Alexandra Bell – författare

Brought to you by Penguin. Welcome to the Winter Garden. Open only at 13 o''clock.You are invited to enter an unusual competition.I am looking for the most magical, spectacular, remarkable pleasure garden this world has to offer.On the night her mother dies, 8-year-old Beatrice receives an invitation to the mysterious Winter Garden. A place of wonder and magic, filled with all manner of strange and spectacular flora and fauna, the garden is her solace every night for seven days. But when the garden disappears, and no one believes her story, Beatrice is left to wonder if it were truly real.Eighteen years later, on the eve of her wedding to a man her late father approved of but she does not love, Beatrice makes the decision to throw off the expectations of Victorian English society and search for the garden. But when both she and her closest friend, Rosa, receive invitations to compete to create spectacular pleasure gardens - with the prize being one wish from the last of the Winter Garden''s magic - she realises she may be closer to finding it than she ever imagined.Now all she has to do is win.© Alexandra Bell 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Journey to a magical hotel in the Swiss Alps, where two lost souls living in different centuries meet and discover if, behind the many doors, lies a second chance.‘Have you travelled a long way?’ she asked carefully. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.‘Well, yes,” he said slowly. ‘Yes, you could say that. But it was worth the wait.’When reclusive art appraiser Eve Shaw shakes the hand of a silver-haired gentleman in her London office, the warmth of his palm sends a spark through her.His name is Max Everly – curiously, the same name as Eve’s favourite composer, born one hundred sixteen years prior. And she can’t shake the feeling that she’s held his hand before . . . but where, and when?The White Octopus Hotel, 1935. In this Belle Epoch building high in the snowy mountains, Eve and a young Max Everly wander the winding halls, lost in time.Each of them has been through the trenches – Eve in a family accident and Max on the battlefields of the Great War – but for an impossible moment, love and healing are just a room away . . . if only they have the courage to step through the door.