You could connect with me via Facebook or visit my website at www.allie-cresswell.com where you will find details of my other books and where you can sign up to receive updates about my writing.
If you don’t live too far away from me I would be happy to visit your reading club, WI or creative writing group to give a short talk or a reading.
About the Author
Allie Cresswell was born in Stockport, UK and began writing fiction as soon as she could hold a pencil.
She did a BA in English Literature at Birmingham University and an MA at Queen Mary College, London.
She has been a print-buyer, a pub landlady, a book-keeper, run a B & B and a group of boutique holiday cottages. Nowadays Allie writes full time having retired from teaching literature to lifelong learners.
She has two grown-up children, two granddaughters and two grandsons, is married to Tim and lives in Cumbria, NW England.
You can contact her via her website at www.allie-cresswell.com or find her on Facebook
Also by Allie Cresswell
Tall Chimneys
Winner of the prestigious One Stop Fiction Five Star Book Award.
Considered a troublesome burden, Evelyn Talbot is banished by her family to their remote country house. Tall Chimneys is hidden in a damp and gloomy hollow. It is outmoded and inconvenient but Evelyn is determined to save it from the fate of so many stately homes at the time - abandonment or demolition.
Occasional echoes of tumult in the wider world reach their sequestered backwater - the strident cries of political extremists, a furore of royal scandal, rumblings of the European war machine. But their isolated spot seems largely untouched. At times life is hard - little more than survival. At times it feels enchanted, almost outside of time itself. The woman and the house shore each other up - until love comes calling, threatening to pull them asunder.
Her desertion will spell its demise, but saving Tall Chimneys could mean sacrificing her hope for happiness, even sacrificing herself.
A century later, a distant relative crosses the globe to find the house of his ancestors. What he finds in the strange depression of the moor could change the course of his life forever.
One woman, one house, one hundred years.
Readers’ Reviews of Tall Chimneys
‘A family saga spanning two wars and generations which will be entrancing for lovers of historical fiction. It's beautifully written and I guarantee you will be sucked in until the end. I highly recommend it.’
‘Wonderfully written, beautiful story of endurance and perseverance. Spanning a century of war, love, grief and coming to realize who you are and where you belong.’
‘I love historical fiction and especially books about British history. This book takes you back to a time and place we of this generation can only imagine. I loved the way the author wove her story together with her word pictures of the characters , and places come alive as you get deeper into the story of the their lives.’
‘This was a story to be savoured. Every page was beautifully written. The best book of my year.’
‘Brilliantly written family saga! I was pulled in from the very beginning of Evelyn’s story, and what a story it was….pain, loss, betrayal, secrets, romance, and second chances. It spanned 100 years, and I hung on to every word Evelyn spoke.’
‘Tall Chimneys is book to be read and savoured. It is not to be rushed through, but appreciated for its language, its images, and its characters. It is a beautiful book. Ms. Cresswell’s facility with the English language is to be admired. I’d strongly suggest that all new authors read her work to see what a true understanding of language means.’
The Hoarder’s Widow
Suddenly-widowed Maisie sets out to clear her late husband’s collection; wonky furniture and balding rugs, bolts of material for upholstery projects he never got round to, other people’s junk brought home from car boot sales and rescued from the tip. The hoard is endless, stacked into every room in the house, teetering in piles along the landing and forming a scree up the stairs. It is all part of Clifford’s waste-not way of thinking in which everything, no matter how broken or obscure, can be re-cycled or re-purposed into something useful or, if kept long enough, will one day be valuable. He had believed in his vision as ardently as any mystic in his holy revelation but now, without the clear projection of his vision to light them up for her as what they would be, they appear to Maisie more grimly than ever as what they are: junk.
As Maisie disassembles his stash she is forced to confront the issues which drove her husband to squirrel away other people’s trash; after all, she knows virtually nothing about his life before they met. Finally, in the last bastion of his accumulation, she discovers the key to his hoarding and understands – much too late – the man she married.
Then, with empty rooms in a house which is too big for her, she must ask herself: what next?
Readers’ Reviews of The Hoarder’s Widow
‘I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys superbly written, character-driven fiction. There is nothing flashy in this simple tale, but it is a rich and filling feast of real and complex characters muddling through life’s challenges and finding their way forward together. I would write more, but I need to go find out what else Ms. Cresswell has written, and settle in with a cup of tea and another of her stories.’
‘…a lot of dry English wit, [but] it's certainly not a funny story. Allie Cresswell does a remarkable job of telling of a seemingly ordinary life in a way that you can't put it down.’
‘There are twists and turns aplenty, and her lyrically descriptive language paints a compelling picture of the house Maisie lives in.’
‘It strikes just the right balance for me; approachable, allowing me to relax as I read, and elegant, fortifying her scenes and enhancing them with flavours and sensory experiences.’
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Tiger in a Cage
Who knows what secrets are trapped, like caged tigers, behind our neighbours' doors?
When Molly and Stan move into a new housing development, Molly becomes a one-woman social committee, throwing herself into a frantic round of communal do-gooding and pot-luck suppers.
She is blinded to what goes on behind those respectable façades by her desire to make the neighbourhood, and the neighbours, into all she has dreamed, all she needs them to be.
Twenty years later, Molly looks back on the ruin of the Combe Close years, at the waste and destruction wrought by the escaping tigers: adultery, betrayal, tragedy, desertion, death. But now Molly has her own guilty secret, her own pet tiger, and it is all she can do to keep it in its cage.
Peer Reviews of Tiger in a Cage
Erudite, character-driven drama at its best. Allie Cresswell is a literary assassin. Just when you think you're safe, the atmosphere and tension in her novels slips home like an undetected, whetted blade between the ribs. What truly makes this novel stand out is the masterful way in which the plot strands are woven together in the final quarter of the book; the explosive events, the straining to release what has been bottled up for decades, the Tiger in a Cage. The climax is satisfying and worthwhile. Highly recommended work from a fine novelist.
Marc Secchia, author of the Shapeshifter series.
Cresswell crafts her novels lovingly, taking time to polish them to perfection. She plays with words, linking them together in unique ways, creating stories rich in detail and lavish in language. Her plotlines are subtle and weaving, the characters and their lives all overlapping and inter-connecting in unexpected ways. She is a wordsmith in the true sense of the word.
Ali Isaac, blogger and author of the Conor Kelly novels
Cresswell writes about commitment, fidelity, and the gap between public and private lives, as she lays out what we risk when our desires, behaviours, and values are shaped by social convention.
Beth Camp, author of Standing Stones
All of the Combe Close characters are so true-to-life that I am extremely relieved not to be one of Ms.
Cresswell's neighbours. I would be terrified of ending up skewered to the page in the next episode...
Deng Zichao, author of People Like Us
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