The last of my series of promotional images: You Yet Shall Die is a mystery about dark family secrets, set on the Kent marshes near where I grew up, with flashbacks to postwar Oxford and the London nightclub scene. You can find details of this and my other novels on the My Fiction Showcase page of my website. My Amazon Author page includes my non-fiction books as well.
Continuing my series of promotional images: Unfaithful Unto Death is a satirical novel set in an English village where Cyril Peabody, the arrogant doctor also featured in Overdose and Fata Feverfew, investigates some suspicious deaths.
Continuing my series of promotional images: Fatal Feverfew is an old fashioned cosy mystery set in a healing retreat in the English countryside.
Continuing my series of promotional images: the stories in Three Novellas are set between England and New Zealand. They are loosely interlinked but each one is self-contained, and they can be bought separately as well as in this box set.
Continuing my series of promotional images: No Good Deed has an English domestic setting. It explores some medical themes, the psychology of marriage, and how attempts to help others can go very wrong.
Continuing my series of promotional images: Cardamine is a fairly light read, a mystery/holiday romance partly set on the lovely Waiheke Island, a boat ride away from my present home.
Along with the campaign that is currently running to promote my fiction catalogue, I’ll be posting images of some individual titles in the coming weeks.
Overdose was the first novel I wrote, so long ago that it now counts as historical fiction. It’s a tragicomic story which gives an authentic picture of life in a psychiatric hospital in the late 1970s. Much has changed since then and some modern readers may find the book rather shocking.
To accompany my husband’s recently published autobiography A Psychiatrist’s Journey, I’ve posted a list of loosely related books on the website formerly known as Shepherd, now called BookDNA.
Of course I had to include the classic biography of Sigmund Freud by Ernest Jones. This is an admirable work but so long that neither Brian or I ever got through it. In the section of his autobiography that describes his sea voyage from New Zealand to England, where he was to begin psychiatric training at the Maudsley Hospital in London, Brian wrote: “I took Ernest Jones’ three volume biography of Freud, thinking it an appropriate introduction to psychoanalysis. I started to read it several times but could not get far before I started to yawn.”
To see the other books I selected – all of which I did read and enjoy, though they might not be ones that Brian would have chosen – please click here:
https://bookdna.com/best-books/historical-psychiatric-biographies
Following the death of my husband Brian, the task of editing the memoir that he had asked me to complete has been a bittersweet experience. His book has now been published under the title A Psychiatrist’s Journey and is available in ebook or print versions from many online retailers: https://books2read.com/u/4NzOJN.
A long detailed account of Brian’s varied and productive life, it’s not intended for a wide commercial market but should appeal to people with an interest in the history of medicine and psychiatry, those who grew up in 1930s Auckland, and those who knew him personally. Taking over this project, which was so important to Brian, has been a big responsibility and I hope I’ve done it justice.
I left the wording almost exactly unchanged, resisting any temptation to add things in or take things out, except where clarification was needed or information was repeated. My main change involved reorganising the document into shorter sections, adding headings to make it easier to read and to navigate. It needed many minor copy edits such as standardising the use of capital letters and the format of abbreviations. I made some use of tools like “search and replace”, but they can introduce errors and anyway it was a labour of love which I preferred to do myself by hand. I did employ help with the layout and illustrations from a colleague who has worked with me on previous books. I didn’t use AI.
A short blurb:
“A candid memoir by Brian Barraclough (1933-2025), best known for his research on psychiatric and social aspects of suicide. His book covers growing up in New Zealand, having tuberculosis aged 17, training as a doctor at the University of Otago, practising general medicine in Christchurch and psychiatry in Dunedin before sailing to England as a ship’s surgeon. He worked at the Maudsley Hospital in London, the Medical Research Council unit in Chichester, and the University of Southampton before retiring back to Auckland. His book describes many memorable patients and colleagues and his wide leisure interests including art, European travel, and medical history.”
Here again is the link where you can read a preview: https://books2read.com/u/4NzOJN.
The first time I received an unsolicited email containing fulsome praise for my recently published novel, and a proposed marketing plan, I felt quite flattered and impressed. I replied explaining that due to personal circumstances I didn’t want to proceed at present but would be interested at a later date. Almost at once another email came, this time including a detailed script for a YouTube trailer about my book. It seemed too good to be true, and my suspicion grew when I googled the sender and found nothing about a book promotion service under their name. Even so, in my naivety it took me a while to realise that my correspondent was an AI.
Since then I’ve received many other emails offering to market either my latest book or a previous one. They lavished compliments on my writing: “the work of someone who deeply understands human relationships, subtle suspense and the power of memory and place” “the story breathes psychological nuance, clarity and compassion” “you illuminate the hidden layers of human conflict, emotion and resilience”.
Some of them did appear to come from a real person, although it was hard to tell, and maybe would have led to a genuine marketing campaign if I had taken them up. But I suspect others were from scammers who might take my payment and never contact me again, or even hijack my financial details for illegal purposes. I will never find out, because I am getting tired of the growing influx of such emails, and have started deleting them unread.
