Shelagh Mazey, born in Chichester in 1948, started writing when she retired from her job as a medical secretary. At that time she lived with her husband in a thatched cottage in rural Somerset. She is married with two children, two stepchildren and five grandchildren. Since her retirement she has written a series of five regional historical novels set in and around Dorset and Somerset. These stories have led her characters on many adventures, travelling to the southern hemisphere to Tasmania, Australia, and South Africa.
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Shelagh Mazey
All That Glitters is the fifth book in the Heart of Stone Series, following on from The Golden Fleece. Set in the late 19th century it charts the heroic adventures of two women who decide to leave their homes and nurturing families to travel abroad seeking romance, love and new futures.
Aurora Dryer is the adopted daughter of Lord and Lady Dryer of Alvington Manor, who fell for the prospector Rhys Thomas on a short-lived trip to Australia. Her challenge is to persuade her parents to let her follow her heart and return to the gold mining town of Bendigo to see if the magic can be re-captured.
Lucy Seymour, the young widow of murdered Ashleigh Seymour, makes the decision to travel with her small son Frankie to the diamond mines of South Africa to visit her brother-in-law, Rupert. Enticed by the offer of marriage, Lucy knows that she and her son have a long sea voyage and epic trek overland ahead of them, but she wishes to escape her uneventful provincial life with her in-laws.
Both women are yearning for excitement, but their journeys are destined to take different paths to those they had envisaged.
This story involves, gold and diamond mining, several love interests, heartache and jealousy, voyages and a shipwreck, black magic, vendettas, arson, kidnap, extortion and the traditions and customs of Somerset, Bendigo and Hopetown during that period in the 19th Century.
All That Glitters
Shelagh Mazey
This novel charts the the adventures of two women who leave their families in Somerset to travel, one to the goldmines of Australia and the other to the diamond mines of South Africa, both seeking romance, love and new adventures
Book Excerpt or Article
REVIEW OF ‘ALL THAT GLITTTERS’ BY FROST MAGAZINE
‘All That Glitters’ is the fifth in the Heart of Stone series by Shelagh Mazey, one of my favourite authors, who has created a series of deeply researched, fascinating, memorable sagas, using settings which seem to span the world.
The novel, set in the second half of the nineteenth century, starts with a prologue, which is always a good way to bring the reader up to date. This time Shelagh Mazey uses ‘where we are in the series’ letters, a device used from time to time, to draw the threads of the novel together. Clever. And within the first chapter there is talk of smallpox, and vaccinations which makes this historical novel immediately relatable – again – clever.
Swiftly flowing, always page turning, Mazey writes with compassion, and gentleness. Whenever I read one of her novels I learn about a country, and a time set back in the annals of history. ‘All That Glitters’ is no exception, Mazey transports us from Portland, and its rich history, to South Africa, by sea, to Australia, too. I can see the bright light, and smell, almost taste the dust of these far away countries, as we follow all that the characters endure, all their trials and tribulations. Do they overcome them? Ah, read and see.
Why travel in their footsteps, when you can buy this book and take the journey in the comfort of your armchair, and what’s more, travel back in time while you’re about it? Another triumph for Shelagh Mazey. Bravo.
More Articles and Excerpts by
Shelagh Mazey
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Vera Bell |