Winner of the Romantic Novelists' Association Rose Award 2013.
After being shamelessly seduced by a married man, Zelah Pentewan finds her reputation is in tatters. Determined to rise above the gossip-mongers, Zelah knows she can rely on no one but herself...But her independence takes a knock when a terrifying stranger must come to her aid.
Major Dominic Coale's formidable manner is notorious, but Zelah shows no signs of fear. She doesn't cower at his touch as she begins to get a glimpse of the man behind the scars...The Notorious Coale Brothers They are the talk of the Ton!
Born in Bristol, Sarah Mallory grew up telling stories. She would make up adventures to relate to her school friends during break times and lunch hours, and she was once caught scribbling a story instead of listening to the French lesson. As a punishment, her teacher made her translate the story into French!
She left school at sixteen and worked in offices as varied as stockbrokers, marine engineers, insurance brokers, biscuit manufacturers and even a quarrying company.
Sarah married at nineteen, but continued to work until the birth of her first child. It was at that time that she decided to try her hand at her first love—writing, and shortly after the birth of her daughter she had her first book, Fortune's Lady, published under the pen name of Melinda Hammond. This was quickly followed by two more historical novels, Summer Charade and Autumn Bride, but with the birth of her twin sons the demands of family life meant that writing had to take a backseat for a few years.
A compulsive scribbler, Sarah never stopped writing and continued to work on research for her novels, experimenting with contemporary scenarios as well as writing pantomimes for her children's school. In 1989 the family moved to an isolated Pennine farmhouse in West Yorkshire, not far from Brontë country, where the family expanded to include a dog, two gerbils and a dozen chickens. The growing family needed funding and she went back to work full-time. The writing had to be put on hold.
Then, in March 2000, Sarah stepped off a curb and landed in hospital with one ankle broken and one badly sprained. This laid her up on a sofa for twelve weeks and gave her the time she needed to finish a novel. She wrote as Melinda Hammond and Maid of Honour was published the same year. Since then she has never looked back.
She's published more than a dozen books under this pen name and has won the Reviewers' Choice Award in 2005 from Singletitles.com for Dance for a Diamond. Her novel Gentlemen in Question was a Historical Novel Society Editors' Choice Title in November 2006.
Sarah is now concentrating on writing romantic historical adventures for Harlequin Mills & Boon.
