Every novel needs a narrator, and mine came with strings attached. Tom Henning turned up in my head fully formed, opinions and all, and made it very clear he'd be doing the talking. Two decades and several rewrites later, I still don't think I've talked him out of anything. So, in the interest of managing expectations, here's what you're in for. Tom is Swiss. Properly Swiss – the kind who grew up twenty kilometres from Berne and will point out, politely and every single time,

Love, Secrets, and a Plate of Sushi Plenty of people say they'd like to write a book one day. Some actually do. Most don't, usually because life has other plans and rarely asks permission first. Mine started on a train. Rewind to 2004. I'd been in Japan for eight years, the last three in Tokyo, and had recently swapped a shaky career as a freelance English teacher for something steadier: a desk job in finance, the field I'd left home to escape and somehow ended up back in any