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A small town scammed by one of their own in a Ponzi scheme. That’s the scenario for bestselling author Fiona Lowe’s, latest contemporary fiction, The Money Club.
Hi there. I’m your host, Jenny Wheeler, and on Binge Reading today, Fiona unpicks the moral quagmire of those who trade on the bonds of their closest friendships and families for money.
This week’s Giveaway
In our Giveaway this week, Mystery Thriller and Suspense Freebies for a limited time. Once again, we’re giving you a library of choice, including my Hawaiian Christmas novella Captive Heart. It’s a mixture of romance and history, #8 in the Of Gold & Blood mystery series.
https://books.bookfunnel.com/mtsnewsleter_endsjul15th/ze5yu8o9ad
And remember if you enjoy the show, leave us a comment so others will find us too. Word of mouth is still the best form of recommendation.
Links to things mentioned in the show
Ponzi Scheme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme#
ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) https://www.abc.net.au/
Grey (Gray) Nomads https://www.thegreynomads.com.au/
Fiona Lowe Books:
A Home Like Ours (Women’s fiction on the theme homelessness among older women)
https://www.amazon.com/A-Home-Like-Ours/dp/B08SR7PSPV/
Family Of Strangers; https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/89575506
The books Fiona is reading now
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins.
https://www.amazon.com/American-Dirt-Novel-Jeanine-Cummins/dp/1250209765
And the controversy over American Dirt
https://www.vulture.com/article/american-dirt-book-controversy-explained.html
The Running Club by Ali Lowe:
One Of Those Mothers: Megan Nicol Reed.
https://www.amazon.com/Those-Mothers-Megan-Nicol-Reed-ebook/dp/B0BNGZ2BHJ/
Where to find Fiona Online
Introducing author Fiona Lowe
Jenny Wheeler: But now here’s Fiona. Hello there, Fiona, and welcome to the show. It’s so good to have you with us.
Fiona Lowe: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here.
Jenny Wheeler: Fiona, you’ve got a very impressive back list in the romance area where you started writing You’ve got prize winning books that have won RITAs. That’s the US romance prize and the RUBY, the Australian prize.
But you’ve turned in more recent years to women’s fiction and this one that we’re going to be talking about today, The Money Club is actually about the sixth one of these women’s fiction ones, if I counted correctly.
Why did you make that change from more straight romance to very much women’s fiction?
Fiona Lowe: Oh, I was published with Penguin Random House in America around about the time that they merged. And I had a series, and the first book had done well.
The second book release coincided with the merger and it was absolute chaos. They sacked my editor and they didn’t get the books out of the warehouse.
And then they said, ‘oh, we’re not publishing those types of books anymore.’
I had lived in the States and I was writing books set in America, but when that all happened, I had an absolute hankering to write a book set in my own back garden in Australia.
A forced change of direction that worked out well
I wanted to move beyond looking at one couple and one relationship, and I wanted to roam over all sorts of things and write books about family and communities.
I changed direction, but that said, the emotion that I write into my books now, I probably couldn’t have done without all those years of having written the romance fiction up until that point.
Jenny Wheeler: And are you still with the same publisher, just doing different types of books?
Fiona Lowe: No. I’m with Harper Collins, Australia now, have been for the last seven books.
Jenny Wheeler: Oh, fantastic. So it was a complete change and, but you were living in Australia at that time?
Fiona Lowe: I was, but we had been living in the United States, which was why I was setting books over there. But yes, I’ve basically reinvented myself three times within my writing career, since I started.
Jenny Wheeler: Oh, amazing. We might get to talk about the third time a little bit later on but also it might have had an advantage, because you’re a truly international author now, aren’t you? You have quite a reach beyond the Australian market.
Fiona Lowe: Yes, I’m published overseas as well as in Australia and New Zealand.
What would you do if you lost all your savings?
Jenny Wheeler: The Money Club introduces us to a group of middle class friends in a small town that are drawn into investing in a financial deal that one of them is running.
This thing called the Elite Club, and it’s not giving any spoiler away to let people know that early on in the process, this turns out to be a con, because it’s already in the publisher’s blurb for the book.
The story deals with the fallout from that.
It seems to me that there’s two ways that people have to deal with this kind of disaster in their lives.
They can try and pick themselves up and say, ‘oh, that’s happened and we’ve got to regroup.’ Or they can spend a lot of energy on trying to exact revenge and justice and almost being in denial that they’ve lost their money, trying to get their money back.
And your people do have those two slightly divergent sorts of responses, don’t they?
Fiona Lowe: When you lose all your money, your first absolute reaction is that you want to get it back.
And as human nature is, we want to blame someone. We want someone else to take responsibility for what happened.
That is a normal response, no matter whether you lose all your money, or whether you’ve gone through a natural disaster.
In the early days in the book, everyone is just trying to keep their head above water.
You go into shock when something like that happens because it’s the last thing you expect when you’ve invested and you’ve been making money.
Especially when you’ve invested with someone that you trust. because Ponzi schemes are inherently based around trust and connection.
They trusted Brad with their money. It was a slow realization that everything isn’t as good as what they thought it was.
That leaves you absolutely floundering, when you realize suddenly life – what you thought had – has done a complete 180.
The characters all have a journey. And they deal with their loss of income in very different ways.
The town where lightening struck twice
Jenny Wheeler: The story is based in a rural town outside of Melbourne, but it could happen anywhere.
We only need to look overseas to Bernie Madoff and the billions that he stole to see that.
But this one has got an aspect of being based on true events as well, hasn’t it? Tell us a little bit about the particular case that you were drawn into.
Fiona Lowe: There’s a couple of things. My claim to fame, I’m not sure it’s a great one, is that I live in a regional city that has been subject to two of Australia’s worst Ponzi schemes.
In fact, we actually had, at one point, standing in our kitchen drinking our wine…
We had one of the perpetrators of one of these schemes We did not invest, but the fact that he was standing in our kitchen came about because of small towns, and the networks.
You are never too many handshakes away from anybody. When this scheme went down and $89 million dollars went missing, a lot of people in my town were affected and I observed the fallout from that.
I hadn’t actually intended to write a book about it. It was just like, isn’t this awful?
It was just sitting there in the back burner. And then another decade went by and the town got hit by another Ponzi scheme.
Are they ‘gullible’ or ‘greedy?’ You decide
And remember listening to an ABC podcast about a couple of blokes down in East Gippsland who had invested and lost money and they were trying to get their money back.
They believed that there was a middle man involved and they were trying to sort that out.
I remembered these families and these workplaces because Ponzi schemes and networks – entire extended families go down.
Entire sporting communities, sections of a factory. They all invest because they all trust each other. And I started to think if you lose everything, normally you can turn to someone in the family and they can help you out.
But if your entire extended family has lost everything, where does that leave you? And I thought, I need to write a book about this.
Jenny Wheeler: Early on there is the question raised of ‘were they gullible or were they greedy?’ And I guess sometimes this might surface in the press as well with the comment t’hey shouldn’t have been so gullible.’ How did you tackle that aspect of it?
Fiona Lowe: That was the big theme of the book, what is need and what is greed? And that was my constant question that I was asking as I was writing the book. Is it greedy to want to own your own home? Is it greedy to want to educate your children? Is it greedy to want to own a Lamborghini and for other cars?
And who makes a decision about what is need and what is greed and where’s the line drawn? So that’s constantly being tossed around.
Facing homelessness at 55
Jenny Wheeler: I must admit that when you read of these stories, sometimes you do think to yourself how terrible it would be.
I’d hate it at this stage of my life now if my relatively modest savings were somehow just all swallowed up
Fiona Lowe: It would be terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.
I’ve written another novel A Home Like Ours that I focused on homelessness. Women over the age of 55 in Australia are the fastest rising group of homeless in the country. because they’ve often come out of divorce or they’ve been a carer or they’ve been raising children and they just don’t have that same income.
And it’s awful to be constantly worried about, can you afford this? And are you a going to be able to hold onto your home?
That’s one of the issues that plays out in The Money Club.
We were talking about being gullible before. The way a Ponzi scheme is structured, we are dealing with narcissists, so when we are dealing with someone like that, we can’t apply our own moral code to these people because their moral code is so far deviated from ours that it’s unrecognizable and they’re very clever.
I’d better explain what a Ponzi scheme is to your listeners in case they don’t know. A Ponzi scheme is a sham investment.
No money is ever generated. How it works is they use the latter investors’ money to pay dividends to the early investors’ money.
Ponzi schemes… ‘Always a red flag…’
Initially people are making some money and then they’ll say to their friends, look, this is really good investment and it’s paying and I’m getting dividends.
Do you want to join? But the later people who invest, they lose everything. And. Yes. The investment percentage payoff is normally higher than other investments.
That’s always a red flag. But then again, there’s been other times where people have taken a risk and it’s completely paid off.
With a Ponzi scheme the risk is actually muddied because of these early payments. They’re not a hundred percent gullible. They’re a hundred percent scammed, and I don’t know about you, but I get at least two scams a week on my phone at the moment. We are being hammered by scams.
In fact, in my town this morning I woke up on the news to hear that there’s a current parking fee scam. People who got parking tickets on the weekend, it’s a hundred percent a scam
Jenny Wheeler: I’m being hit with ones that tell me that they haven’t been able to deliver my parcel. I haven’t had any parcels ordered. And if I just give them my details, then they’ll be able to make sure it gets to me. Yeah.
Fiona Lowe: That’s exactly right. We have to be constantly vigilant.
The other thing about Ponzi schemes and with The Money Club is that this wasn’t a stranger that was suggesting that they invest.
This was a friend, someone they trusted, a man whose father was a financial advisor.
They came with gravitas. And trust is such a huge thing, if we trust people, we will take that step.
The collapse of life dreams – and learning to handle it
Jenny Wheeler: The characters in the book, the dreams that they have are the dreams we all have.
There’s a young couple who want to own their own home. Now we have mentioned about this thing of home ownership.
It might be a little bit more common in Australia and New Zealand that a lot of people assume that the sign of their success in life really is getting to own their own home.
I know that in some areas, it’s not so much a goal in life, but this young couple, they’re gutted when they realize that the home that they have actually put money into is going to be taken away from them.
And then the other older couples, they’re looking at the retirement plans, they’ve got dreams to drive around Australia, et cetera.
It’s the collapse of all their dreams as well, isn’t it that’s involved?
Fiona Lowe: Oh, that’s right. Exactly. And that’s where the anger and the fury and the revenge comes in because, they had plans and these have all been scuttled.
You’ve got a young couple that wanted to pay off their house and have another child and change their life because Jack’s a ‘fly in, fly out’ engineer.
They’re prepared to do the hard yards for four or five years.
That means that Lucy, who’s a midwife, is a sole parent two weeks out of every four and Jack’s away from home.
Stress of relationships is the seed of the story
The ultimate plan was to pay off the house, and then he could take a lower paying job in the district and be a soccer dad, and their life could roll on.
With the loss of their savings, they’re struggling.
Then Jack’s parents, who’ve lost their superannuation, they’re also left struggling.
On top of all this, you’ve also got fraught, intense family relationships. Birdie, who is Lucy’s mother-in-law, they had a difficult relationship before everything went pear-shaped.
You can imagine the stress they’re under now that they’re under a great deal of financial stress.
When I write my books, I’m always looking at interpersonal relationships, and when they exist and then you add on the extra stress. That’s where you get great seeds for story.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes, and as we all know, I think, money is one of the biggest causes of relationship breakups as well, isn’t it?
Fiona Lowe: Oh, absolutely. Even without having lost all your money, If people overextend themselves to take on a mortgage, then that is always a huge red flag.
Jenny Wheeler: This thing about going away in a caravan when you retire. I think it’s something that’s big in Australia and I think maybe popular in the US as well, but there’s even a name for them in Australia.
You call them the Gray Nomads. Talk a bit about that. I actually looked it up and see that there is a website called the Gray Nomads.
Gray Nomads – a new 60s phenomenon
Fiona Lowe: Oh, the Gray Nomads. I have to tell you, at this time of year Northern Australia is absolutely frantic with people over 60 traveling around in caravans and big four wheel drives.
I was in Broome this time last year, and it was absolutely frantic. Birdie and Mike got married young and they’ve worked hard and all Birdie has been wanting to do for the last few years is take this trip.
Mike promised her, hand on heart he would retire at 60 and then the contracts kept coming and he wants to fill the superannuation up as much as possible.
But Birdie has raised the kids. She’s looked after her elderly mother. All she wants to do is take this big round Australia trip and when there’s an offer for them to invest in a lease, she is very promoting of that, because if this is going to bring Mike’s retirement forward two years.
Then they can take off. That’s her entire focus, this traveling around Australia in a caravan.
Jenny Wheeler: Practically speaking, did you settle on any ways where people can protect themselves against getting sucked into one of these schemes? Is there anything much you can really do?
Fiona Lowe You can do your due diligence, but like I said before, because of how a Ponzi scheme is set up, it’s fake so you could do your due diligence and and still invest.
It was quite interesting when I was researching. One of the Ponzi schemes, a financial advisor, his client had said to him, oh, look, I’m making money out of this.
And he went, oh yeah. And he invested some money into it, and he was an early investor, so he was being paid dividends, but he could not work out how. the money was coming.
The Good Life has a dark side
He looked at all the paperwork, he looked at all the racing figures. He couldn’t work it out. And so, he never advised any of his clients to invest in it.
He withdrew his money and he said to the man that had recommended it to him, I think you need to pull your money out because I cannot work out how this is working.
And the other bloke didn’t. And a month and a half later it went pear shaped. And I suppose we were invited to be part of one and we just looked at it and went, ‘those returns are too good to be true,’ and so we didn’t do it.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s very sensible. Yes. It was tied around race horses as well, wasn’t it? Race betting.
Fiona Lowe: Racing and the betting and that’s a part of the whole thing. The tagline of the book is “The Good Life Has Its Dark Side.
When the book starts, after the prologue, you meet the characters and they are enjoying a very pleasant lifestyle.
Things are looking good. And I think the thing about the Elite Club is it isn’t just a money-making venture.
It had a huge social overlay. There were trips, there were dividend days, there were barbecues, there was a lot of socializing and enjoying the profits.
Jealousy and cutting down the tall poppies
And that becomes a way of life, and that was also another source of tension within the town, because you’ve got people watching, people making money, and then human beings are truly shocking.
Of course when it all went pear shaped and they lost everything, there was a little bit of the tall poppy syndrome.
People weren’t sympathetic to them because they’d felt that they’d risen above their station. It wasn’t just what was going on in amongst the characters, but also their relationship to the other people in the town.
Jenny Wheeler: Now, because in a small town like that and with all those extra events going on, you’d get the feeling of being a bit left out as well. If you hadn’t joined, wouldn’t you?
Fiona Lowe: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And you had to invest a certain amount of money to join. There’s a comment about a young man who said, “I was within $150 of being able to join.”
And country towns, they’re fish bowls. and people don’t like to miss out.
They see these people driving these new cars and they’re taking holidays and things that they haven’t had, and you are a bit jealous and you think why can’t I have a share of that?
That’s normal human nature.
Running away is never a real escape
Jenny Wheeler: In the book before this one, which was called Family of Strangers, your characters in different ways are all running away from things.
And I thought it was a wonderful irony that it was actually partly written anyway during Covid when no one could go anywhere at all.
Fiona Lowe: When I was starting to think of the idea for this book, I wrote one word on my whiteboard, and that was escape.
And the three female characters in this book are wanting to escape from their lives, in a variety of different ways.
And basically the theme of the book is that’s actually it’s better to stay and deal than run.
I always write about social issues of the day. In that book, I had a young couple who’d been on holidays in this tiny country town and they had such a wonderful holiday, which is what you should have, that they decided that they should relocate and live there, and then every day would be like this.
And I’m fascinated by this approach. I’ve met numerous people who’ve decided to relocate after a good holiday, and I want to say to them, “But you take your real life with you.”
It’s not going to be a holiday when you are living there.
Of course, they get there and they’re trying to run a business and there’s no decent internet and there’s no childcare because you go from a big city to a tiny town, you don’t have the same resources.
Absolutely. I looked at the mental load on women.
Fiona Lowe – not a natural born writer
How they’re having to juggle absolutely everything. We looked at that. And Abby was trying to escape – she had quite a bit of trauma in her life.
I set it in a small rural town in Tasmania because I needed the isolation for the story to work.
But I also loved that part of Tasmania, so that was good too.
Jenny Wheeler: When you got started in writing fiction, was there some epiphany or eureka moment when you thought, I just have to write, or my life won’t mean anything to me?
Fiona Lowe: No, I’m not very traditional that way.
I didn’t grow up scribbling stories. I thought back, when I listened to other authors talk about how they always used to write stories and things.
I definitely didn’t do that, but I used to have imaginary conversations in my head and I would always rewrite in my head the ending of a book that I didn’t like.
And when you’re a teenager and you’re having those agonizing conversations with boys, that didn’t go well.
I would re-script those in my head. I guess that sort of thing I had done, and I’d always written a travel diary, but I came from a medical background and it had never occurred to me to write a book.
I’d had a lot of trouble having my first child and taking about seven years.
A decade of perspiration before success
When I was finally at home with the baby, I wasn’t really keen to be dashing straight back to work.
And I heard an interview on the radio about writing romance fiction and I really loved the flying doctors and ER, and I knew the medical stuff surely.
I have to say here, it’s very embarrassing, at that point in my life, as far as romances was concerned, I’d read Pride and Prejudice and one Mills and Boon.
I knew absolutely nothing. I don’t know why I thought I could write a book, but I decided that I could.
And so I gave it a go and it took me four complete manuscripts before I was published with Harlequin Mills and Boon for a medical romance, which are little 50,000 word books.
I knew nothing. I didn’t have a clue. If I had read a lot more romances, my life probably would’ve been a lot easier, but I didn’t even understand the genre.
I just decided that I was going to stay home and write books so that I could be at home with the baby.
And from that decision to the first book hitting the shelf, took a decade.
Strong foundation in commercial romance
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. You’ve mentioned your medical background. You were trained as a midwife, you’ve worked as a sexual health counselor and a family support worker.
So were all of those early romances focused in the medical area.
Fiona Lowe: Yes, I wrote 23 medical romances. I had moved long out of hospitals. Prior to that, I’d worked in community health for years, but yes. I wrote the first one, and was very surprised when they expected me to write another one.
I wrote a few more and something happened that I had never anticipated and that was that I developed some new writing muscles that I wanted to flex and I wanted to write something a little bit different.
That’s when I started writing what they call single title romance. I didn’t have the medical bit.
They were bigger books and involved more couples, and that’s when I wrote Boomerang Bride and the Wedding Fever series.
And then I wrote these two bigger novels, they had medical themes to them, but they were also straight romances for Penguin Random House.
And then when that all went pear-shaped, I started writing my general fiction novels that I’m writing and loving now.
A career that’s blossomed on ‘pivots’
Jenny Wheeler: You mentioned at the beginning that you’d had three pivots in your writing career, so was the third one going from series romances to single titles?
Fiona Lowe: Correct. I did medical romances, then I wrote the single title, I did the Wedding Fever books and these other larger Montana books that had some medical in them and then now the general fiction. So yes, three times.
Jenny Wheeler: I imagine that I know the word you’re going to give me for this next question, but if there’s one thing that you see as the secret of your success in your creative career, what would it be?
Fiona Lowe: Persistence,
Jenny Wheeler: I knew it was going to be that one!
Fiona Lowe: Actually bloody minded, dogged bloody mindedness really.
Because when I was getting close to being published, although there was 10 years elapsed, I’d changed countries and I’d had another child.
I wasn’t writing for that whole 10 years. But it was probably two and a half years before I finally got published, and I knew I was getting close, but this was the hardest thing I’d ever done.
I’d done post-graduate studies, I’d never failed at anything, and getting over the line to get a book published was seemingly almost impossible. I just became steely, determined that, I was going to win.
What Fiona is reading right now
Jenny Wheeler: Fantastic. We’re starting to come to the end of our time together.
We always like to ask our authors what they’re reading and if they’ve got recommendations for the listeners. Because we’re a popular fiction podcast, we tend to focus in the area of books that are both either entertaining or escapist or not too serious.
Are you happy to talk about your reading?
Fiona Lowe: Yes, certainly, although I tend to go blank.
But the book that I have just finished reading yesterday is for my book group and that’s American Dirt by Jeanine-Cummins.
I’ve just finished reading that. I am about to start The Running Club by Allie Lowe, also spelt the same way Lowe.
And I’ve just finished a novel written by a New Zealand author Megan, someone Nichols. She’s a journalist and she has a column in the newspapers and it was a domestic noir and it’s a triple barrel surname.
Megan Regan Nichols. I can’t remember the name of it book. It was quite a long title. But that was very good.
It was set in I would imagine, it was set in a suburb of Auckland.
Half of Fiona Lowe’s reading is audio
Jenny Wheeler: Oh, I’ll have to look it up.
Fiona Lowe: That’s what I’ve just finished reading and what I’m about to start. These days read about 50% of my yearly reading is on audiobook.
Jenny Wheeler: And do you have a particular genre you like to focus on?
Fiona Lowe: I like to read contemporary fiction. I don’t mind the occasional historical fiction. But I don’t read thrillers because they give me chest pain and agitation.
And I’m not a big crime person, but I quite like the domestic noir if it’s not too stressy for me. I like character driven novels.
I like to see how people, learn and change.
Jenny Wheeler: That sounds great. Looking back down the tunnel of time, if there was one thing about your creative career you’d change, what would it be?
Fiona Lowe: Not having not having publishing houses go to the wall. As an author, you have very little control.
You can only control the content of your novels. You have no control over anything else. And there’s always a certain element of luck involved.
Luck and persistence in equal measure
There are some fabulous books out there that are brilliantly written that have never really taken off, and there’s other books that may not be brilliantly written, but they have a great premise, or it’s an intersection of time. They just arrived at that right moment and they took off.
But we have, as an author, have no control at all about that. All you can do is turn up every day and try and write your best work.
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. And do you turn up every day?
Fiona Lowe: Five and a half days a week. Yes.
Jenny Wheeler: And how many hours would you put in when you’re writing at your desk?
Fiona Lowe: All day.
Jenny Wheeler: Oh gosh. Really? Yeah. You have to take breaks though?
Fiona Lowe: Tuesday mornings I play tennis. But the thing is it’s not just writing. My career is today, where I’m chatting to you. This is work. The podcast work.
There’s your creative aspect of work and there is the marketing. And then there’s just the sheer administration, as well.
All of it, some days you’ll be writing, but what I do find is that you ‘re better to get up first thing in the morning, not talk to anyone and get your words down. And then you can deal with all the admin and other stuff later in the day.
Dedication to sitting down and ‘just doing it’
I play tennis on Tuesdays because I work from home and that’s my water cooler and I see people, but I don’t tend to go to Pilates or do this or do that and then come home and write.
I can’t because I’m distracted. It really interferes with the way my brain works.
So creatively, it’s better just to get up and do the work and then turn on the email.
Jenny Wheeler: Do you have a word count for each day?
Fiona Lowe: Not really. Ideally, I’d like to write 1500 words, but I never achieve that when I’m first starting a book.
Probably round about 1200 some days, I have days of 800 because it depends on if you’re stuck.
It depends if you know what you’re doing or whether you are trying to find your way.
And then, as you get to know your characters and you get further into the book, then I can write more words in a day.
I have a template in my head and basically, I need about 1200.
I’d like to like lot more, but I’m also very anti, “I wrote this many words today” because it doesn’t matter how many words you wrote, it’s the quality of the words that you wrote that counts.
Where to find Fiona Lowe online
Jenny Wheeler: Yes, absolutely. Do you enjoy interacting with your readers and where can they find you online? Do you do quite a bit of actual in-store stuff as well?
Fiona Lowe: With the Money Club, I’ve just come off a big month of May book tour and that was fabulous.
I did a lot of library talks and I love meeting my readers, but I’m very easy to find.
I have a website, fionalowe.com. I’m on Facebook. I’m on Instagram, I’m on TikTok, and I have a newsletter that you can subscribe to, so I’m very easy to find which is good and bad.
It’s wonderful when people write to you and tell you how amazing your book is, you don’t mind being found then.
It’s not quite so much fun when you found, when people want to take you to task for things.
Jenny Wheeler: Doing TikTok, I am impressed.
Fiona Lowe: That’s a bit of fun. I got that started during lockdown. I’m not quite sure if I’ll continue it, but during lockdown it was a bit of fun and a bit of a distraction.
Jenny Wheeler: Fiona, thanks so much talking. Thank you for your time.
Fiona Lowe: Thank you very much for having me. Take care.
Jenny Wheeler: Thank you. Bye.
Fiona Lowe: Bye-bye.
If you enjoyed Fiona you might also love
Kristan Higgins in the “Queen of Love & Laughs with small town romances that bite deep.
Next week on Binge Reading
Kelly Rimmer and a World War Two story of love, spies and betrayal, based on true life. That’s what we’ve got for you next week on The Joys of Binge Reading.
Kelly’s latest book, The Paris Agent, delves into the dangerous world of the agents who parachuted into France to support the Resistance fighters and met with heartless betrayal.
Kelly’s previous international bestsellers include The Warsaw Orphan and The Things We Cannot Say.
And this one, like them, is a real humdinger of a story.
That’s it for today. Until next week. see you next time and Happy Reading!