Bella’s Beastie

About the Book

Sir Gerald is the young incompetent owner of his family estate. He has a 7-year-old very disruptive daughter, Fiona, whom he leaves to the ‘women’ to rear. Because all Fiona’s nannies leave, he kidnaps Bella’s father as he returns from London and sends a ransom note to his three daughters, one of them to take his place or else. Bella goes to Ebony House and finds it impossible to control Fiona without the father’s cooperation. She is about to try and escape when Fiona goes missing. Bella discovers her unconscious from a fall and Gerald allowed her home for 2 weeks. She delays until a devastating fire wrecks the cottage. They flee to Ebony House for refuge, but Gerald is missing. Bella finds him in the grounds about to kill himself because he has lost everything.

About the Author

When I was around 9 or 10. I wrote stories in boarding school and I was never at a loss for a companion on the long school walks weekends. In the 1990s, many poems and short stories were published in anthologies. I was awarded prizes for poetry at an open ceremony. I contributed to Poetry Review and Discuss. Linked in. But I always wanted to rewrite some of the great children’s classics and here is the first: Beauty and the Beast. It has a good plot and there have been many versions over time. My Bella is a little different. My family settled in Cambridge at the end of the war where I continued my education and, after 6th form, I read Philosophy at U.C.L London. After sundry jobs including the News of the World office and the Inland revenue, I married John Wyon Burrow who later became an eminent historian before he died of cancer in 2009.