“Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.” – Arnold Lobel
A real life mystery with murder, crime, tragedy and humour thrown into the mix …
An extract from Room 13 …
It all started with that grisly crime 500 years earlier …
Bob Bennett had never been superstitious: if there were such things as ghosts, he had never had any problems with them at Crawthorne Hall. As for Penny, she did believe in the supernatural world and had noticed a pattern in the goings-on in Room 13. It seemed to her that bad people who stayed in the room often ended-up with some misadventure.
She remembered one disgruntled guest who had been consistently rude to staff – on the way home on a foggy morning his car had veered off the road into a tree. A local newspaper report had claimed that, on his way to hospital, he kept repeating over and over again that he’d looked in his mirror and saw a veiled woman with a baby sitting on the back seat: he claimed that she’d tapped him on the shoulder just before the accident.
On the other hand, there were numerous stories of other guests who had enjoyed happy stays in the infamous room. One well-known novelist who had deliberately asked to stay in Room 13 had been quite happy finishing-off his latest book – a spine-tingling thriller. It had rapidly become a best seller.
In her mind, Penny was convinced that good things as well as bad occurred in Room 13. However, whether it was at Crawthorne Hall or elsewhere on their travels, she had noticed something slightly uncanny about Bob: he seemed to be around when strange, inexplicable things occurred. Sometimes she wondered whether he was a kind of conduit, unknowingly passing-on the vibes, whether for good or for bad. She’d never mentioned it as he’d have told her she was going mad.
About the Author …
Tony Ashridge was born in Essex, then attended schools in Cheshire and Surrey before studying Art History and Education at the University of Warwick. As a teacher, he has lived and worked in various parts of England including the Midlands, Essex, London and finally Hampshire where he has settled for a quiet life in the country.
He has travelled widely throughout the world, often finding inspiration for his writing from incidents, characters and locations along the way.
Tony has been writing for twenty years – mainly short stories. His first novel Mr Domestic, a family drama, was published last year.
A bit about Mr Domestic …
PLENTY OF TONGUE-IN-CHEEK HUMOUR TO ENJOY AMIDST THE DRAMAS PLAYED OUT BY ADULTS BEHAVING BADLY!
An amazing book to read, sad, funny, inspiring and based on true-life events with a bit of fiction thrown in. Bob Bennett will have you in stitches!
Upwardly mobile Dan Fisher feels that he has, at last, got a firm foothold on the career ladder. He is looking forward to the holiday of a lifetime with his young family when, at the age of 36 everything suddenly goes wrong. He finds himself on an uphill struggle trying desperately to cope single-handedly in looking after his invalid wife and children whilst earning a living. He has always been a dab hand with the vacuum cleaner and polishing rags, but he is now thrust into the deep end of domesticity. Just when he thinks that things can’t get any worse, the hand of fate unexpectedly slaps him even harder. He grapples with the problems thrown-out by his wife’s illness; battling with religious fanatics, his antagonistic relatives, Social Services, the Child Support Agency and the legal system. Dan’s story charts the struggle to win through in the face of adversity. It tells how he becomes a changed man, understanding and coping with the pressures of modern-day working life on domestic bliss. There is plenty of tongue-in-cheek humour to enjoy amidst the dramas played out by adults behaving badly.
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