Daisy Chain

Two Roads, June 2021 Lily Crawford and Jeanie Taylor, from very different backgrounds, are firm friends from their childhoods in Kirkcudbright. They share their ambitions for their futures, Lily to be an artist, Jeanie to be a dancer. The two women’s eventful lives are intertwined. The girls lose touch when Jeanie flees domestic abuse and joins a dance company, while Lily attends The Mack, Glasgow’s famous school of art designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. A chance meeting brings them back together and they discover a city at the height of its wealth and power as the Second City of the Empire – and a city of poverty and overcrowding. Lily’s intense love affair with fellow artist Jack Petrie is shattered by World War I. She is broken hearted when she learns of his death at the front. Grieving, she marries urban missionary Hugh Anderson, who works with the city’s desperate poor, and moves to China with him. The glamour and dissolution of 1920s Shanghai mirrors the vibrant city they have left behind. Hugh loses his battle against his personal demons, putting Lily in peril. Her only hope of survival lies in her old friend Jeanie, as the two women turn to desperate measures to free Lily from her husband’s tyranny. Inspired by the eventful and colourful lives of the pioneering women artists The Glasgow Girls, Daisy Chain is a story of independence, resilience and female friendship, set against the turbulent background of the early years of the 20th Century.

Looking for Evelyn

Saraband, June 2017 Chrissie Docherty returns to the southern Africa of her childhood and tracks down Evelyn Fielding, the woman at the centre of an explosive scandal involving a traditional colonial officer and a gifted black African artist. Together, the two women uncover the secrets that shattered a remote expatriate outpost in the Zambian bush. Switching deftly between the 1990s and the 1970s, and set against a background of tense post-colonial race relations, political turmoil and witchcraft, Looking for Evelyn, powerfully evokes the very special colours, sounds and smells of Africa. Praise for Looking for Evelyn Shortlisted for Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize If you’re looking for a holiday book to transport you to Southern Africa, this is it. –Scottish Daily Mail A moving, rich read that skilfully combines the threads of the story, and brings Africa to life. –Sunday Mirror This year’s perfect summer read, with a deliciously provocative mix of exotic locations, sexual scandal and the end of colonialism. –The National A scintillating jewel of a novel: Ritchie’s dreamlike Zambian landscape explodes with the nightmarish secrets of the past. I was seduced by the sultry, dreamlike colours of Africa; hooked by the insistent drumbeat of menace that pulses through the novel. – Sandra Ireland, author of Beneath the Skin

Paris Kiss

Saraband, February 2015

Bohemian Paris in the 1880s. Exotic, strange and exciting, especially to young English sculptor Jessie Lipscomb, who joins her friend Camille to become a protégée of the great Auguste Rodin. Jessie and Camille enjoy a passionate friendship and explore the demi-monde of the vibrant city, meeting artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec and the boldly unconventional Rosa Bonheur. But when Rodin and Camille embark on a scandalous affair, Jessie is cast as their unwilling go-between and their friendship unravels. Years later she tracks her down to an insane asylum where Camille tells her an explosive secret. Can their friendship survive the betrayal?

Praise for Paris Kiss

 Flows from the page like a piece of art. –Sunday Mirror

A touching tale of friendship, love and betrayal set against a colourful backdrop of the Paris art world. –France Magazine

Jessie’s adventures as a woman artist in 1880s Paris completely captivated me. A wonderful story. –Carmen Reid

A beautifully written evocation of the Parisian art scene of the late 1800s… It is a mesmerising canvas of love, friendship and betrayal. –Laura Marney

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23582577-paris-kiss