… the stage was set, the continuing the story of love. In book three (hopefully moving towards its adulthood in publication) there’s love in friendship, as their daughter Alice recalls her teenage year of first public exams and formation… Writing is a process, and as the song says, Tell me the truth about love…

I’m adding TWO reviews today: a lovely humorous novella for grown-ups, Mrs Morris Changes Lanes (note the surname!) by Debbie Young, and a thoughtful, insightful, book for young teens – though this one is really so well written and insightful that it comes recommended for ‘all ages’, Girl with a White Dog, by Anne Booth.

Read NEWS about my writing & a Book Review…
(Eleanor) is of course alone among strangers, and must make her way into the social world of girls different to herself, with whom she’ll eat, sleep, and spend her free time, as well as learn school subjects…

…during this last lockdown, we’d discovered, lurking in some box in the attic, a collection of about ten short stories written by that younger self. Some printed by our first, dot-matrix, printer, …

After Sarah Moss’s three linked, feminist, rather serious novels, (Night Waking, Bodies of Light, and Signs for Lost Children), read in autumn and winter, I have turned to a couple of lighter books. Each author is someone I know: Debbie Young, who introduced me to the Alliance of Independent Authors, and later invited me to… Read More

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