Helping out a mate...

You've got to help out your buddies, right?

So that's what I'm doing today. My alter ego, MJ Kingston just published a new one, and I'm darn well going to promote it here on my blog. MJ's talking semi-retirement after this one, to let yours truly have a proper run at the try-line, so - after five books, and a lot of wonderful times - this is sort of an au revoir. It's a sad moment, but also a happy one, because this lovely book is one I've wanted to see in print for over a year.

Here's the story:

On an island full of disreputable drinking establishments, the Spread Eagle at New Swinton somehow managed to stand out. It was the quintessential disreputable drinking establishment. The disreputable drinking establishment par excellence. The customers were immoral, frequently violent and often illegal. The staff were promiscuous, cynical and loyal only to each other.

Into this insalubrious world steps an entirely unknown quantity: somebody nice…

When little Dotty O’Hara, just eighteen and independent for the first time in her life, walks through the door of the Spread Eagle to start her new job there, there are three other ‘full-timers’:

Red, the Head Girl; tough, pragmatic, worldly-wise, loyal.

Alberta; good-hearted but wild, who would have got into a lot less trouble if she were just a little less fond of sex.

And their boss, Neville; quiet, decent, and still haunted by the horrors he went through in Korea, over forty years earlier.

As the innocent young Irish girl becomes increasingly a part of their lives - through the routines, small triumphs and sudden tragedies of small-town life - her colleagues begin to notice something strange.

Dotty isn’t changing.

Their world isn’t changing.

But they are – because of her.

And then absolute disaster strikes, in the stupidest possible way: and, suddenly, it is Dotty, seemingly the least-equipped of them all, who has to stand tall and try to lead them back into the sunlight…

A comedy, a fantasy, and a poignant picture of life on either side of the bar in a small-town, small-island pub, Eagles will make you laugh, cry and will ultimately lift your heart.