Angela Petch

Welcome to my author page - "benvenuti"!

I live in the beautiful Italian Apennines for several months each year. A truly inspiring location.

My love affair with Italy was born at the age of seven when I moved with my family to Rome where we lived for six years. My father worked for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and he made sure we learned Italian and visited many places during that time.

Later on I studied Italian at the University of Kent at Canterbury and afterwards worked in Sicily, where I met my husband. His Italian mother and British father met in Urbino in 1944 and married after a war-time romance.

I wanted to write my first novel "The Tuscan Secret" not only for my amazing mother-in-law, Giuseppina, who sadly died in 2024, but also to make people aware of the courage of the resistance fighters and the generous hospitality shown by the poorest of families, including relatives of our Italian neighbours in our corner of war-torn Tuscany.

This first novel is a story about ordinary people who lived through extraordinary times. (Please note it is a revised version of indie-published "Never Forget" and "Tuscan Roots"). I was subsequently signed by wonderful BOOKOUTURE and the new title is "The Tuscan Secret" and has more tension and intrigue. I am so proud to be a part of this publishing "family", who have patiently helped me polish the original. It is available on Amazon and reached bestseller standard along with all my other books since published with Bookouture. I am finishing an eighth book at the moment. Watch this space!

My research for all these novels set in Italy has been greatly helped by my kind Italian, country friends, who have vivid memories of both the Second World War and the harsh times they endured in their childhoods.

Italy is a passion but my stories are not always set there. I have also written a novella about two fun-loving ladies of "a certain age" who live by the seaside in Sussex and get up to all kinds of adventures. "Mavis and Dot" were launched on December 1st 2018 at St Paul's Centre, Worthing, West Sussex and has received fab reviews. I have a sequel in mind. All profits from sales go to research into cancer and I am pleased with the amounts that I've been able to deliver for this worthwhile charity. How many of us have lost friends and family through this vile disease?