.

And I’ve also lined up a couple of historical mystery novelists I’m sure you’ll love, Benedict Brown and Lynn Morrison, to interview soon.

Recommendations

A few quick recommendations to round the month off. I’m:

  • Watching A Spy Among Friends, the ITV series that dramatised the defection of Kim Philby, on ITVX. The trio of leads (Guy Pearce, Damian Lewis and Anna Maxwell Martin) is top-notch. Pearce in particular is mesmerising as Philby, the oh-so-English spy who fooled the British establishment for decades before fleeing to Moscow when he was exposed as a spy.
  • Enjoying Dorothy Brande’s Becoming A Writer, on the grounds that it was Hilary Mantel’s favourite book about writing. If it’s good enough for Hilary, it’s more than good enough for me. It’s packed with good sense.
  • Loving LC Winter’s creepy Spider, Spider, a gothic Victorian story of witchcraft and revenge. I had the pleasure of meeting author Libby at an Arvon course a couple of years ago, and I was so excited to come across the beautiful bookshop edition of her first novel in the British Library bookshop. I devoured the story in a couple of days.

June newsletter: Book news and recommendations

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Anna at Walmer Castle
At Walmer Castle for the book fair

What a busy month May was! I began with a wonderful trip to Florence in Italy, where I enjoyed visiting museums, galleries, churches and palazzos, not to mention sipping wine in a Tuscan hill village. Lots of possibilities for a trip to Italy for Marjorie Swallow at some point in the future!

Back in London, I led a guided walk through Deptford for a group of American tourists who want to hear about the literary history of the area. It was a chance to revisit some of the places that inspired my first novel, Unlawful Things.

I enjoyed a study weekend exploring Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy – bliss for historical fiction fans, with talks by historians, authors and experts on all aspects of Tudor history. And I met with author friends including 1920s mystery luminaries like Benedict Brown, Lynne Morrison and Rosie Hunt at the Self Publishing Show Live 2026 conference, held opposite the Houses of Parliament at County Hall.

Mid-way through the month, my fifth Marjorie Swallow book, Death On Fleet Street, went live, so it’s now available as an audiobook. My wonderful narrator Kim Bretton is now hard at work on Murder On The White Cliffs, the last in the current series.

I also took part in the Walmer Castle Book Fair in the delightful surroundings of Walmer Castle gardens, just down the road from me.

And in between all the activity, I got some writing done. More on that next month. Read on for all the usual news, recommendations and offers.

Summer reading recommendations

Is there anything more relaxing than a book on a beach? It’s my favourite way to wind down, and you can’t beat a mystery for a spot of relaxation. Here are two books I’ve enjoyed recently.

Have you read the Augusta Peel mysteries? Emily Organ’s series set in 1920s London is very much up my street. I like her reluctant sleuth, Augusta, who would prefer to be left to a quiet life mending books in a Bloomsbury cellar, but keeps getting dragged into murder investigations. Death In Soho, the first in the series, sees her act as chaperone to a young woman intent on visiting a Soho nightclub – but she soon wishes she’d stayed at home with her books.

Death In Soho is June’s Mystery of the Month. The book is just 99p/99c from June 24 to 30. Find it here.

Jane Thynne’s Midnight In Vienna is set on the brink of World War Two, as all Europe holds its breath. Stella Fry, a young woman in search of employment, meets mystery author Hubert Newman, who is looking for a secretary to type up his latest book. But Hubert is not long for this world, and when he’s discovered dead in Westminster Abbey just hours after their lunch in his London club, she begins to suspect his death was not an accident. And what ‘mistakes’ did he want her to spot in his manuscript?

It’s an atmospheric and gripping book, and even has a walk-on role for my favourite mystery writer Dorothy L Sayers!

 

Event: Walmer Castle Book Fair

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Walmer Castle
Walmer Castle

I’m excited to be taking part in the 2026 Walmer Castle Book Fair next weekend. I’ll be on the author’s pop-up stage on the lawn at 1pm on Sunday June 14, talking about how I write my historical mystery books, and answering audience questions. I’ll also be signing books during the rest of the fair on Sunday. If you’re in the area, why not come and say hello?
Walmer Castle is managed by English Heritage.