The Berthe the Witch series of books consists of 14 books in French and 2 translated into Spanish for children learning those languages. The stories are about a green witch called Berthe and her cat, who loves ice cream. The language is simple and is based on the themes covered in school: description, weather, clothes, family, a visit to a restaurant, shop or Paris etc.. As the author I have had fifty years of teaching languages to children to know what to include and try to make them fun.

Each book contains a story, a word search, a game to make and a list of vocabulary. Each French book has a QR code on the back which links to the story being read. There are also two quizzes on my website for each book.

The books are used in schools across the country and abroad and featured in an article in the Scholastic Junior Education Plus magazine under the title Ten of the Best MFL Resources. They were the only storybooks mentioned.

Most importantly, children say that they enjoy the stories because they can understand them and they make them laugh.

Sofia Due writes contemporary romance and historical fiction. She’s a native Londoner but now divides her time between the capital’s urban energy and the windswept coast of North Cornwall. These provide the settings for her contemporary novels, ‘Finding Jack’ and ‘Ed & Lily’, heartwarming stories about second chances and fresh starts. As well as contemporary fiction, Sofia writes historical novels, stories of women in first century Roman Britain. Look out for a new release in January 2027!

I was born in Nottinghamshire in 1959. I studied medicine, then went into software development, where I have stayed ever since, watching one innovation after another promise to change everything. A good number did. Work took me abroad, including fourteen years in southern Italy, before I came home to England.

I have written stories since school, but for most of my life they had to wait their turn. With retirement in sight, they no longer do. What I write comes out of a working life spent building things meant to improve how we live. I tend to see the potential for good in what we create. I hope I’m right.

That hope sits at the heart of PS (Post Singularity). Celia Jones leaves Merthyr for a Cambridge AI lab, where she quietly builds a machine of her own and calls it Echo. Running from 2013 to 2036, it is my attempt at a Nineteen Eighty-Four for the age we are walking into.

Authored by Others is set in Oxford. Novelist Chloe Summers is fifty-two when her publisher starts opening doors for her: Geneva, Paris, a masquerade in Mayfair. Every choice is hers. By the time she sees how the arrangement works, the question is no longer who did it, but how much of it she chose. It is the first of a trilogy.

Both novels are out in hardback, paperback and on Kindle, alongside several short-story collections, among them Parallel Tracks and The Other Versions of Us. Find them all at ajblackwell.co.uk

Peter Fockema is an unapologetic history enthusiast who founded Blancart Press in 2026 as an engine through which to put historical fiction into print.

His debut novel, The Uncrowned Lion, is a historical political thriller set in the treacherous heart of fourteenth-century medieval England.

“Gentlemen, the inheritance of England is to play for.

England, 1376. The aging king, once the terror of the French, has lost his ability to govern and finds himself hidden from sight to live out his final years as a shameful secret. His son and heir, the famed Black Prince who was once England’s pride, is also at death’s door. The death of both the monarch and his heir would leave behind a ten-year old boy to be king – albeit a puppet one on strings.

The king’s other son, the Duke of Lancaster, is charged with running England whilst his father and brother wither – a task he has failed at abysmally. The kingdom’s borders lie undefended and enemy forces raid up and down the bankrupt country. Succumbing to his own avarice, the duke and his friends descend like crows upon a corpse to feast on the still-breathing body of England. Reeling from the fallout, Alfonse and his father, Henry Penenden, find themselves teetering on the edge of ruin. Enraged, they join a camp that’s filled with lords, bishops, and merchants that are all opposed to the Duke of Lancaster who seems determined to swallow England whole.”

The Book Social was launched in 2026 as a new imprint for fiction and non-fiction titles.

The mission of The Book Social is to put readers first and central to all of its activities. This means building a unique and major reader community in the UK and internationally, through working closely with book groups, libraries, reader events, while partnering with online and other existing reader communities.

“Results Department Editorial Services is run by Helen Johns, an award-winning copywriter and supplier of editorial services in Oxfordshire.

Helen can edit your book for publication, whether it’s fiction, biography or memoir, or non-fiction. She’ll check for consistency, clarity, and relevance; ensure grammar, syntax, diction, spelling and punctuation are correct; reduce over-long sentences; double-check that text references and footnotes are accurate; remove unwanted formatting, and check fonts are consistent.

Helen is also a first-class proofreader: checking for spelling and punctuation errors in headings and body copy; reviewing consistency of headings, references and pagination; ensuring fonts are consistent; dealing with missing or repeated text; and ensuring captions and source references are correct.”