FROM SOMETHING OLD (2021)

Four people looking for love. Four choices that could be the start of everything.

At thirty-three, nurse Heather is desperately waiting for her romantic life to begin. Then she meets handsome, virile Anthony and is sure she’s found the one. Brushing any doubts aside, she projects all her hopes for true love onto him.

Meanwhile, at a yoga retreat in Spain, happy-go-lucky Joe can’t believe his luck when he meets vivacious, witty Amy. She’s the sharpest, most beautiful woman he has ever dated, and the fact that she’s interested in him feels like a dream come true.

But new love can be blind, and when the two couples meet, the cracks are easy to see.
Will their crossed paths lead the way to happiness? Or are they all destined for heartbreak?

THE ROAD TO ZOE (2020)

She ran away from the truth, but she can’t run forever.

Seven years after his sister vanished without a trace, Jude is on the road, determined not to return home until he has found her. He wants to reunite his broken family, but more than this he wants to know why Zoe left—what happened when they were kids, on that terrible day when everything fell apart.

They’d been enjoying the funfair—grasping a rare moment of happiness following their parents’ divorce—when after a ride together, Zoe had stopped speaking to her mother’s new partner. Though Mandy believed he was the man she’d waited all her life for, her love for her daughter trumped even that, and soon suspicions of an unthinkable betrayal shattered the family.

So finding Zoe would be just the start. If Jude can find her, then what happens next will depend on the story she’s been carrying with her all these years. Because when families are destroyed by dark secrets, can the wounds ever truly heal?

YOU THEN, ME NOW (2019)

She’s given her daughter everything.
Now it’s time to give her the truth.

Becky’s father is not just absent: he’s a mystery, a gaping hole in her past. He died before she was born and for her mother, Laura, the subject is strictly off-limits. But when Laura books an unexpected trip to Greece, Becky decides to join her, determined to get closer to her mother—and to the truth.

As they make their way to the beautiful island of Santorini, it becomes clear that this holiday is not as impulsive as Becky thought. Laura’s hiding something from her daughter—and she’s been hiding it for as long as Becky can remember. Laura has been here before, and that last visit holds the answers to Becky’s past.

But Laura’s memories of that first trip are tinged with pain and heartbreak, secrets she’s kept buried for twenty-five years. Now, with the truth emerging into the sunlight at last, can mother and daughter lay the ghosts of their past to rest and find the happiness they’ve both been looking for?

THINGS WE NEVER SAID (2017)

All the love she ever gave. Every secret she never told.

Catherine was the love of Sean’s life. But now she is gone. All that’s left is a box full of envelopes, each containing a snapshot and a cassette tape.

Through a series of recordings, Catherine shares their long love story, but will Sean recognise the story she tells? Catherine’s words have been chosen with love, but are painfully honest—and sometimes simply painful. She reveals every unspoken thought and every secret she kept from her husband—revelations that will shake everything Sean thought he knew about their life together.

But as disconcerting as the tapes turn out to be, Sean prays that they will ultimately confirm the one thing he never dared question. Does destiny exist? And were his and Catherine’s love and life together always meant to be?

THE BOTTLE OF TEARS (2016)

(Previously published as Let the Light Shine)

They all lived through that terrible Christmas. The problem is, they remember it differently…

Sisters Penny and Victoria seem to have nothing in common—except perhaps envy. Penny seems blessed with a perfect work-life balance, though only she knows how underpaid and underappreciated she is, while Victoria appears to have everything she could wish for— along with a growing list of neuroses that keep her teetering on the brink of breakdown.

For years the sisters have been at odds for reasons they don’t quite understand. What they do know is that everything changed on Christmas Eve 1976, when a shocking chain of events fractured the family forever. But when a fresh tragedy strikes, it becomes clear that Victoria remembers a lot more about that horrific day than she’s letting on…

As secrets from their childhood are forced to the surface, the sisters must confront the shadows of the past together. Because, as they come to learn, as long as the truth remains bottled up, their relationships with each other, and to the past, can never heal.

Revised edition: This edition of The Bottle of Tears (also published as Let the Light Shine) includes editorial revisions.

THE OTHER SON (2015)

From the outside, Alice’s marriage looks successful. It’s true that Ken was never her first choice, but four decades in, she’s learned to tolerate him. Their two sons have chosen their own paths, Tim as a successful banker and Matt a carefree globetrotter she can’t keep up with. But when circumstances collide to make her question the life she’s quietly accepted, Alice realises she’s been lying to herself for years.

It’s time to stand up and put her own happiness first, but where do you begin when you’
ve turned your back on everything? Alice craves the support of someone who understands her, but Tim won’t take sides and his trophy wife won’t give her the time of day. It seems the only person she can really rely on in her new start is herself.

Unless … Can her other son come through for her? Matt’s been travelling so long that she barely knows which continent he’s on. But could his experience as the black sheep of the family be just what she needs to finally reveal the secret she’s bottled up for years—and find the happiness she gave up on so long ago?

THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S WIFE (2014)

Barbara – a child of the Blitz – has more secrets than she cares to admit.
She has protected her children from many of the harsh realities of life and told them little of the poverty of her childhood, nor of the darker side of her marriage to one of Britain’s most famous photographers.
With such an incomplete picture of the past, her youngest, Sophie, has struggled to understand who her parents really are, and in turn, Barbara sometimes worries, to build her own identity.
When Sophie decides to organise a vast retrospective exhibition of her adored father’s work, old photos are pulled from dusty boxes. But with them tumble stories from the past, stories and secrets that will challenge every aspect of how Sophie sees her parents.

THE HANNAH SERIES (2012/2013)

“If your first love came back to offer you everything you ever dreamed of, what would you do? “

Hannah is thirty-eight and the happily married mother of eleven-year-old Luke, the diamond in her world. Her marriage is reassuringly stable, and after fifteen years she has managed to push the wild dreams of youth from her mind and concentrate on the everyday satisfactions of here and now. The first half of her life hasn’t been as exciting as she had hoped, but then, she reckons, whose has?

When she succeeds in convincing husband Cliff to rent a villa in the south of France for a summer vacation with her sister Jill and gay friend Tristan, she’s expecting little more than a pleasant few weeks with her family.
But they each have their own baggage – their own secrets – ready to explode on this not-so-relaxing holiday in France.
When a phone call at the villa announces the imminent arrival of a ghost from her past, the ambiance is transformed into a raging sea of jealousy as Hannah is forced to question everything she thought she knew and believed.

But is she brave enough to take the life-changing decisions her future happiness requires?

The sequel to this novel, Other Halves, was published by Black & White Books on the 12th December, 2013.

THE MISSING BOYFRIEND SERIES (2011/2012)

The Number 1 Ebook hit: over 270,000 copies sold to date

Thirty-nine year old CC is living the urban dream: a high-powered job in advertising, a beautiful flat, and a wild bunch of gay friends to spend the weekends with. And yet she feels like the Titanic – slowly, inexorably, and against all expectation, sinking.

The truth is, CC would rather be digging turnips on a remote farm than convincing the masses to buy a life-changing pair of double-zippered jeans – rather be snuggling at home with the Missing Boyfriend than playing star fag-hag in London’s latest coke-spots. But sightings of men without weird fetishes or secret wives are rarer than an original metaphor, and CC fears that pursuing the Good Life alone will just leave her feeling even more isolated.

Could her best friend’s pop-psychology be right? Are the horrors of CC’s past preventing her from moving on? And if CC finally does confront her demons, will she find the Missing Boyfriend? Or is it already too late?

The Top 10 E-book Hit: over 200,000 copies sold to date

CC is trapped by a job she no longer loves in an unfriendly city. So when her new boyfriend decides it’s time to sell up and move to the South of France, she decides in seconds to change her life. After all, who wouldn’t pick an azure sea, aperitifs and sunshine over a dreary commute and a rainy climate?

She hadn’t expected a tumbledown farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Or a motley assortment of surly builders, eccentric farmers and a resentful, terrifying neighbour – who happens to be her boyfriend’s aunt.

Suddenly, CC’s dream of a place in the sun is looking more like a nightmare. Does she have the courage to stick it out, and make a home of her French house?

THE 50 REASONS SERIES (2004-2009)

Mark is looking for love in all the wrong places.

He always ignores the warning signs, preferring to dream, time and again, that he has met the perfect lover until finally, one day…
Through fifty vivid snapshots of life as a young gay man in Brighton, Mark takes us on a very funny tour of the modern dating minefield: from s&m nightclubs to chintzy b&bs, from disastrous blind dates to promising internet hookups… It’s all here.
Wry, touching, witty and honest, 50 Reasons to Say Goodbye is a poignant exploration of that long winding road: the universal search for love.

Following the loss of his partner in a car crash, Mark, the hero from the bestselling 50 Reasons to say “Goodbye”, tries to pick up the pieces and build a new life for himself in gay-friendly Brighton.

Haunted by the death of his lover and a fading sense of self, Mark struggles to put the past behind him, exploring Brighton’s high and low life, falling in love with charming but unavailable Tom and hooking up with Jenny, a long lost girlfriend from a time when such a thing seemed possible.

Moving, witty, truthful and wise, this is a story that digs deep into what it is like to lose someone you love and start again.

Funny, sexy and clever, Good Thing Bad Thing follows everyman Mark as he decamps to Italy with his new boyfriend and discovers that life is not always as bad – or as good – as it seems…

On holiday with new boyfriend Tom, Mark heads off to rural Italy for a spot of camping. When the ruggedly seductive Dante invites them onto his farmland the lovers think they have struck lucky, but there is more to Dante than meets the eye – much more. Thoroughly bewitched, Tom, all innocence, appears blind to Dante’s dark side – but Mark is racked with suspicion. As their holiday starts to spin slowly but very surely out of control, it is Mark, alone, who can maybe save the day…

It’s perhaps revealing that believe and naïve should rhyme so well…

Mark is about to embark on the project of a lifetime, the purchase of a hilltop gite in a remote French village with partner Tom. But with shady dealings making the purchase unexpectedly complex, Mark finds himself with time on his hands – time to consider not only if this is the right project but whether Tom is the right man…

A chance meeting with a seductive Latino promises nirvana yet threatens to destroy every other relationship Mark holds dear, and as he navigates a seemingly endless ocean of untruths, Mark is forced to question whether any worthwhile destination remains.
Funny, perceptive and heartfelt, Better Than Easy is both a tense tale of betrayal, and an incisive dissection of the mix of courage and naivety required if we are to choose love and happiness – if we are to continue to believe against all odds that we will live happily ever after.

Living with his soul mate Ricardo in an idyllic beach-house in Colombia, Mark looks like he has finally found true happiness. But all is not as it it seems.

Despite the paradisiacal beaches and salsa music, Mark is torn between the quiet security of home and the excitement of his Colombian lifestyle. When an old friend’s mother dies, Mark hopes that attending the funeral will enable him to decide where his future lies.

But no sooner does Mark set foot in England than bonds of love and obligation from the past begin to envelop him with such force that he wonders not only if his relationship with Ricardo will survive, but if he will ever be able be break free again…

Insightful, poignant, pierced by Nick Alexander’s trademark wry humour and forensic eye for detail, Sleight of Hand weaves universal themes of honesty and happiness, desire and obligation, love and lust into a rich tapestry of modern life.

13:55 EASTERN STANDARD TIME (2010)

Alice looks at the phone and then glances at the clock. 13:55 EST makes – she counts on her fingers – about 6pm in Berlin. He’ll be on his way home. Alice settles into the armchair and dials the number…

If Alice hadn’t bumped into Will then she would probably never have phoned that afternoon. And if Alice hadn’t called, then Michael, poor Michael, might still be alive today…

In a digital age of world-spanning communications and easy travel these stories explore how interconnected and yet fragmented our lives have become, and how – no matter where we live or what we do, no matter how different our lifestyles – the universal desires for love and happiness draw us ever onward.

Both short story collection and novel, 13:55 Eastern Standard Time finds Nick Alexander at his best. Sometimes disturbing, sometimes funny, these are stories of lives that cross and collide in life-ending drama, or simply run peacefully alongside for a few hours – lives filled with characters who are attracted and repelled, hopeless and yet inspired.
Narrated in Alexander’s trademark tense prose, these interwoven stories explore the ripples emanating from our every act, ripples that alter distant destinies, and occasionally bounce back, catching us from behind to haunt or inspire.
13:55 Eastern Standard Time repeats the success of Alexander’s first novel, 50 Reasons to Say Goodbye because again, as with life itself, the whole is mysteriously greater than the sum of the parts.