KAREN CHARLTON
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Welcome to the official website of historical novelist KAREN CHARLTON

News: 50K Sales for 'Plague Pits & River Bones'

28/3/2019

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Plague Pits & River Bones
​Reaches fifty thousand readers

My publishers have just told me that Plague Pits & River Bones (Book #4) has now surpassed fifty thousand sales. 
I feel humbled and incredibly proud that so many people are buying and enjoying my Detective Lavender novels.
Thank you for your support.
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News: Publication date for 'Plague Pits & River Bones'

27/8/2017

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D-Day: 11th January 2018

That's the date,folks.
On the 11th January 2018, Thomas & Mercer will publish the fourth novel in The Detective Lavender Mystery Series:
​Plague Pits & RIver Bones. 
It's already up for pre-order on Amazon with its lovely new book cover and racy blurb and this happy, little author is doing an excited dance around the kitchen.
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Pre-order on Amazon
London 1812: Savage gangs intent on treachery and revolt besiege the capital, while a brooding menace stalks the corridors of the Palace of Westminster. When Detective Stephen Lavender is called in to investigate a highway robbery and a cold-blooded murder, both the cases take a dangerous and disturbing personal twist.
Meanwhile, Lavender’s trusted deputy, Constable Ned Woods, finds a mysterious, severed foot washed up on Greenwich Beach. They soon realise that these ancient bones are more sinister than they first appeared.
With Bow Street Police Office undermanned and in disarray, it will take all of Lavender and Woods’ wit and skill, with help from Lavender’s spirited wife, Magdalena, to unmask the fiend behind the mayhem; restore peace and justice to the beleaguered city and solve the tragic mystery of the severed foot.
But will they do so in time to foil a plot that threatens to plunge the country into chaos?
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News: New novel to be published in December

18/4/2017

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PUBLISHING DEAL FOR
PLAGUE PITS & RIVER BONES

I'm delighted to announce that Thomas & Mercer have agreed to publish the fourth Detective Lavender Mystery: Plague Pits & River Bones.
​I don't have a firm date for publication yet, but it MAY be as early as December 2017.
In the meantime, I have a few more days left to tweak the manuscript before I submit it to my editors.
Over the last six weeks, I have pain-stakingly removed 6,500 surplus words and phrases. Then with the help of my friendly Alpha-readers I've restructured it and tightened it some more. The novel, my most complicated plot to date, has now gone down from 110,000 words to 100,000 and is a lot better for this revision.
It'll go thorugh three more rounds of edits with Thomas & Mercer and, hopefully, by December it will be a smooth, thrilling and enjoyable read.
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Article: Thoughts about book covers

23/10/2016

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'PLAGUE PITS & RIVER BONES':
BOOK COVER MUSINGS...


One of the most enjoyable things about writing a novel is playing with ideas for the book cover. Usually, by the time I'm half-way through a manuscript (which is where I am at the moment) I've some idea about what I would like on the front cover of the finished book. For me, it's always about the location of the story.
My publishers don't ask me for ideas until I've handed over the manuscript. The book cover design usually runs concurrently with the editing. APub use a very talented designer, called Lisa Horton, for my novels and I love everyone of them. Lisa rose to my challenge and created a fictional Northumbrian pele tower for 'Heiress' but I was more helpful with 'The Sans Pareil Mystery' and gave her pictures, pulled from the Internet, of the original Sans Pareil Theatre. Last year, I walked along the Market Harborough canal tow path and took photos of all the old bridges to help her with the design of the book cover for 'The Sculthorpe Murder.'
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The River Thames was always going to feature on the front of 'Plague Pits & River Bones' because it's the river mentioned in the title. Originally, I toyed with the idea of using the stretch at Greenwich with the Royal Naval Hospital in the background. However, I've now changed my mind and decided that the old Westminster Bridge and the old Palace of Westminster will grace the cover of this new novel.
Both the bridge and the parliament buildings have been rebuilt since 1812, the year of this novel. Fortunately, there are plenty of paintings from the period to show us what it used to look like - many of them are painted by Canaletto. They're fascinating. I cannot get over how empty the banks of the Thames were two hundred years ago - and how wide the river seems to be without skyscrapers looming over it. Once upon a time, London was a city with a big sky.  
Anyway, have a look at the inspirational paintings below and see what you think.
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