Tina Beattie

Tina Beattie is former Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Roehampton in London and a widely published academic. She now dedicates her time to writing fiction and independent research. Tina was born and grew up in Lusaka, Zambia, to Scottish parents, and she has also lived in Kenya and Zimbabwe, where her book "Between Two Rivers" is set. She now divides her time between Camber on the south coast of England and Stirling in Scotland.

The Good Priest

Psychological Thriller

"John's limbs are still stiff with cold. He dreads going out there. He has a sudden horror of finding them all dead or disappeared. The silence is so absolute. ..."

What horrors have come to haunt Father John as he hears confessions on Ash Wednesday? Who is the stranger in the confessional threatening to do "pure evil", and what does this haunting appearance have to do with the traumas of John's past?

​As Lent unfolds, John finds himself caught up in events beyond his worst imaginings or fears. Surely, the serial murders of prostitutes have nothing to do with his ordinary parish and his priestly calling?

Or do they? ...

Between Two Rivers

Literary Fiction

“Msasa trees provided dappled shade for Jenny’s tea party. April sunshine dribbled through the leaves onto suntanned arms. The frangipanis were in bloom ...”

This is the scene that greets Scottish doctor Morag soon after her arrival in Salisbury in the 1950s. Jenny is an English wife and mother trapped in an increasingly violent marriage and secretly in love with another man. Soon, Beatrice will come to work as Jenny’s maid and nanny to her children. Over the next twenty years these three women will form deep bonds of affection, but can their loyalty to one another survive as the façade of white suburban life is shattered by war?

In a novel that moves from the Firth of Clyde in Scotland to pre-independence Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), from the illusory idyll of colonial privilege to the traumas of guerrilla war, Beattie explores the hidden lives and untold stories of those caught up in the dying years of white rule in Africa.

Maggie Jackson's Odyssey

Literary fiction; women's fiction; contemporary fiction; marriage and family life

Psychotherapist Maggie would have said she was contented, if not happy, in her marriage, until she discovered her geriatric pop philosopher husband, Colin, was having an affair. She set off on a spontaneous odyssey across Europe, but Maggie's libido was not as exhausted as she thought, and she too was susceptible to the seductive allure of a late-life dalliance.

A year later, Maggie broods and reminiscences as she prepares for Colin's 71st birthday during lockdown. Then a surprise revelation from him jolts her into a new reality.

How well do married couples really know each other?

Sample Chapter