Introducing Mel and McCracken from Double Identity

Double Identity starts a new thriller series featuring Mel, and McCracken, but who are they?

Mélisende des Pittones, known as Mel, 29, daughter of a French father and English mother, just left her French Army job as an intelligence analyst in a special forces team. She’s tall, athletic build, dark blonde shoulder length hair, worn […]

A visit to Mediolanum Santonum (Saintes, France)

Having had my trip to ‘Roma Nova’ cancelled in June, I was thirsty for some Roman input. But it’s not easy going on a trip in the middle of a raging world pandemic.

However Saintes, in Charente Maritime, is only two hours by fast autoroute from where I live and still in the green zone […]

Roma Nova on Jo Frances Penn's Books and Travel podcast

Travel is a wide concept. It doesn’t just mean trotting up the steps to a plane or sitting back looking out of a train window, or even visiting entrancing and exotic places.

Travel can be in the mind, across hundreds or possibly thousands of years, into other realities and mentalities, even into an alternative […]