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The Sterkarm Handshake - Susan Price Last month I promised to tell you about the hardest, most strenuous piece of research I've ever undertaken for a book. It came about because, while writing The Sterkarm Handshake, I realised that the horses in the book might as well have been bikes. I spent most of my childhood around dogs, so I know how they behave and the dogs in the book were convincing enough. But not the horses. Yet The Sterkarm Handshake was partly set in the 16th Century, on the Scottish Borders, and the Sterkarms were supposed to be people whose lives were built around horses. They would have been riding, grooming, feeding, training horses every day. I needed to be more familiar with the beasts. So when I saw an advert for a residential riding school on the Scottish Borders, which promised to teach you to ride in a week, I booked up. On the first day I was introduced to my mount. He was a Northumberland cob, so quite close to the kind of horse that  rei...

A Sterkarm Kiss by Susan Price '...There had been a lot more dancing, and drinking and eating, and the evening light that came through the door... had flickered into dusk before the fiddlers and the pipers began to play, once more, the tune called 'Come to the Wedding.' As they played, they bore down on Per and Joan, and people cheered and clapped and stamped. It was time that the wedded pair were put to bed...           Mistress Crosar put her mouth so close to Joan’s ear that it tickled, and shouted, “Undo thine garters!”           Joan froze. They were at the back of the dancing hall, near the benches. People were everywhere. How could she pull up her skirts and undo her garters?..           "Oh, come here, lass!” her aunt said, and turned her round, tutting at how slow and clumsy Joan was in moving. Other women gathered round he...

A Sterkarm Tryst by Susan Price Tryst: (Old French) an appointed station in hunting. An appointed meeting place, often of lovers. To engage to meet a person or persons. A cattle market, e.g. 'The Falkirk Tryst.'   A Sterkarm Tryst: an appointed meeting place of which only one side is aware: an ambush.    Yesterday, January 24th, the third Sterkarm book, A Sterkarm Tryst, was published. It's the third in the series. The first two, after being out of print for some years, have been republished by Open Road. They are The Sterkarm Handshake and A Sterkarm Kiss . The Sterkarm Handshake by Susan Price A Sterkarm Kiss by Susan Price (I've just been messaged on Facebook by a reader, who tells me she can now at last read Kiss, which she's been trying to find for ten years, and has pre-ordered Tryst.  I can only say thank you for your stamina and thank you again.) The books were inspired by the reivers of the Scottish...