A Distant Drum

by Marguerite Bell

Fanny Templeton is a young widow and worried about her stepdaughter, who is about to marry the penniless Freddie March. Yet her own life is about to change, as she travels to France and then Brussels with her employer and encounters March's older brother Lord Ordley. She falls madly in love, but nothing is simple when it is wartime. The pair manages to get back to England, but danger continues to follow the couple. The memorable story written in the early 21st century by Marguerite Bell, a pseudonym of Ida Pollock, provides a love tale set in romantic and tragic circumstances.A must-read for fans of literary romance and surprising twists of fate. -

221 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 20, 2005

About the author

One of many pseudonyms used by Ida Julia Pollock, née Crowe.

Mrs. Pollack was a British writer of several short-stories and 125 romance novels that were published under her married name and under a number of different pseudonyms: Joan M. Allen; Susan Barrie, Pamela Kent, Averil Ives, Anita Charles, Barbara Rowan, Jane Beaufort, Rose Burghley, Mary Whistler and Marguerite Bell. She has sold millions of copies over her 90-year career. She has been referred to as the "world's oldest novelist" who was still active at 105 and continued writing until her death.

Ida and her husband, Lt Colonel Hugh Alexander Pollock, DSO (1888–1971), a veteran of war and Winston Churchill's collaborator and editor, had a daughter, Rosemary Pollock, who is also a romance writer.