“Haunting and compelling”
- Jane Potter
Book Launch
Wednesday 1st October, 7:30pm
The Tasting Room, Exeter
Angela K. Smith
Angela K. Smith is the author of three monographs about the role of women in the First World War, and editor of several more. She lives in Devon. Her first novel, The Solace of the Common People, was published in 2022.
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Press inquiries please contact info@aksmith.co.uk
Where No Shadow Awaits
Amid the shadows of the Belgian city of Ypres, three lives entwine.
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Journalist Helen Parkes seeks a project to combat her personal demons.
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First World War veteran Joe Smith needs someone to ghost write his war experience, but is it his story to tell?
Gabrielle Rochard, silenced by history, must find a way for her voice to be heard.
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By turns trench narrative, ghost story, murder mystery and romance, Where No Shadow Awaits follows the relationship between Joe, a young English soldier, and Gabrielle, a Belgian peasant girl living close to the front line at Ypres. Their troubled love story, told in their own words, plays out against a backdrop of the battle of Passchendaele in 1917, with repercussions that echo through the following decades.
Trapped within the zone of armies set in a war of attrition, they struggle to imagine a future together, but as the battle for the Ypres Salient rages around them, they are beleaguered by other terrifying obstacles. They encounter enemies where they might expect to find friends and sympathy from surprising quarters.
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The story of these entangled lives offers a hidden dark side of the First World War, filled with lost and marginalised voices that will haunt you.
Coming Soon...
The Solace of the Common People
Suppose Richard III won at Bosworth…
Suppose six hundred years later his legacy still shapes English society…
On 22nd August 1485, Richard III defeats Henry Tudor at the battle of Bosworth, bringing an end to the Wars of the Roses and security to England. He sets about building a new kind of regime with the welfare of the common people at its heart. But he is beset by an illicit passion, haunted by the ghosts of his past, and faced with betrayal and rebellion that will shake the foundations of his rule.
In the year 2125, a young man watches preparations for a day of national celebration. It is the coronation of a new King Richard, who is soon to discover that he is surrounded by people who want to reform the outmoded, repressive constitution he is about to inherit. And they are the people he least expects.
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Available now in eBook and Paperback.
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