LONDON,UNITED KINGDOM: A 93-year-old debut novelist has used the proceeds from her book to move her friends out of nursing homes and into her new country house, she said in British newspaper reports on Monday (August 11th).

When Lorna Page hit the jackpot with "A Dangerous Weakness", a raunchy thriller set in the Alps, she traded in her flat for a 310,000-pound (400,000-euro, 600,000-dollar) five-bedroom house in picturesque Devon, southwest England, and invited her contemporaries to move in with her.

"Care homes can be such miserable places. You sit there all day staring out the window with no one to talk to," she said, quoted in the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph.

"I thought it would be lovely to give a home and family life to one or two people who would otherwise be sitting around there.

"I started asking people if they wanted to move out of their care homes and live with me and I've had dozens of offers. They are queuing up," she said.

"It's nice for me too because at my age it's handy to have someone to live with. Now every book that sells will help towards making a home for someone."

Page had written the book -- about a woman who becomes embroiled in a bitter power struggle after receiving an seemingly innocent invitation to spend Christmas in Switzerland -- three years ago but had stored it in a suitcase.

She made no attempt to have it published but her daughter-in-law found the manuscript and was instantly gripped and urged her to contact publishers.

Page, who has two children and two grandchildren and taught Morse code to servicemen during World War II, is now working on a collection of short stories.