Read author Colin Ferguson’s experience of working in the Probation Service in the 1970s-1990s, and learn a little about the lives, motivations, and hopes of some prisoners and ex-prisoners, the real vulnerable, confused, unhappy, or angry, people ‘Behind the Crime’. How do they see themselves, what motivated them to commit the crime, what hopes do… Read More

On the blog today: Respectability is All… a significant book on societal attitudes in England (and Japan, though I have not commented on that part), follow-up to Sarah Moss’sBodies of Light…https://marihowardauthor.wordpress.com/2021/04/12/signs-for-lost-children-respectability-is-all-in-this-an-untidy-world-mari-howard/

Bodies of Light, and Reflections of Ancestors is now up on the Mari Howard Author blog https://marihowardauthor.wordpress.com/ This piece links up my family with the mid-Victorian era which Sarah Moss has skilfully evoked in her novel Bodies of Light, which I recently read. I’m captivated enough by Ally, who emerges as the main character, that… Read More

Hello followers and others! News needs a quick update. TWO Mari Howard Author blogposts have been added – December 3rd and December 28th In ‘Writing that Inspires’ (December 3rd) Mari considers the kind of books and authors she enjoys and which inspire her own authorship, particularly of course in the two Mullins novels – Baby,Baby,and… Read More

The Art Fiasco is 5th in Fiona’s Poppy Denby Investigates series, and I was given the chance to read a copy for review. I thoroughly enjoyed this new mystery, set in Newcastle on Tyne and in the mining village of Ashington, in 1924 (with backstory in 1897-8). The book has a cast of lively and… Read More

My latest blogpost is here: click on the official blog box below to read Please don’t be Political! where I’m discussing why my main ‘writing prompt’ for fiction is social change… Then on Thursday, a special double treat: One, fellow author Fiona Veitch Smith will be guesting on my blog, under the title Who’s left… Read More

Autumn … evenings are ‘drawing in’, it’s a great time to curl up with a book…here’s a cosy phychotherapy mystery. Annie Try’s Red Cabbage Blue Read about it here

This new short book of stories is authored by the writer known as ‘Philologus’, published and obtainable only from Hodge. Illustrations by Ceri Leeder (here), design by Rachel Lawston (lawstondesign here). Can a teacher from the first century AD have anything to say to us in the twenty-first? The author of The Wisdom of Yakob… Read More

What indeed are ‘friends’? When Frances and Bobbi take up with an older couple, also involved in the Dublin arts scene, they probably don’t realise they’re stepping into deep water…

Want to know how Jenny and Daze became step sisters? Read the story of how Jenny attempts to show off her Mum’s work on a hot summer afternoon… go to ‘read an extract’ And here’s a picture of how Daze might’ve looked back then, angry with new step-mum Caroline soon after this, for giving her… Read More