Dog walker’s romance knocks Fifty Shades off ebooks top spot

 
16 August 2012

Author Alice Peterson has overtaken Fifty Shades of Grey’s “mummy porn” to top the Kindle charts this week with a sweet romance inspired by her dog-walking friends in west London.

The Hammersmith-based writer said she is amazed to have sold more than 500,000 copies of Monday to Friday Man to overtake EL James’s erotic blockbuster.

She suspects holidaymakers are fuelling the boom on ebook: “It’s a lovely story and not really heavy weather,” she said. “I really enjoyed Fifty Shades but it’s pure fantasy. I would imagine that most people who read it have lives far removed from it, so there is still room for a reality book, a romance, like mine,” she said.

Peterson’s novel is her third after two non-fiction books including a memoir, Another Alice, recounting how her promising career as a tennis professional was ended by rheumatoid arthritis at 18. She was forced into a wheelchair, could scarcely feed herself and contemplated suicide until she found a drug to control the pain and turned to writing.

Monday to Friday Man tells the story of Gilly Brown, who is jilted two weeks before her wedding and takes in a handsome TV producer as a lodger for company. All Gilly’s friends think he would be a perfect catch, except for the newest recruit in her dog-walking group who harbours suspicions about the glamorous Jack Baker.

Peterson, 38, admitted the storyline was checked among the close circle of friends she has met since acquiring her Lucas Terrier, Mr Darcy, named after Jane Austen’s hero — and in appreciation of Colin Firth’s memorable TV portrayal of the Pride and Prejudice character.

“The dog-walking fraternity love it,” she said. “They recognise the tree and the dogs. There’s a lovely man I walk with and I borrowed his fashion sense. I was very honest with them as I was writing it.”

Sales of Monday to Friday Man have built gradually since publication on July 21 — even if Peterson has a very long way to go to beat the 40 million global sales of EL James’s sado-masochistic trilogy. Fifty Shades has sold more than two million copies on Kindle.

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