2025 SUMMER NEWSLETTER

Ta-da! My brand new book cover is revealed!

I’m so happy to share this with you all, because I absolutely love it! Covers are so important (obviously) to entice readers to pick up a book in the first place, but for an author, it is an emotive thing. Having worked for months and months on a book (in this case, eighteen months), we hope the cover will encapsulate not only the subject matter, genre and setting, but also the mood and tone of the novel in an attractive way. And I really think this cover does all of those things, and more. It is especially hard when there are three protagonists of the story, set over a period of four hundred years. I think the designer has done an incredible job! I hope you like it too.

As for the contents, here is a summary of what the novel is about:

1552, Paris: Against a backdrop of turmoil, suspicion, and paranoia, the printing press is quickly spreading new ideas across Europe, threatening the power of church and state and unleashing a wave of book burning and heretic hunting. When frightened ex-nun Lysbette Angiers arrives one day at Charlotte Guillard’s famous printing shop with her manuscript, neither woman knows just how far the powerful elite will go to prevent the spread of Lysbette’s audacious ideas.

1952, New York: Milly Bennett, lonely and unmoored, is a seemingly ordinary housewife with a secretive past. Balancing the day-to-day boredom of keeping house and struggling to find her way with the mothers at her children’s school, she finds her life taking an unexpected turn as conspiracies spread amidst the paranoid clamors of McCarthy’s America. When a relic from her past presents her with a 400-year-old manuscript to decipher, she is reluctantly pulled into a vortex of danger that threatens to shatter her world.

From the risky backstreets of sixteenth-century Paris to the unpredictable suburbs of mid-twentieth century New York, the stakes couldn’t be higher when, 400 years apart, Milly, Lysbette, and Charlotte each face a reality where the spread of ideas are feared and every effort is made to suppress them.

Dramatic and affecting, and inspired by the real-life encrypted Voynich manuscript, Book of Forbidden Words is both an engrossing story about a timeless struggle that echoes through the ages and a testament to the indomitable spirit of those who dare to let their words be heard.

The book will be out in the US on 17th February 2026 and around that date in Canada and the UK, but I don’t have the exact date yet! It is available for pre-order, again only in the US so far, but with the UK and Canada following soon. Do keep an eye out and pre-order if you can. I’ve mentioned it before, but pre-orders are vital to the book’s potential success. I’m eternally grateful for your support, so thank you. You can pre-order in the US here I cannot wait for you to meet Milly, Lysbette and Charlotte.

I’m also excited to share that the book will be translated into German and Italian and (fingers crossed) other languages too. It’s getting harder to have books translated into other languages by foreign publishers because often the English language export edition can be cheaper and often comes out first, and that undercuts the foreign language editions, which is a real shame.

In the coming months, I will also exclusively share in this newsletter an illustration that will be in the book. I’ve never had an illustration in a book before, but this one was necessary for reasons that will be explained! Watch this space and I will also be sharing some fascinating tidbits behind the book too!

In other news, together with four other brilliant writers, Nikki Smith, Louise Hare, Charlotte Levin and Eleni Kyriacou, I have set up something called The Author Clinic. We all met because our debut novels came out into the lockdown world of 2020 and facing this unprecedented situation as a debut novelist meant we all supported each other perhaps more than would have happened in an ordinary year. That support and sharing information both maintained our sanity and helped enormously. Since then, we have gone on to navigate the sometimes crazy and roller coaster world of publishing, writing and bringing out more books. But all of us have experienced both ups and downs and between us, we have amassed lots of experience we thought could be useful to others, and insights we wish we had had when we were starting out.

The idea is that whether you are an existing author or a new writer, you can book a paid, one-hour video-chat slot with any one of us, and we will do our best to help. We provide a sounding board for any writing or publishing problem you might have, whether that be a plot or character problem, being stuck in the middle of your work, or are confused about the publishing industry itself, want to ask a question about having an agent, or anything else. We couldn’t find any other service like this, so we decided to set it up ourselves! If you think we might be able to help you, or if you know someone who writes and you think we could help them, then do pass our details along. You can find our more details on our instagram page here or our facebook page here All bookings are very simply done from our instagram profile.

I mentioned in my last newsletter that I’d been invited to be a visiting author on a reading retreat on the beautiful island of Naxos in May with the wonderful travel company, Naxos Creative. For various reasons, the May retreat couldn’t take place this year, but the good news is, it will be happening next year! A brilliant holiday for book lovers, perfect for singles or groups of friends. I will be a visiting author, as will fabulous thriller writer, friend and fellow Author Clinic founder, Nikki Smith! If it is something you fancy, we would love to see you there. You can find out more here

I’m off to Vegas in less than two weeks to attend the Historical Novel Society conference at The Caesar’s Palace Hotel, and I can’t wait! It will be so great to meet other historical novelists and readers. If you happen to be living in the area, all the books of the attendees will be on sale in the hotel for the duration of the conference (26th to 28th June) and authors will be there to sign copies.

The picture at the bottom of this newsletter is a view over beautiful Barcelona, with the Sagrada Familia clearly seen in the distance. I went there recently for a long weekend for the first time. Jaw dropping, and well worth the visit if you can!

Enjoy the rest of your summer, and happy reading all of you,

With love, Louise x