Caro Clarke ▪  novelist  ▪

My novels

My preferred form of story-telling is the old-fashioned historical novel. I like what it requires: a focus on the lives of other people. I also like research, being an historian by training. The past offers ways to explore the choices women have had to make in times when they were not supposed to have those choices.

I write slowly. It takes a good three to four years or more to produce a novel. Writing is now my full-time work. When not replying to your lovely messages, of course.

I have not completely ignored the short story, and have had these published in various anthologies. My poetry has also been included in anthologies, but I don't write much verse these days. Finally, you have to choose your art form.

front cover of the novel MY HOME IS ON THE MOUNTAIN

Published 2021

MY HOME IS ON THE MOUNTAIN

You can make your life extraordinary, if you have the courage.

East Tennessee, 1931

Published by Sapphire Books in 2021, MY HOME IS ON THE MOUNTAIN can be purchased as an ebook or in paperback from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, iBooks, Googlebooks, and from your local bookseller.

My website for the book:

www.myhomeisonthemountain.com

offers more information, including the history behind the story, the music, and more about me and my approach to writing.

Eastern Tennessee, 1931

Cecilia Howison, the rich and well-known daughter of a prominent east Tennessee family, appears to be the perfect Southern girl: cultured, gracious, virginal. The actual lesbian she is feels restless and ready for something new. She finds it in a high mountain meadow.

Airey Fitch is the mainstay of her family's hard-scrabble hill farm. She has no love for the Howisons or any their kind, who now are evicting the mountain folk to create a new national park. Despite them, she will hang on, despite them, she will seek a life for herself in music.

Cecilia and Airey find themselves driven to emotional connections that only Cecilia knows are dangerous, but just as they realise they are bound by more than friendship, more than passion, they are confronted by an agonising, implacable choice.

THE WOLF TICKET first edition's book cover

New, updated edition forthcoming

THE WOLF TICKET

"I will not be lost ‒ I will always be looking for you."

Western Europe, 1945

Germany, in the last months of WWII, was not a safe place to be. Pascale Tailland, a translator in the WAC, makes a split-second decision to rescue a stranded refugee as her unit heads out of the war zone.

The young Polish refugee, Bron, is a woman who masquerading as a man to survive the horrors or German and Russian occupation. Gaunt, hardened, and bleak, she sees no law in life but the law of the wolf. She also knows that Pascale touches depths she thought dead, and seizes her words as a lifeline when they are torn apart.

Pascale uses every helpful person she can find to help her hunt for Bron, including a well-known American reporter willing to help for a price, and an upper-class U.S. Army officer with her own agenda. Bron uses all the survival skills she has used through the war, finding dubious allies in a U.S. Army nurse and then a French prostitute shunned as a Nazi collaborator.

But when Pascale and Bron thinks that happiness is within their grasp, they must make a decision that will bind them for the rest of their lives.

What the reviewers said:

"diverting, unabashedly sexy" (Publishers Weekly)

"has the most convincing love-at-first-sight plotline I've ever read" (Bay Area Reporter)

"Fast-paced action, finely drawn characters struggling against a backdrop of ravaged Europe, and a gripping portrayal of love in all its forms triumphing against the odds combine in a hard-to-put-down lesbian romance that ought to please mainstream crossover readers, too." (Booklist).

My website for the book:

www.thewolfticket.co.uk

front cover of the novel FALSE FOX

Forthcoming

FALSE FOX

My sword at the king's service — my heart at the queen's feet.

Eastern Europe, 1892

Dora, spinster, swordswoman, and cheerful seducer of women, arriving in a small kingdom for the coronation, is beseeched to aid her distant cousin, the king.

For there is treachery afoot at court: a scheming, ambitious prince, a cold and hostile queen, too many courtiers with dubious loyalties, and murder afoot.

Dora finds herself surrounded by danger. Who or what can she trust, beyond her own blade? So much hangs on her wits and her skill. So much hangs on her own heart. Her vow to her royal kinsman must, of course, come first. Or must it? Where does her destiny lie — with love or with honour?

www.caroclarke.com