Book Extract & Giveaway: The Colletta Cassettes By Bruno Noble

Please join me in welcoming Bruno Noble to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for his book, The Colletta Cassettes.

Liguria, Italy. Summer 1978.

The Kentish family are on holiday in idyllic medieval village of Colletta. Sixteen-year-old Sebastian is smitten with Rosetta, the hotel cleaner and waitress, much to his snobbish mother’s dismay, while his younger brother and their fellow hotel guests are obsessed by the World Cup, hosted by the murderous military junta in Argentina.

The boys’ father, Peter Kentish, has very different motivations for the trip. An investigative journalist, he spends much of his time interviewing a mysterious American, a disillusioned ex-CIA agent.

As Kentish uncovers the shocking extent of Operation Gladio, he delves into some of Italy’s darkest secrets. Darker still is the involvement of the USA. Those complicit will do anything to ensure that the truth is buried. For good.

There’s a chance to win a stack of 5 Inkspot books below but first, Bruno has shared an extract from The Colletta Cassettes. We hope you enjoy. 

*****beginning of extract*****

Sebastian, aged 16, is on holiday in Liguria, Italy with his parents and his brother in 1978. He is intensely attracted by Rosetta, who works at the hotel as a waitress and chambermaid, much to his mother’s disapproval.

*****

Sebastian heard the door open and there stood Rosetta, with a broom and her mop and her basket again.  Against the light, she resembled an Amazon, clutching spears and a shield.

‘Hello,’ he said, resisting the impulse to stand, recalling his mother’s instruction that one stands for a lady but not for a servant.

‘I’ve come to clean,’ she said.

She wore cut-off denim shorts and a blue and white striped man’s shirt rolled up at the arms and tied around her waist.

‘You’re holding it upside down,’ said Rosetta, indicating his book with a nod.

Furiously embarrassed, Sebastian turned the book the other way only to find that he’d been holding it the right way up to begin with.

‘Very funny,’ he said righting the book immediately, now just furious.

Rosetta laughed.  ‘So,’ she said and ran her tongue across her top lip, ‘your mother is an artist, your father is a writer and you’re a reader.’

‘What do you know about my father?’ asked Sebastian with interest.

Rosetta shrugged.  ‘I saw him yesterday. Everyone is by the pool and he’s there with his typewriter.  And you’re here with your book.’

That had been said rather contemptuously, Sebastian felt.  ‘And what do you do?  When you’re not – working?’  He’d intended to say ‘cleaning’ but he’d been afraid he’d sound like his mother.

She shrugged again.

‘Don’t you have any hobbies?’

‘I fight.’  That was said nonchalantly.

‘You fight?’  Sebastian couldn’t keep the note of astonishment from his voice.

‘Yes, you know, judo.  I go to lessons.’

‘Judo!  That’s not real fighting,’ said Sebastian, regaining his composure.  ‘That’s just people rolling around hugging each other.’

‘Not real fighting?’  Rosetta arched an eyebrow.

‘Anyway, what on earth do you need to learn to fight for?’

‘When you are one sister and have brothers, you need to learn to fight, believe me.’

‘You don’t fight your brothers!’  Sebastian found it all rather amusing.

‘Certainly I do.’

Sebastian laughed.  ‘Sorry, I just don’t see you beating a boy in a fight.’

Again, she shrugged.  ‘Please get off the bed.  I need to make it.  And clean your room.’  There was an unspoken slur that she only had to do it because he was incapable of it.

‘Make me,’ said Sebastian.

‘Make you?’

‘Yeah, make me,’ said Sebastian.  ‘Make me get off the bed.  If you can beat your brothers in a fight, you can get me off the bed.’

In the next moment, he’d lost his book and found himself with his back to the cupboard by the bed.  His legs were shaky, he had a pain in his pelvis and his head was only a little sore from having hit the cupboard door.  One arm, where it was held in two vice-like grips, didn’t hurt so much as smart.

‘Hey, that was unfair,’ he protested weakly.  And in the full knowledge that he would regret it as soon as he said it, he added, ‘I bet you couldn’t do that again.’

She did.  Not letting go of him, she fell onto the bed pulling his arm after her with her falling weight and, using both her momentum and his and all the strength in her legs, lifted him with the tops of her feet on his thighs so that he flew over the bed and landed on his feet between his bed and Dominic’s.

‘Bloody hell!’  Surprise, indignation and humiliation competed to overwhelm Sebastian.  He couldn’t believe it.

‘Again?’ Rosetta asked, eyebrows raised, as though she were offering a child another go on a merry-go-round.

She had yet to let go of his arm and, were she to throw him again, he feared it would come out of its socket.  He saw her eyes narrow and felt her arms go tense and her grip tighten but, on this occasion, he was readier than he had been.  He deflected one foot from his thigh with his free arm and stepped aside from the other, so that, no longer having any purchase on his body, Rosetta only managed to pull him onto the bed on top of her.  He suddenly realised that he, momentarily at least, had the upper hand, and his anger and desperate need to regain some dignity and reverse his humiliation to that point gave him strength.  The realisation that she thought it was only a game while for him his honour was at stake increased his fury.  With his free hand, he tried to grab her but managed to catch only the front of her shirt. He couldn’t free his other hand and resorted to pulling violently at her shirt and the buttons down its front popped.  He saw anger come into her eyes and delighted in it.  He sat on her with all his weight and rolled his wrist out of her grip and caught her wrists and held her hands down on the pillow above her head and pressed hard.  She bucked and struggled and kicked her legs out ineffectively behind him and he looked down in satisfaction at her face only inches from his and he waited for her to acknowledge defeat.  Her dark hair lay on the pillow like storm clouds about her head.  Her breasts, barely contained in a purple bra, heaved before him.  And her eyes were dark wells of fury or, if not that, some other intense emotion.  All of a sudden she stopped moving and she and Sebastian stared at each other intently and just at that moment that all of Sebastian’s life had been leading up to, in the intense heat of the day and of their exertion, in the hot air that was charged with possibility, at the very moment when Sebastian became aware of the warmth of Rosetta’s thighs under his legs and noted the rise and fall of her heavy breathing, just when gravity had pulled his lips to only an inch away from hers, he heard his mother say, ‘Mon dieu!  Mais, qu’est-ce qui se passe?’

*****end of extract*****

About Bruno Noble –

Bruno Noble study Philosophy and French literature at Southampton University. 

A circuitous route selling advertising space in financial magazines took him to the City where, amongst other things, he wrote markets and investment reports while impatient to write a novel. 

His first, ‘A Thing of the Moment’, was published by Unbound in 2018, and his second, ‘The Colletta Cassettes’, was published by Indie Novella in 2022 before being re-published by Inkspot Publishing in 2025.  

Having enjoyed working collaboratively with other writers when he joined the Collier Street Fiction Group in 2021, Bruno started a part-time (two-year) Creative Writing M.A. at Birkbeck University in 2024.

Connect with Bruno via Instagram and Facebook. 

The Colletta Cassettes was released in 2025. Click to buy on Amazon UK and Amazon US. 

*****

Win A Stack Of Five Inkspot Publishing Books. 

Would you like to win a stack of 5 Inkspot Publishing books? 

Do you live in the UK? Well, here’s your chance. 

There’s three to give away. For details on how to enter, click on this link for Gleam. 

UK only. 

*Terms and Conditions –

UK entries welcome. 

Please enter using the Gleam link above. 

The winner will be selected at random via Gleam from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. 

Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data.

I (Novel Kicks) am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.

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Laura

I'm Laura. I started Novel Kicks back in 2009 as I wanted a place to discuss books and writing - two loves of my life. As someone who has anxiety, these two things give me, and I am sure countless others, a much needed escape.
There is a monthly book club, writing exercises, prompts, reviews, author interviews, competitions and guest posts. I cover many genres and I hope there is something for everyone.
I grew up by the sea in Dorset and currently live in Poole with my husband, Chris and three cats. I love writing and have a BA (Hons) in Creative Writing from Falmouth University. I am writing my first book. If only I could stop pressing delete. Chris has threatened to stop it from working. Haha.
I have always loved creative writing since I was in first school and would very much like to meet my teacher, Miss Sayers, to say thank you for all the encouragement she gave me then.
When not writing, I love reading, cats, Disney, singing (I can't sing but this doesn't stop me,) and falling into a good TV show or film. If I could step into any fictional world, it would be amongst the characters in ABC's Once Upon a Time.
I love reading many genres and discovering new authors.