Well, Sh*t (Book 1, PAPERBACK)

Currently, we offer shipping for physical books to the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. These are the countries where our printing facilities are located, which enables us to maintain faster delivery times and more reliable shipping.

Please note: shipping rates are set by the printer, not by us. In some regions, postage costs can be higher than we’d like, but unfortunately, this is outside of our control.

USA: Books are printed and dispatched within 5 business days through BookVault’s US facility. Delivery via USPS Ground or UPS Ground typically takes an additional 1-5 business days, depending on your state. 

Canada: Books are printed and shipped from BookVault’s Canadian facility in Winnipeg. Orders are usually dispatched within 3–5 business days, with delivery handled by Purolator Ground (and additional carriers as needed). 

UK, EU, (and NZ): Orders are processed from the UK facility and shipped within 2-5 working days via couriers like Royal Mail, DPD, or FedEx. 

Australia: BookVault’s Australian facility typically prints and dispatches orders within approximately 5 business days. Local delivery times vary depending on the service. 

New Zealand: Orders are processed from the UK facility and shipped within 2-5 working days via couriers like Royal Mail, DPD, or FedEx. 

International Orders

Customs duties, taxes, or import fees (if applicable) are the responsibility of the buyer and may be charged upon delivery, depending on your country’s policies.

How much does shipping cost?

Shipping costs are determined at checkout and are set directly by the printer. Rates vary depending on the items ordered — including the size and weight of each book, as well as how many you add to your cart. While Jane has no control over these fees, we always strive to make her books as affordable and accessible as possible, while ensuring they arrive safely and swiftly.

Thank you, as always, for your wonderful support! 💜

• Slow Burn Romance
• Grumpy/Sunshine Romance
• Menopausal Chaos
• Ride-or-Die Friendship
• Hot Cop
• Small Town
• Midlife Murder Rom-Com

396 pages
Perfect bound paperback, black & white interior on white paper.
ISBN: 978-1-922745-68-2
Dimensions: 6x9 inches / 152x229mm

It’d already been a hell of a day, and it wasn’t even half-eight. At my age, getting going takes a minute. The knees crack like chip packets the moment I stand, hips misfire like a dodgy gearbox, and I have to brace myself against the sink just to fart without risking a full evacuation. So when Mel called—right as I was hunched over, razor in hand, halfway through shaving my left nipple—I answered on speakerphone with one boob out and absolutely zero dignity.
“Gary’s dead,” she said, before I could even say good morning.
“Gary?”
I could hear her eye-roll through the line. “You know. Gary? Me ‘usband.”
“Right,” I said. Gary, who thought a clitoris was a Roman emperor and once called me ‘opinionated’ like it was a slur. That Gary.
Honestly, it said a lot that Mel had to clarify which Gary—there were at least two in our lives, and neither was worth a postage stamp.
Still holding the razor mid-shave, I glanced down at the nipple hairs I’d been halfway through dealing with. I didn’t even know nipple hair was a thing until I hit fifty. Now it’s a full-time job managing the ecosystem. One day I’m plucking a chin hair in the car mirror, the next I’ve got half a dozen rogue hairs looping out of my left areola.
Why was I even shaving them? Habit. Delusion. The faint hope that someone might someday see me naked and not immediately think Oh dear.
“They found him on the beach. He’s… he’s… dead.”
My stomach lurched. The razor stalled midair. Foam slid down my side in slow motion. “The beach?”
“Yes,” Mel sniffed.
Funny. That’s not where I buried him.
I didn’t say it out loud. I’m menopausal, not mental. Instead, I exhaled through my nose in what I hoped passed for shock. “Oh, Mel. Shit. Are you okay?”
“No,” she wailed. “I’m not okay. He’s dead, Jo. Properly dead. Like… not breathin’. They said I should go and identify him, but I can’t. I just can’t. I don’t wanna see his—oh God—’is face.”
I plucked a bit of tissue from the box and dabbed foam off my nipple. “Course not, love. No one wants to start their morning with a corpse, especially one they used to share a bed with.”
Mel hiccupped. “Will you come with me?”
I didn’t even hesitate. “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll bring coffee.” And possibly a spare pair of knickers. For both of us.
I slapped on some mascara, missed, poked myself in the eye, cursing up a storm, using words that would have made Dad proud and Mum roll in her grave. Five outfit changes later, I settled on black linen pants and a blouse that didn’t scream funeral, but didn’t shout Target clearance rack, either. I made it halfway down the drive before realising I hadn’t put a bra on.
Back inside. Bra. Shoes. Bag. Keys. I was practically a goddamn Olympic athlete by the time I reversed out of the driveway.
Cape Effie doesn’t have much, but we do have a decent café near the surf club. I pulled in, slathered in deodorant and shaving foam, and placed my order—two flat whites, extra shot. One with oat milk—Mel’s. Because of course, she’s one of those. Has a KeepCup and everything.
I was scrolling through my phone, trying not to think about dead husbands and morgues, when the barista called out my name. I stepped forward just as a man in a charcoal suit reached past me for his order. I turned—he turned—we collided. So did our coffees. Scalding brown liquid arced up through the air and splashed across my chest.
“Bloody hell!” I gasped, flinging my arms wide as hot liquid soaked through my blouse and straight into my bra. “Jesus on a biscuit!”
“Shit. I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”
I looked up into piercing grey eyes. Tall. Broad. Handsome in a grizzled, haven’t-slept-since-2004 way. He had the jawline of a man who either boxed recreationally or ground his teeth every night. He was also holding a now-empty cup and blinking at me like he couldn’t believe his eyes.
There was a beat—a fraction too long. His gaze flicked down to my drenched shirt, then quickly back to my face. My cheeks flushed hotter than the coffee. Okay, fine. He smelled good. Like soap, spice, and trouble. The kind you definitely shouldn’t taste. But I was fifty-four, coffee-stained, damp in places no woman should be at this hour, and not in the market for flirtation with a devilishly handsome silver fox.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said, placing the cup on the counter and fumbling for napkins, reaching toward my chesticles as if he were going to dab the coffee away. I hurriedly stepped back, my brows shooting into my hairline at the sheer audacity of the man.
“Really?!”
He recoiled, realising what he was doing. “You’re right, of course. Here—” he held out a napkin. “You do it.”
I stared at it. Then at him. “I don’t think that’s going to cut it.” Still, I took it and dabbed uselessly at my boobs.
His mouth twitched. “I said I’m sorry.”
“Oh, that makes it okay then. And now I’m magically dry. Oh, wait—nope.” I peeled the blouse away from my skin with a soggy squelch. “Brilliant. My nipples are steeping in caffeine.”
He coughed. “It’s not all my fault. You were standing too close.”
“Excuse me?” I snapped. And that’s when I felt it—not just the rage, but the creeping lava surge that could only mean one thing—a hot flush. Brilliant. Awesome. Perfect. Sweat prickled everywhere, and I could feel the blood pooling in my cheeks, knew my face was turning red. Wanting nothing more than to get out of here with a shred of dignity, I grabbed Mel’s coffee and stalked toward the door.
“Flat white fascist.” I hissed under my breath.
* * *
Mel opened her front door in leggings and a T-shirt that said Namast’ay in Bed. Her face was blotchy. Her hair was in a state of grief-induced rebellion, with dead straight strands poking out of a claw clip on top of her head.
“You brought coffee,” she said, voice wobbling.
“Course I did.” I held out the cup. “Only one survived. I lost mine in a rather unfortunate incident.”
“You’re soaked.”
“Sharp as ever.”
She blinked at my chest. “You need a shirt.”
Ten minutes later, we were elbow-deep in Mel’s wardrobe, which—like Mel—was a chaotic mix of tie-dye, sequins, and slogans that hadn’t been ironic since 2003.
“What about this one?” she asked, holding up something cropped and crocheted.
“I’m fifty-four, not twenty-four.”
She tossed it aside and pulled out a tank top with the words Powered by Prosecco across the front.
“Next.”
Mel sighed and reached for a white T-shirt with a gold leopard-print star on the front. “This one’s cute. Bit snug, but it’ll stretch.”
“Don’t you have anything loose?”
Mel reached for the crocheted crop again. “I do! This!”
I sighed. “Mel. Darling. I love you, I do, but surely you’ve noticed the slight discrepancy in our sizes? You’re a petite patootie, whereas I am a voluptuous size sixteen on a generous day.”
“Well,” she huffed, flinging the rejected outfits haphazardly back into her walk-in robe, “it’s either the tee or your wet blouse. Your call.”
“Fine,” I huffed back, shoving tissues inside each bra cup to soak up the moisture, then snatching up the white T-shirt and wriggling it over my head. It clung to my midsection like shrink wrap.
“It’s cute!” Mel offered tentatively.
“It’s tight,” I corrected. “I feel vacuum-sealed.”
She pressed her lips together, deciding—wisely—not to argue. She grabbed her bag, I grabbed my sodden blouse off the floor, and we drifted toward the front door in a sort of shared, miserable truce.
“My car or yours?” she asked, locking up behind us.
I shot her a look. My faded red hatchback sat behind her zippy blue BMW, boxing it in. Today wasn’t the day to point out the obvious, so I simply said, “We’ll take mine.”
We climbed into my hatchback, silent for a while.
“You okay?” I asked eventually.
“No.”
“Fair.”
We drove to Byron Bay in silence, save for the occasional sniff from Mel and the damp squelch of my bra every time I shifted in my seat. Cape Effie’s too small to have its own morgue—our local hospital doesn’t even have a functioning vending machine, let alone somewhere to chill a corpse—so Gary had been transferred up the coast to Byron, where things were slightly more official and slightly less… coastal DIY.
As we pulled into the hospital car park, Mel glanced over at me and said, “The detective said he’d meet us inside.” I didn’t register that as anything more than background noise. Just some middle-aged man with a badge. Probably balding. Probably smelling faintly of mothballs and ego.
We climbed out of the car, and I was halfway around the bonnet when Mel stopped dead, eyes locked on my chest. “Oh my God, Jo.”
“What now?”
She pointed, half-horrified, half-trying-not-to-laugh. “Your bra. It’s… leaked.”
I looked down. Two perfectly round, wet patches had bloomed through the front of the white T-shirt.
“Perfect,” I muttered. “Now I look like I’m lactating.”
Mel snorted. “Should’ve gone with the crocheted top.”
“Should’ve stayed in bed.”
We walked through the automatic doors, and a man in a charcoal suit turned to greet us—tall, broad, grey-eyed—I stopped dead. It was him. Mr. Flat White Fascist. And judging by the look on his face? He remembered me, too.
“Melanie Wilson?” he asked, looking from Mel to me and back again, probably praying that I wasn’t Mel.
Mel gave a slight nod.
“I’m Detective Sergeant Nate Callahan. Thank you for coming.”
I froze. Of course, he was a bloody detective. Because the universe doesn’t just throw coffee at your boobs for fun—it doubles down and makes it professionally awkward.