Janine Marsh Books In Order

Publication Order of The Good Life France Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Janine Marsh
Janine Marsh is a British writer that lives in the middle of nowhere rural France, with a bunch of animals and a husband. She is a Francophile with a foot in the UK and a foot in France.

It wasn’t always this way. On some freezing cold day in February of 2004 something happened to her which changed her life. On this booze cruise to Calais, she fell in love with a run down old barn around an hour’s drive inland, and she ended up buying it for less than the price of an incredibly posh handbag. And eventually she moved there (there’s a long story involved of love, loss, and taking a risk). She became a writer after quitting her office job.

It all began with a blog called The Good Life of France. Her friends had told her she was like Felicity Kendall in the TV show, giving up the rat race in order to try and live a self sufficient, if mud-filled way of life. She wrote about the people that she met, the things that she saw, and the places that she visited. It began as a fun way to keep friends up to date with her new life and the enormous renovation job that they had taken on. Once other people began reading it she was thrilled. The blog kept growing, she was like Forrest Gump, she just could not quit writing. And her audience continued growing as well.

From here she also began writing for newspapers and magazines, traveling all around France finding all the off beaten track places, falling in love with cities from Bordeaux to Paris, meeting some interesting people and getting to learn all about her adopted country, the wine and food (she’s perpetually on a diet), the history, language, traditions, and the quirky side of France, if not totally strange. Like these jam filled cakes which are meant to look like the gouty finger of some long dead emperor.

She grows most of her own vegetables and fruits and she is the maid to umpteen stray dogs and cats, chickens, ducks, and geese. One year they had 52 ducklings hatch. She’s just a total sucker for animals.

“My Good Life in France: In Pursuit of the Rural Dream” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2017. Janine Marsh, while on a trip to northern France one grey dismal day, was picking up some cheap wine. She returned to England just a few hours later having put in this offer on some old rundown barn in the rural Seven Valleys part of Pas de Calais. It wasn’t something she had expected or planned on.

She eventually gave her job up in London in order to move with her husband to live the good life in France. That’s what she’d hoped anyway. As she came to grips with the locals and la vie Francaise, and renovating this new dilapidated house of hers, which was a building that lacked the comforts of mains drainage, proper rooms, or heating, and with very little money and even less of a clue, she began realizing there was so much more to this new home than she could’ve ever imagined was possible.

This is the true story of Janine Marsh’s roller coaster ride, which is in many ways a love story, with her sharp observations on the incredibly different way of life, etiquette, and the culture of France. From her early homesickness and struggles through personal tragedy, to her efforts to become self-sufficient and to breed ‘the fattest chickens in the entire village’.

Uplifting, effervescent, and warm, Janine’s humor and voice bubble right off of the page in “My Good Life in France”, making you want to immediately pack up your stuff and visit her fixer-upper of a home in rural France. For those that have wanted to see the ‘real France’, you will not want to miss such a delightful book as this one here.

“My Four Seasons in France: A Year of the Good Life” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2020. Janine Marsh and Mark (her husband) gave up their city jobs in London in order to chase the good life in the countryside in northern France. Having overcome the obstacles of beginning to renovate her dream home (a dilapidated and ancient barn) and fitting in with the peculiarities of her new neighbors, she’s now the go-to expat in the area for those that are looking to come to grips with an incredibly different way of life.

In the Seven Valleys, every season brings with it new challenges, along with new delights. Freezing weather in February threaten the lives of a few of the four legged locals; snow in the month of March results in a broken arm, which in turns leads to an etiquette lesson at the local hospital, and a dramatic hailstorm in July wrecks houses and cars, ultimately bringing the villagers so much closer together.

With humor and warmth, Janine showcases a uniquely French outlook while two eternally ambitious expats drag a neglected farmhouse back to life and stumble upon the hidden gems of this incredibly special part of the world.

“Toujours la France!: Living the Dream in Rural France” is a non-fiction book that was released in 2022. Janine shares more entertaining and heartwarming tales about her new life in rural France.

Janine and Mark have renovated their dream home and have built a new life for themselves, adjusting to the oddities and delights of life in a tiny French village.

Including the much loved village characters like Claudette, Jean-Claude, Mr. and Mrs. Pepperpot, and the infamous Bread Man, in this installment, she also introduces her readers to a few new faces and funny tales, while she and Mark continue their lives in this special place in northern France. With fantastic birthday parties, food, rural traditions both new and old. Jean-Claude introduces snail racing to this village, and some trouble with uninvited animals, there is never a quiet or dull moment to be found in the Seven Valleys.