To hold something and turn it round in your hand, knowing that someone else, long ago, has run their fingers along these same curves and edges. It makes you wonder who they were, what their lives were like and what became of them. When Julia found objects lost or hidden or buried in her French manoir, they set her on a quest to learn their stories. The facts she uncovered changed her own life in a way she could hardly have envisaged.

For anyone insane enough to want to embark on forming an opera company, or anyone who is fanatic about opera, 'How to Knit an Opera' is a compelling and enormously funny read.

Justine Duval has modest goals in life: to attain celebrity status, earn stacks of cash, be drop dead gorgeous and find pure, unadulterated love. Simple. By achieving her ambitions of fame, money, beauty and a bloke, Justine will cunningly evade ever becoming Grown-Up-and-Past-It. And a bizarre meeting with her future self - ten years older and ten years wiser - gives Justine the chance to really get to grips with her ultimate destiny...in more ways than one.