It's a perfectly normal day for Kitt Hartley at her job at the University of the Vale of York library, until Detective Inspector Halloran arrives at her desk to tell her that her best friend, Evie Bowes, is under suspicion of murder. Evie's ex-boyfriend Owen has been found dead - with a fountain pen stabbed through his heart - and all the evidence points to her.
Kitt knows there is no way Evie could murder anyone - let alone Owen, who she adored. Horrified that the police could have got it so wrong, Kitt decides there's only one thing to do: she's going to investigate Owen's murder herself. She's read hundreds of mystery novels - how hard can it be?
With the help of her assistant Grace, and the occasional hindrance of the library's eccentric regulars, Kitt summons up all her investigative powers (absorbed over years of reading everything from Agatha Christie to Ian Rankin) and gets to work.
She soon discovers that down the quaint streets and snickelways of York lie darker doings than she'd ever dreamed, but she needs to watch her step: the murderer is watching her. And they haven't finished killing yet...
As the front-woman in a band, Bonnie is used to being in the spotlight, but now she must hide in the shadows.
Bonnie only has one person who she can turn to: her friend Esther Knight, who waitresses at the Fifties-themed diner. There, retro songs play on the jukebox as fries and sundaes are served to satisfied customers. But where has Esther gone?
Alone in New York City, Bonnie breaks down in front of arrogant news reporter, and diner regular, Jimmy Boyle. Jimmy offers to help her. Can she trust him?
When the kindly owner of the Starlight Diner offers Bonnie work, and she meets charming security officer Nick Moloney, she dares to hope that her luck has changed. Is there a blossoming romance on the cards? And can Bonnie rebuild her life with the help of her Starlight Diner friends?
Next time you’re in New York, take a turn off Broadway onto East Houston Street.
There, you’ll see it: The Starlight Diner. A retro eatery curious enough to delight tourists and locals alike. Fifties tunes stream out of the jukebox long into the night, and it serves the tastiest milkshakes in the five boroughs.
Esther Knight waitresses at The Starlight Diner. She’s sharp, sarcastic, and she’s hiding something. Nobody at the diner knows why she left London for New York – or why she repeatedly resists the charms of their newest regular, actor Jack Faber.
Esther is desperate to start a new life in the land of the free, but despite the warm welcome from the close-knit diner crowd, something from her past is holding her back. Can she ever learn to love and live again?
It's hard to believe that it's already been a month since Helen Cox's debut Milkshakes and Heartbreaks at the Starlight Diner was published. Helen has been a regular visitor to the blog in the last couple of months, I interviewed her as part of a debut feature in May which you can read here and she also wrote a guest post talking about the inspiration behind the series which you can also read about here.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing journey?
I’m a 34 year old northern lass with more than a passing interest in books, America and Grease 2. Some of my family and friends have labelled my obsession with this movie ‘unhealthy’. I would listen more carefully to their arguments on this score but it’s difficult to hear what they’re saying over Michelle Pfeiffer singing ‘Cool Rider’.
I’m in love with the writing process and have written stories since I was old enough to hold a pen in an upright position. I completed my M/A in Literature and Creative Writing a decade ago and since then have authored three non-fiction books and written for websites, magazines and blogs. At the beginning of July 2016 I achieved a life-long dream when my first novel, Milkshakes and Heartbreaks at the Starlight Diner was published by the Avon imprint at HarperCollins.
When I featured Helen Cox in the debut spotlight back in May it seemed like we still had a while to wait until her debut novel Milkshakes & Heartbreaks at the Starlight Diner was published. But the wait is finally over as the book was published on Monday so it's my pleasure to welcome Helen back to the blog as part of her blog tour.
A question I get asked quite frequently is: does The Starlight Diner exist? I’m mostly asked this by people who are desperate to visit next time they’re in New York City. I am sad to report that The Starlight Diner is a place that can only be visited through my stories.
Well, sort of.
Though the diner does not exist in reality, most elements of the diner are based on real-life details from various diners across the city. The location of The Starlight Diner was inspired by The Remedy Diner on East Houston Street. That’s where I was sitting when I first decided I’d quite like to set a story in a New York diner. If The Starlight Diner really did exist the two eateries would stand just a few blocks apart. The 1950s theme for The Starlight Diner was inspired by Ellen’s Stardust Diner on Broadway (if you visit the staff sing Broadway tunes and it’s really cool) and the humming refrigerator stacked with pies and cakes was inspired by The Skylight Diner on 34th Street - although you can find such a thing in many a New York diner.
Naturally, a lot of these details could be conjured by half an hour of furious Googling, but that’s not really my style. People always laugh when I tell them I went on a ‘research trip’ in which I toured New York diners. I laugh with them of course but, and this is going to sound like the poorest excuse ever for eating more cheesecake than one should, I don’t feel I would’ve had the confidence to write about New York diners without visiting my fair share of them.
As mentioned previously 2016 is certainly turning out to be the year of debuts as there are so many exciting new authors being unveiled. Today it's my pleasure to introduce to you one of Avon's newest authors Helen Cox whose debut novel Milkshakes and Heartbreaks at the Starlight Diner is being published in eBook format on 4th July.
Helen Cox is a book-devouring, photo-taking, film-obsessed novelist. If forced to choose one, Helen’s Mastermind specialism would be Grease 2. To this day, she still adheres to the Pink Lady pledge and when somebody asks her if she is a god she says ‘yes.’
After completing her MA in creative writing at the University of York St. John Helen found work writing for a range of magazines, websites and blogs as well as writing news and features for TV and radio. She has written three non-fiction books and founded independent film publication: New Empress Magazine. She currently lives in York and writes novels.
More information about Helen can be found on her website: helencoxauthor.wordpress.com. She can be also be found on Twitter: @Helenography or Facebook Helen Cox author.
Can you tell us a little bit about your debut novel Milkshakes and Heartbreaks at the Starlight Diner?
Milkshakes is set in New York in 1990. The story revolves around a diner waitress called Esther who’s fled London to start a new life in America. She’s desperate to keep her past a secret and to forget some of the unspeakable things that happened back in England. She manages well enough until Jack Faber walks into the diner, and into her life. The well-meaning but meddling staff at The Starlight Diner can’t understand why Esther rejects the advances of this charismatic, blossoming actor, and have no idea about the deep-seated fears holding her back. This book charts Esther’s journey as she faces those fears and tries to come to terms with what happened to her in the life she left behind.
What is it that attracted you to set the book in New York and not just a different city in England?
I grew up in the eighties and to a lot of eighties kids America was just the coolest place on the planet. I’m not saying it’s true of everyone but certainly a lot of people I talk to who grew up in the same era agree. It’s something that kids TV producers pandered to at the time, inserting an American character into the storyline, or a Brit with a dubious fake accent, wherever possible. So in short, I’ve always thought America was cool.
When it comes to New York specifically, I’ve been in love with the city for a long time. It featured in many a movie I saw growing up and during my teen years the latest episode of Friends was statutory viewing, lest you wanted to be shunned on the schoolyard.
My infatuation with New York was at last consummated when I visited for the first time back in 2007. I can count the places where I feel at home on one hand but New York is one of them and was from the moment I first laid my head down to rest in a hostel on 106th Street.
I’m not saying the place is perfect or that it’s always easy to get along there. It isn’t. But for better or worse, it’s a city I’m in love with and that’s why I chose to set my novel there.
Did you have to do much research about New York to enable you to write the book?
New York is part of the intricate web that is America, and is populated by people whose roots are dug all over the country, and indeed the world. When I studied for my MA in Creative Writing and Literature about a decade ago, I specialised in 20th Century American authors and, though I didn’t know it at the time, that was the foundation stone of the research I did for this book.
Whilst writing these books I’ve read both fiction and non-fiction works by other authors to better understand the different facets of the city. I’ve also spent a lot of time looking at old maps of Manhattan and conducting interviews with people who live in New York to try and get under its skin. At the back end of last year, I took a month-long, life on a shoe-string, research trip to the States where I hung out in New York for a couple of weeks and then bus and trained it across to the Mid-West to better understand the background of some of my minor characters and the protagonist of the second book. I honed my manuscript off the back of that research trip and about a month after I came home to Yorkshire, I received an email from HarperCollins saying they wanted to publish my story.
