RYEDALE author Bill Spence is getting ready to open the latest chapter in his life – the publication of two new books.

Bill, pictured right, who writes under the pen name of Jessica Blair, hit the headlines last year when, at 90 years of age, he had his 22nd novel published.

Bill, who lives in Ampleforth and is also the Gazette & Herald’s book reviewer, will have two more books published by publisher Piatkus on February 6.

A Tapestry of Dreams, which will be in hardback, is set in the 1850s and tells the story of Susannah Charlsworth, the daughter of a wealthy Lincolnshire landowner.

She has a disastrous marriage to a mill owner in the West Riding of Yorkshire, but can she escape her misery when she would be a social outcast and lose everything?

Bill’s other book is the eagerly- awaited paperback of “In the Silence of the Snow”, which follows two life-long friends through the Second World War, both sharing a secret that must never be disclosed.

Recently, Bill followed up the war theme in a book he has just finished “Just One More Day”, in which he has based some of his real-life experiences of flying in Lancasters during the Second World War. This will be published next year to follow the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the ending of the war. This will be Bill’s 24th novel under the name of Jessica Blair.

For more information, visit www.jessicablair.co.uk