A TALE of historical intrigue and forbidden romance written by a Kirkby Stephen author will hit the shelves next month.

Whispers in the Shingle is a book written by Bridget M. Beauchamp based on stories of smuggling in the eighteenth century.

1780. A time when graceful sailing ships plied the waters of the North Sea by day but engaged lawlessness and subterfuge against His Majesty’s excisemen by night.

Kate Goldsmith, a young woman from Orford, falls in love with a dashing young sailor, but there is more to him than first appears. When she finds out the truth, she hides it from her family and the respectable miller’s son who has come to court her.

However, when Jack clashes with the preventive service and finds himself on the run, Kate becomes involved in his escape and unwittingly starts a feud between her two suitors.

Bridget M. Beauchamp spent her childhood on the Suffolk coast, but now resides in Cumbria.

Bridget said: “I wrote Whispers in the Shingle because I was inspired by the lonely Suffolk shingle beaches of my childhood and the smuggling activities of the late 18th and early 19th centuries my mother would tell me about.

“We had no car and buses were infrequent, so you would often see my mother and I walking the straight two-mile road south to Aldeburgh with its Medieval Moot Hall and pretty fishing cottages.

“Even as a child I remember the big watercolour skies, the desolate shingle beaches, the quiet villages and reed thronged waterways of coastal Suffolk.

“The many rivers and creeks, inlets, beaches and heaths afforded plentiful hiding places for contraband, along with Inns and even churches and I could well imagine boats pulled up on the shore after dark, men whispering and waiting with horses and wagons, residents fearful to look out in case they witnessed something they shouldn’t.

“As with highwaymen and pirates, there is always a certain romance around these clandestine figures and smugglers were no exception. Many young men would be tempted by the illicit trade and the huge profits to be made, when poverty was crushing and life was an uphill battle against starvation and unemployment.”

The book will be published on February 28, 2023 priced at £8.99, ISBN 9781915352842.