Lari's Castle: A Romantic Mystery (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781530960835)

Sheila Mary Taylor (Belshaw) was born in Cape Town of Scottish immigrants: James Taylor, psychologist, behavioural scientist and author of several scientific books, and Dora Taylor, novelist, poet, playwright and literary critic. She trained at the University of Cape Town Ballet School, but when she went to the UK to further her dance career, she met Colin Belshaw, a mining engineer, and that was the end of her dancing, although her love for ballet never left her and features in a number of her books. The couple emigrated to Zambia where their three sons were born. Sheila edited the magazine Spotlight, and was an actress and make-up artist with Bancroft Players. A keen golfer, she represented Zambia in international competitions. It was only when her son Andrew was diagnosed with teenage cancer that she began to write. At his hospital bedside she scribbled the dramatic events as they unfolded. These notes became Fly With a Miracle published in 1999 by Denor Press, London, later published as Count to Ten. Four romantic novels followed, published by Thorpe Publishing, Leicester. In 2004 she resurrected and edited her mother's unpublished novels - Kathie, Rage of Life, and Don't Tread on My Dreams, published by Penguin in 2008/9. This work of love kick-started her new career of editing, and resulted in Dora Taylor receiving the South African Posthumous Literary Award. Sheila's other published works are Pinpoint, a legal crime thriller set in Manchester UK; Dance to a Tangled Web, set in Menorca; Golden Sapphire, set in Queensland; and Eldorado, set in Ghana, where Sheila and Colin lived in the 1990s. Her work in progress, Silent Justice, is her first novel set in Cape Town. Sheila and Colin are swallows, living six months in Cape Town, the other six in Menorca and the UK. Apart from writing and editing, Sheila's main hobby is photography. She walks every day on the beach, and enjoys a twice weekly dance class at the local branch of The Fitness League.