Every brushstroke a mystery, every canvas a lie.

Love Painted in Lies is a laugh-out-loud, feel-good, heartwarming comedy. Minty’s return to Maida Vale isn’t just about the chaos of raising twins, Old English Sheepdog shenanigans, and caring for her parents—it’s a second chance at life.

Her days are shadowed by whispers on the school run of her unusual talent—and her past at the heart of a family art ring that once duped London’s elite. Now, the law is convinced she’s back to unearth the truth about a legendary missing painting. Minty must prove her new life is a genuine fresh start. But does she know more than she’s revealing, or is her return an honest attempt to repaint her life’s canvas?

Amidst it all, a mysterious stranger strolls into her already turbulent world, bringing intrigue and the possibility of romance. Is he a brushstroke of fate or a shadow from her past?

With gangsters on her heels and love at her door, Minty embarks on a laugh-out-loud, heartwarming adventure where resilience, family complexities, the differences that make us unique, and the absurdity of overpriced art comically collide in Maida Vale.

In this stand-alone spy story, Penny and Peregrine Jones, CIA “un-retirees”, are off to Paris to solve the mystery of how CIA Officer Nick Fortune had the misfortune to nearly drown into a vat of wine at a Normandy vineyard.

Using their covers of Lord and Lady Jones of Watchingwell on the Isle of Wight, they join forces with four members of a CIA financial investigations team. Their task? Connect the circumstances of Nick Fortune’s blown meeting with a potential asset at a French vineyard to a Russian “black money” operation in France.

They’re set to sail on a week-long cruise on the Seine River, not only with a dangerous killer, but also with Madame Marie Bernard, the wily counterspy chief of the DGSI and her husband Jacques. The woman reminds Penny of Madame Defarge, Dickens’ infamous knitter of codes. Is Marie Bernard knitting a code into the scarf she is making? The CIA would love to know the answer to that!

Before the riverboat even leaves its dock, a chief inspector of the National Gendarmerie is brutally murdered and tossed into the Seine. Is his murder meant to conceal another murder at the same vineyard?

The CIA team creates cover for itself by forming the Seine River Poker Club. Their nightly penny ante poker games in the main lounge allow them to socialize openly. When they befriend a beleaguered tour manager aboard the riverboat and learn the secrets Sophie has about that Russian money laundering operation, they have no choice but to share what they’ve learned with Madame Bernard, not only to protect Sophie, but also to protect France’s national security.

Like fictional spy-catching heroes Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, Penny and Perry are determined to get to the bottom of this espionage case. This “who-dun-what” cozy mystery will appeal to fans of Anthony Horowitz, Robert Thorogood, and Agatha Christie.