A best-selling author has released a new novel set in Malvern - now available in bookshops.

'Grace' is Victoria Scott's second novel, and it tells the story of a baby who is removed at birth and taken into care, and the two women - her birth mother and her prospective adoptive mother - who go to court to fight for custody of her.

Scott, whose debut novel, 'Patience', was a Booksellers’ Association Book of the Month, grew up in nearby Castlemorton and attended Malvern Girls’ College (now Malvern St James’).

The author says that she decided to set the novel in the town because it has a “unique atmosphere” and that the Malvern Hills “have soul.”

“I have always felt that Malvern is a special place, and it felt right to set Grace within its boundaries," she said.

"Both of the main characters in the book, Michelle and Amelia, live in Malvern, but they also inhabit two very different worlds.

"I was really interested in exploring the diversity of the area.”

Several local landmarks feature in the novel, including Great Malvern Priory and the Worcestershire Beacon.

Scott also created a fictional Malvern housing estate and a fictional boarding school for the book, which she named Langland College, after William Langland, the author of Piers Plowman, which was also set in the county.

Scott describes her novels as "book club fiction" - stories which explore social issues and "questions which keep (her) awake at night".

However, she also says that her novels are uplifting stories which "celebrate the brilliant things that can happen when people support each other".

Bestselling author Clare Swatman adds: “Grace is a story about women and motherhood and what really makes a mother... It manages to feel warm and real and heart-breaking all at the same time. I loved it.”

To find out more about Victoria’s novels, visit www.toryscott.com / twitter @toryscott / instagram @victoriascottauthor