Feature on Liz Fielding, Murder in the Vineyard

 This week our Feature on Author: Liz Fielding. She has a new book out, Murder in the Vineyard.

Multi-award winning author, Liz Fielding was born with itchy feet. She was working in Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, has lived in Botswana, Kenya and the Middle East, all of which have provided rich inspiration for her writing. She now lives in West Sussex. 

She has written more than eighty books for Harlequin Mills and Boon and other publishers, has sold over 15 million copies and in 2019 was honoured with the Romantic Novelists' Association Outstanding Achievement Award.  Her fourth book in the award-winning Maybridge Murder Mystery series, Murder in the Vineyard, published by Joffe Books, is published on 8 September 2026.

Liz Fielding on the web:

Website             Facebook           X.          Instagram           TikTok

Who is Liz Fielding?

Good question! Only child, fabulous parents, happy childhood mostly playing in the park a few steps from out house (such freedom!) or in the library. Read from an early age and have never stopped. Secretarial training, a job working for the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism in Zambia where I met my civil engineer husband – a Coventry lad who was there constructing reservoirs. More travel, living in Africa and the Middle East.

 

Liz Fielding school time

First book published in 1992 by Mills and Boon. Lockdown sent me back to a crime novel that I’d started years earlier but never finished. Eighty odd books later, I’m now a widow with brilliant memories, living near my daughter and grandchildren and still writing, but now it’s crime all the way.

 

Liz Fielding's husband in Zambia

 

Do you listen to music while you write?

 

Not much, is the honest answer. Sometimes I’ll ask my Alexa to play a favourite song. Play me some John Denver, or play me some Dolly or there’s this French song, J’attendrai (I will wait) -- J'attendrai - YouTube  -- that I played on repeat when I was writing Christmas Reunion in Paris. That’s rare. Mostly, when writing, it’ll be something classical in the background, but if the words are flowing I won’t notice when it’s stopped.

 

What do you do to relax?

I read, a lot. I belong to a book group and a quiz team. I watch television – love a cozy crime, Death in Paradise, Marple and Poirot on repeat, Bookish, Ludwig. I’m not good with anything scary so I tend to avoid the psychological stuff.

 

I spent a lot of time with my family, and I enjoy pottering in the garden. This year it’s been a battle with heat, but I’ve kept pretty much everything alive with my watering can. This is my lovely King Chales rose.

 

From this week's harvest

And I meet up with writing friends, either for lunch, on zoom and once a year on a writing retreat in a manor house in the Lake District.

 

Tell us about your book...

 

It all began on one of those writer’s retreat. We’d gone to Dorset for a change and the converted barn we’d rented was next door to the Bride Valley Vineyard. We booked a tour – here we are -- it would have been rude not to, and of course everyone said my next book should be Murder in the Vineyard.

 

Titles are so easy but they’re not a plot!

 

First, I had to get Abby to the May Valley Vineyard on an estate overlooking Maybridge. That’s where Scout, a scruffy little terrier, came to my rescue. She caused Abby no end of bother, but finding her owner, led her to a body.

Clementine Courtenay, renowned vigneron, owner of the estate, and temporary carer of Scout, had tasted her last vintage. The police assume natural causes. Abby isn’t so sure but who would want her dead? There’s a lot of family, hidden resentments, a mystery lover, and a woman with everything to lose.

Abby has her work cut out with this mystery, but with the help of her friends — Jake just wishes she’d leave it to the police —she will get there in the end.

Buy on:

Amazon Kindle

Amazon UK

Amazon Aus

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