The Salt House · Book One · Out now
Frank, funny, later-in-life romance from the Cornish coast, for women who have stopped apologising and would quite like to be looked at properly.
Kindle and Kindle Unlimited · paperback available · for adult readers
One Cornish guesthouse, and the people who come through the door in the months the brochures don't show.
Book One · out now
Book Two · October
Book Three · November
Book Four · December
Book Five · January
Off Season. Claire Bennett is forty-five and runs four rooms above a harbour on a lane the map doesn't name. Hospital corners, toast over the sink, a hole in the heel of her sock, and a body that has started keeping its own hours. The season is over and she was going to close for winter. Then the last booking arrived: a cabinetmaker with a crack in his windscreen he refuses to fix, who came to Cornwall for the weather and his late father's maps, and did not come for her. Ten days. No strings. Explicit, honest, and very funny about all of it.
The Windscreen · two days before Off Season
Dan Hart, a green Volvo, a crack in the glass he won't fix, and a booking he very nearly cancels. Five thousand words, complete, and it spoils nothing. It's yours when you join the reader list; after that, an email once or twice a month with book news, and the first word when Book Two has a date.
Adult romance. Unsubscribe any time. Your address is never shared.
Mother. Lover. Author.
Isla Penrose writes frank, funny, later-in-life romance from the Cornish coast, for women who have stopped apologising and would quite like to be looked at properly.
Things she would like you to know. She is on the side of the woman who says what she wants out loud, and of the man who listens. She believes the off season is the honest one, that a hot flush is not a plot twist, and that a man who fixes a sticking window without being asked has earned a chapter of his own. She has strong views on hospital corners, leftover soup, and wine somebody left behind in September. Her heroes ask first, every time. She thinks lubricant belongs in the bedside drawer and in the book, and she is not going to apologise for either. She has never once made friends with a guest, and she has the furniture to prove it.
Isla is a pen name. The books are the honest bit.
The kettle's on.
Readers, reviewers and book clubs: hello@islapenrosebooks.com. Review copies are available to reviewers who work with later-in-life or open-door romance; no review is ever required.
