The idea behind the Classic Comfort posts is that each featured writer chooses a favourite title from the classics – we’ll define ‘classic’ as pre-1940 – and a favourite comfort read, a book they always return to, for whatever reasons. As third book in each post, we’ll have one by the writer.

This week, it’s Terri Nixon, who writes women’s fiction and sagas as herself, and crime fiction as R.D. Nixon. Terri’s new book, A Cornish Homecoming, will be published on December 2nd, but more about that at the end of the post.

Over to Terri:

Classic:

Kenilworth, by Sir Walter Scott

The Waverley Novels are hard on the eye, but my word they’re balm to the soul! Kenilworth gives us an inside look at the Elizabethan Royal Court – with all its Machiavellian mischief and intrigue – all wrapped up in the tragic story of the Earl of Leicester’s besotted and doomed first wife, Amy Robsart. The ‘lesser’ characters are so colourful too, and I often find myself laughing aloud reading these novels – not something you immediately think of when someone mentions Walter Scott!

Comfort:

The Stand, by Stephen King.

It doesn’t feel right to be citing something that tackles global destruction, particularly at the ‘hands’ of a virus, as a comfort read! But the characters feel so much like old friends, and the story is so familiar to me, that the reason for the devastation almost doesn’t matter. I know whole passages by heart, but I still devour every word. Tremendous battle between good and evil, apocalyptic showdown, conflict, romance, and high adventure… Can’t really ask for more!

The book in the picture was a birthday gift from back in 1990; I’ve read it almost every year since!

Thank you, Terri!
Terri’s coming book is the third and final book in her Fox Bay saga; a family drama set on the west coast of Cornwall during the glamorous jazz age. Here’s the blurb:

1930, Liverpool. Reformed con-artist Leah Marshall has long yearned for the thrills of her former life. Now she has the chance to relive it all as an exciting new ‘game’ beckons, but she soon discovers the rules have changed. One slip-up and she could lose everything . . . including her life.

Back home in Cornwall, the Foxes are making their own difficult decisions. An old agreement has turned sour, putting the hotel at risk once more, and the children have grown and are embarking on their own, sometimes perilous, paths. Matriarch Helen Fox knows she must take charge of her own future now, or be left alone while her family and home splinter around her. Should she hold on a little longer, or let go and move on?

But when a new and deadly danger steps through the revolving doors of Fox Bay Hotel, Helen finds it might not be her choice to make after all . . .

Terri Nixon was born in Plymouth, England. At the age of 9 she moved with her family to Cornwall, to a small village on the edge of Bodmin Moor, where she discovered a love of writing that has stayed with her ever since. She is the author of The Oaklands Manor Trilogy, the Lynher Mill Chronicles, and The Penhaligon Saga, all through Piatkus – an imprint of Little, Brown.

Terri’s alter-ego is R.D. Nixon, whose first thriller, Crossfire, is published by Hobeck Books.

Both of them work in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business at the University of Plymouth.

You can find out more about all Terri’s books on her website, Facebook and on Twitter, where she has a second account here for her crime fiction as R.D. Nixon.

Next month, we have Mandy James with her choice of Classic Comfort books, and next week, I’m trying something new on the blog. I’m not sure it’ll work, so watch this space!