Seeing Stars

The only child of a schoolteacher and a circus clown, Christina Jones has been writing all her life. As well as writing novels, Christina contributes short stories and articles to national magazines and newspapers. Christina lives with her husband Rob and a houseful of rescued cats.

• When city-girl Amber arrives to spend the summer in the village of Fiddlesticks, the only stars she recognises are the ones she reads about in her glossy celeb magazines. So she is stunned to find herself surrounded by a collection of nice bit eccentric neighbours who organise their entire lives around constellation customs and the astral calendar. In Fiddlesticks, every wax and wane of the moon seems to be an excuse for a village knees-up, each appearance of Cassiopeia or Pegasus in the summer skies results in someone throwing a party and making bizarre wishes. More scarily, Amber finds that the villagers actually believe that the stars and moon can work magic. However, when Amber starts working for Mitzi Blessing's Hubble Bubble country cooking outlet as a waitress, Mitzi gently explains that there's a place for many kinds of magic even in the 21st century - and that her own recipes all have a touch of herbal witchery about them. Convinced that she's stumbled into Berkshire's answer to Salem, Amber remains loudly sceptical, but as she's grown very fond of her new friends - especially the gorgeously enigmatic Lewis - and assuming that it's all a bit of harmless fun, she hurls herself into the star-ceremonies and moon-myths on the grounds that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em and any excuse for a party. But when, as result of one of Amber's half-hearted celestial incantations, something totally inexplicable happens, she begins to wonder if maybe, just maybe, there's more to Fiddlesticks' astral-magic than meets the eye...

H.E. Bates for the 21st Century