Roll up. The shop is open.

There is no actual shop. There is not even a shed. There is a website, a printer and four comic novels, mostly set in Cheshire, now in paperback at £12.99 each.

The Pie Whisperer, in which a Winsford baker's pies begin to whisper back. Nobody's Told the Bees, in which a secret intelligence station operates from a bee rescue van in a field outside Sandbach. Best Human, in which a retired driving instructor in Frodsham takes in a collie from considerably further away than Runcorn. And The Terms and Conditions of Everything, in which somebody finally reads the small print, and rather wishes they hadn't.

The first proof copies arrived this week. They were inspected, sniffed and held up to the kitchen window. The paper turned out to be roughly the colour of a cup of tea made by somebody who doesn't like you, so it has been changed to white. The books are otherwise exactly as intended, which is to say slightly daft.

Each copy is printed the moment you order it, so allow a week or two before it lands on your doormat. Put all four in one basket and you pay the postage once. They look rather good lined up on a shelf, and they argue far less than most families.

If you are wondering what to get Uncle Harold this Christmas, he has forty-one pairs of socks. What he hasn't got is a book in which a pie has opinions.

Chapter One of every book is still free, here and on Patreon, for anyone who likes to try before they buy. Very sensible. The pies approve.