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Laurette Long

Goodreads Author

Born

Halifax Yorkshire, The United Kingdom

Website

http://www.laurettelong.com/

Member Since

May 2014

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Laurette was born in the UK, near Brontëland. Graduating from the University of Leicester with a degree in English, she taught in the USA, UK and France, where she now lives.
Aged seven, her forays into fiction writing reveal her literary influences and distinctive style. ‘The Phantom Ghost Girl of Raven Castle’ begins: ‘‘Vicky Dare, the girl detective and her big Alsatian, Rex...”, then stops. ‘The Ruined Cottage’ is longer (“...it was a favourite haunt of mine and I never grew tired of it.”) In ‘The adventures of Carlotta’ “...she dashed to the door her face white with horror” while, surprisingly, in ‘The Secret at the Ball’ “...a secret compartment was revealed! There glittering lay the Lane jewels!”
(She is a hoarder, incapable of partin Laurette was born in the UK, near Brontëland. Graduating from the University of Leicester with a degree in English, she taught in the USA, UK and France, where she now lives.
Aged seven, her forays into fiction writing reveal her literary influences and distinctive style. ‘The Phantom Ghost Girl of Raven Castle’ begins: ‘‘Vicky Dare, the girl detective and her big Alsatian, Rex...”, then stops. ‘The Ruined Cottage’ is longer (“...it was a favourite haunt of mine and I never grew tired of it.”) In ‘The adventures of Carlotta’ “...she dashed to the door her face white with horror” while, surprisingly, in ‘The Secret at the Ball’ “...a secret compartment was revealed! There glittering lay the Lane jewels!”
(She is a hoarder, incapable of parting with childhood notebooks.)
Aged 10 she developed a passion for the theatre, and throughout her career wrote plays for students. ‘A Midsummer’s Nightmare’, where Shakespeare’s lovers get into time warps in the wood, meeting Dracula and Little Red Riding Hood, was a tricky favourite. Everyone wanted to play Dracula. She had to wield authority. (Those with pointed canines had an advantage).Later, unable to find a textbook suitable for adult ESL students, she wrote one for OUP. Beguiled by a work of French literary criticism about American writers in Paris, she translated it.
(Hoarder, bossy, dilettante.)
In 2014 the ghosts of Vicky Dare and Carlotta nudged her into a return to fiction. ‘Biarritz Passion, French Summer Novel#1’ was inspired by the French Basque country and its magic. (Go see!) An Amazon fan, she attempted self-publishing. After wrestling with formatting rules and sweating during the on-line tax interview, she finally hit the ‘submit’ button thus proving that even non-techies can do it.
Book #2 in the series, ‘Hot Basque’, followed in 2015, but Book #3 somehow morphed into a Prequel: ‘The Passage of Desire’, chosen as one of the ‘Top Twenty Reads 2017’ by areadersreview blog. ‘Villa Julia’, #3 and last of the French Summer Series, is planned for release in autumn 2018.

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Average rating: 4.25 · 113 ratings · 73 reviews · 9 distinct works • Similar authors

	Hot Basque 4.27 avg rating — 37 ratings — published 2015 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Passage of Desire 4.19 avg rating — 26 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	From Nettles to Nightingales: The Story of a French Garden 4.17 avg rating — 23 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Biarritz Passion really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 16 ratings — published 2014	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Biarritz-Villa Julia: French Summer Novels: The Dramatic Finale it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 6 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A View from the Tarn: Slow blogging in a fast World it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 2 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A View from the Tarn: Slow blogging in a fast world 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Paris in American Literature by Jean Meral, Laurette Long (Goodreads Author) (Translator) really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1989 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Biarritz Passion: French Summer Novel 1 (French Summer Novels) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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The dawn of a new era?

As the year 2024 ended, my December blog was about the message of hope and inspiration symbolised by the resurrection of Notre Dame de Paris…

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Published on January 01, 2026 14:43

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French Summer (3 books)
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Laurette Long (Goodreads Author)

4.19 avg rating — 79 ratings

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The Peaceful Village

by Paulette Mahurin (Goodreads Author)

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Laurette Long said: " PAULETTE MAHURIN THE PEACEFUL VILLAGE
Travellers on the A 20 Motorway between SW France and Paris will be familiar with a sign that appears in the region of Limoges, striking a chill into the heart: Oradour-sur-Glane. A few kms off the motorway lies a PAULETTE MAHURIN THE PEACEFUL VILLAGE
Travellers on the A 20 Motorway between SW France and Paris will be familiar with a sign that appears in the region of Limoges, striking a chill into the heart: Oradour-sur-Glane. A few kms off the motorway lies a ghost town, the ‘martyred village’ which has become an international symbol of the worst that humanity can do to its own.
Reading Paulette Mahurin’s latest historical novel, I felt that chill once more. I’ve been an ardent fan since she first began to write, but have to say I think this is her most powerful book since her re-telling of the Dreyfus affair in To Live Out Loud.
‘Souviens-toi. Remember,’ the visitor to Oradour is told, and the author does just that, remembering in her novel the events leading up to the fateful day of June 10th, 1944, when the barbarity of war was unleashed on an innocent village. Her story is told through the imagined perceptions of some of the real characters caught up in the massacre: the mayor, the village priest, and Marguerite Rouffache, one of the few, traumatised survivors.
Today there are two Oradours: the new town, rebuilt after the war, and the original, peopled only by ghosts. As the author begins her depiction of the old Oradour, a bucolic village in ‘deep France’, the reader is truck by the tone of the narrative which employs an almost documentary restraint, making it all the more emotionally powerful. Although the area, in the foothills of the Massif Central, is a strong centre of resistance against the German troops which have been occupying the country since June 1940, Oradour floats like a Disney mirage, somehow detached from the horrors happening elsewhere. ‘Many who came from Limoges (a thirty-minute tram ride away) didn’t readily believe there existed a place that ostensibly went on as before…’ The seasons continue to turn, the soil is rich, the flowers bloom. We are gently enfolded into the daily narratives of ordinary country-folk, the familiar bustle of market day, the ritual of putting on one’s ‘Sunday best’ for attendance at Mass, and the occasional more animated event like the annual picnic. These are people living in harmony with nature, from which they draw their strength and in which they find meaning through the comforting rhythms of agrarian cycles, the myriad delights of each unfolding spring.
But disturbing rumours circulate; some members of the village are more aware than others of what the Nazis are capable of. While she is lulling us with seductive images, Mahurin also reminds readers that monsters lurk outside fairyland. As the calendar turns to June, one such monster stirs, sensing danger and looking for new prey on which to unleash its vengeful destruction. The tide of the war is turning, and German forces in the south-west are summoned to help their comrades battling the Allies who have landed in Normandy. One such division is the terrifying Waffen SS ‘Das Reich’; as it moves towards Normandy, the efforts to hamper its progress by resistance groups intensify. The beast is wounded, lessons must be taught. On June 9th, 99 men are summarily hanged from village balconies in Tulle and another 149 deported. The next day, the ‘Das Reich’ turns its sights on Oradour. In an act of swift, senseless barbarity, fairyland is reduced to a heap of smoking rubble strewn with 643 corpses.
In her previous novels Mahurin has written about the systematic extermination of Europe’s Jews perpetrated by Hitler in his quest for ‘racial purity’. The annihilation of Oradour was not motivated by anti-semitism. It was a lashing out, a senseless murder spree, perpetrated by the SS on a civilian population, men, women, and the schoolchildren hiding behind the church altar.
The Peaceful Village is admirably constructed and paced, keeping us gripped until the end. Its powerful message ‘souviens- toi, remember,’ comes at a time when we are seeing real-life, real-time images of similar barbarities on our TV screens. Oradour’s reappearance in Paulette Mahurin’s novel is a reminder of just how quickly ordinary life can change, and just how close the monsters are. Most highly recommended. ...more "

Jun 07, 2022 06:03AM · see review

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Laurette Long wrote a new blog post The dawn of a new era? As the year 2024 ended, my December blog was about the message of hope and inspiration symbolised by the resurrection of Notre Dame de Paris…The post Read more of this blog post »
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Laurette Long and 1 other person liked Julie Haigh's review of The Infinite Terrace (The Italian Interlude Series Book 1): "A gorgeous read. I've read and loved Lindy Viandier's previous books, both memoirs of her life in France. This is something different: A novel, set in Italy, and Wales, I couldn't wait to read it. I was hooked in from the first page-right from the prol" Read more of this review »
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Readers who have fallen in love with John Dolan’s fiction over the last ten years are going to fall in love all over again with this new work, a collection of poems written over time. The themes which he has woven so compellingly into his epic sagas- ...more
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Why do people become good friends? Michel De Montaigne famously explained his friendship with Etienne de La Boétie by saying simply ‘Because it was him, because it was me.’ The surprising friendship between two women with completely different backgrou ...more
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I discovered this author ‘backwards’, reading his latest memoir, ‘Windows on My Worlds’, first, followed by ‘The Kilt Behind the Curtain’ and finally his 2018 book ‘Fortunate Isle: A Memoir of Tenerife’. All three were fascinating, drawing the reader ...more
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Laurette’s Quotes

“My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.”
― Christopher Hitchens

tags: freedom-of-speech, humor

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