Every now and again, I look back through my work diaries to see what I was doing on this particular date in such-a-year. This week back in 2020, I was finishing work on Railway Girls book 3, The Railway Girls in Love.

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Link to The Railway Girls in Love on Amazon

I am delighted to use this week's blurb to introduce you to a new name in the world of saga writing - Rose Warner. Rose is the new name for Jen Gilroy, who writes contemporary romantic/family stories set in North America, as well as dual-timeline tales.

The first book by Rose Warner is The Teacher Evacuees, which is the first in a wartime trilogy set in Norfolk.

Here's the blurb:

Canadian-born teacher Victoria McKaye takes up a new position at a London school, but soon finds herself coordinating its evacuation to a Norfolk village along with standoffish spinster Beatrice and quiet young Nell. Victoria has to adapt to life in the countryside, petty politics and local busybodies.

When she meets attractive naval officer Louis Grainger, romance blossoms. Victoria is drawn into a clandestine world and told that she is helping the British government, but after she catches Louis covertly meeting a suspicious stranger in nearby woods, she fears the worst – a traitor in their midst.

It’s a race against time for Victoria to discover the truth and keep the village – and the country – safe from invasion.

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Link to Amazon Kindle

Link to Amazon paperback

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My review:

An emotionally satisfying story of new love, unexpected friendships and wartime courage, set against the backdrop of a beautifully described Norfolk setting. Victoria makes a sympathetic and interesting heroine - it's fascinating to have a Canadian perspective. Rose Warner handles her story deftly and realistically, warming your heart and making you smile in one chapter and then leaving you breathless at the drama in the next. A talented new voice in the world of sagas.

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Link to Rose Warner's author page on Amazon

Link to Jen Gilroy's author page on Amazon

I'm writing this on Monday 15th - publication day for Dunbar's book 2, Hopeful Hearts at the Wartime Hotel.

One of the reasons I love writing books for you is that it gives me the chance to explore friendships and see my characters supporting one another through good times and bad. I think that women understand the importance of female bonds, and that, alongside our families, our friends are the most valuable people in our lives, the people we can turn to, no matter what.

Setting my stories in wartime gives me the chance to bring women together whose paths would never have crossed in peacetime. Kitty, Lily and Beatrice have been thrown together by circumstances beyond their control and have become true friends as a result of mutual respect and understanding. Life has changed considerably for all three of them and in Hopeful Hearts at the Wartime Hotel, they need one another’s trust and support more than ever. Theirs is a friendship that will last a lifetime.

If this is the first time you’ve met Kitty, Lily and Beatrice, I hope you’ll enjoy getting to know them and will soon feel involved in their lives. If you’ve met them before in A New Home at the Wartime Hotel, I hope you’ll love being back in their company.

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Link to book 1,   A New Home at the Wartime Hotel

Link to book 2,   Hopeful Hearts at The Wartime Hotel

Link to book 3,   Wartime Hotel book 3   Publication date: March 2026

Publication day for   Home Front Girls book 5   A Baby for the Home Front Girls   is Wednesday September 3rd.   Kindle link   Paperback link

I sometimes get asked about Star House, and I can tell you that the name comes from a real house – though the Star House of the Home Front Girls books, with its bedrooms named after the greats of the music hall, and signed photographs of Florrie Forde, Vesta Tilley and others lining the walls in the hallway and up the staircase, is my own invention. After the war, my gran was for some years a theatrical landlady in Windsor Road in Levenshulme in the south of Manchester. Her boarding house wasn’t called Star House, but she had a friend nearby who was also a theatrical landlady – and her boarding house was Star House.

A Baby for the Home Front Girls is dedicated to all the wartime Brownies. Children played a significant role in life on the home front. Older children acted as messengers during air raids, cycling from ARP station to First Aid post, like Noakes in The Home Front Girls. Bigger boys were stretcher-bearers in hospitals.

Salvage soon became a job for children. Hundreds of thousands of them joined the ‘cog’ scheme, each of them becoming a small cog in the mighty war machine. Schools, Guides and Brownies, Scouts and Cubs all competed with one another to collect the most salvage in their local neighbourhoods. Newspapers ran a ‘cog’ page each week for children, and a special song was written called ‘There’ll Always Be a Dustbin’, which was sung to the tune of ‘There’ll Always Be an England’. Working towards earning their ‘cog’ badges was an important part of wartime life for many youngsters.

As for why I specially cbhose to dedicate this book to the Brownies - well, they salvaged enough jam jars to pay for both a lifeboat and an aircraft. Impressive, eh?

So, the next time you’re sorting through your own recycling, preparing to put it out for collection in the various boxes, spare a thought for our salvage-minded wartime generation, who by the time D-Day came round had provided 1.1 million tons of waste paper, 1.3 tons of metal and more than 80,000 tons of rags to help fight – and win – the Second World War.

Home Front Girls series page on Amazon 

What is it that makes a book character universally liked? In The Railway Girls books, it's Dot whom everyone loves. This shows up clearly and repeatedly in reviews and also in comments and messages on my FB page (www.facebook.com/MaisieThomasAuthor).

And with the Home Front Girls series, the character everyone cares about the most is.... Betty.

So why has Betty touched readers' hearts? Here are some of the things that have been said about her in reviews:

"...sweet-natured and kind, but not weak..."

"...lovely Betty, who trusts people and pays a high price for it..."

"...envies Sally (but in a nice way) because she'd love to have a boyfriend of her own..."

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"...she misses her mum so much and you feel she's a real family person. Shame about the stepmother!..."

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Betty Hughes is a good-natured young woman with a loving heart. The reviewer who called her "a real family person" got it just right. She had a wonderful, warm relationship with her late mother, whom she has never stopped missing, and it came as a shock to her when her beloved dad remarried so soon afterwards. Grace, Betty's scheming stepmother, has her own plans for Betty, and it's partly because of Betty's sweet nature and basic belief in the goodness of other people that Grace is able to get away with doing what she does.

Betty is a hard worker, and this is something else that readers like and admire her for. When she first goes to the salvage yard, she makes some mistakes, but she also shows herself able to think things through and come up with solutions, though she will never be wholeheartedly dedicated to her job the way Sally is.

At heart, what matters most to Betty is to have a family of her own one day. When Sally is engaged to Andrew after a whirlwind romance, Sally's happiness and excitement speak directly to what Betty has always longed for. Of course, in book 2, Courage for the Home Front Girls, when Betty thinks she has found the chance of lasting love, things don't go anything like as smoothly for her as she has always dreamed of.

I can't really say a lot more about Betty without giving away spoilers. But one thing is certain - her warm heart, trusting nature and the staunch friendship she shows to others make sure that all the readers are rooting for her from the start and all the way through!

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All the books are available through Kindle Unlimited as well as on Kindle and in paperback and audio format, narrated by Julia Franklin.

Book 1 - The Home Front Girls

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Book 2 - Courage for the Home Front Girls

Book 3 - Christmas for the Home Front Girls

Book 4 - A Wedding for the Home Front Girls

Book 5 - A Baby for the Home Front Girls (published on September 3rd)

Here, I'm sharing some of the NetGalley comments on A Baby for the Home Front Girls.

"This story is about friendship, family, love and courage. I liked that it was true to life in that the work described in the book actually took place during the war, such as the salvage depot. It gives a bit of insight into how life would have been. Really enjoyed this book, can’t wait to see if a new series is coming out! Highly recommended."

"I have enjoyed watching the three characters' stories develop throughout the series, and the plots are enriched by the engaging cast of supporting characters.... Bavin depicts wartime Manchester vividly."

"You know, when you just read a book that makes your heart absolutely burst?! But in the best way possible?! Yeah. That happened."

"It certainly pulled at all my heartstrings, this series just keeps getting better and better with all the welknown characters that you just love reading."

"A book that totally immerses the reader and each page brings a new insight into the lives of the residents of Star House. A truly remarkable book."

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I'd like to say a huge thank-you to everyone who had read and reviewed the book. Your feedback means everything to me. xxx

Two pieces of news for Wartime Hotel fans:

Dunbar's book 1, A New Home at the Wartime Hotel, is 99p on Kindle. This is the build-up to a Bookbub promotion taking place on July 13th. The price will presumably return to normal after that, so if you haven't bought you copy yet, now is a good time; or if you have already read and enjoyed it, it's possibly a good time to receommend it to a friend.   Here's the link.

And the second piece of news is that the cover of Dunbar's 2, Hopeful Hearts at the Wartime Hotel, is now out there. I've put it on my News pgae, but I'm including a larger picture here so you can get a really good look.

And here is the purchase link. Publication day is September 15th.

I have a friend who celebrates her writing career by choosing appropriate charms for her silver charm bracelet. Me, I like to buy myself a bracelet as a keepsake for each series I write.

Which do you like best?

This week, A New Home at the Wartime Hotel has aceived a big milestone - it has over 1,000 reviews and ratings on Amazon - 1,125 to be exact, at the time of writing this. Wow! That's less than three months after publication. Wow again.

I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has left feedback. It really does make a difference to a book's visibility.

Incidentally, I've been asked about that 'Book 1 of 2' under the star rating. No, it doesn't mean there are going to be only two books in the series. In fact, I'm busy writing book 3 at the moment. The '1 of 2' just means that only two so far have been put on Amazon.

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That's it for this week. Just a very short blog. As well as writing Dunbar's book 3, I've also got to write not one but two synopses, as well as a new series proposal, so I've lots to keep me busy.

See you next time xxx

It's always exciting to receive copies of my books. Most recently, I received copies of the audiobooks of A New Home at the Wartime Hotel, narrated by Julia Franklin.

 Here they are - in MP3 and CD formats.

It is enormously important to me to have my books available in audio. I firmly believe that we never grow out of enjoying being read to. When I was a teacher, I read to my class every day. I always have two books on the go – a print book and an audiobook. As well as having favourite authors, I also have favourite readers and sometimes I choose a talking book by an author I have never read, simply because I know I will enjoy the reader’s performance.

Listening to an audiobook adds an extra dimension of pleasure. Narrating a story is a truly specialist skill. The narrator has to tell the story so as to convey character and atmosphere, but without his/her voice intruding on the listener’s consciousness. That’s quite a tall order.

I am proud that all my novels, under all three names, are narrated by the talented Julia Franklin, who has been a favourite reader of mine ever since I heard her read Our Polly by Anna Jacobs back in the early 2000s.   Here she is recording one of my books.

A lot of work goes into Julia's preparation for her narration work. It isn't just a matter of reading the book. She has to consider all the characters and gain a full sense of what they're like as individuals, and decide how best to show their personalties in her performance.

One of the best compliments I have ever received as an author came from Julia - when she said that, in preparing to narrate The Railway Girls, there was a point in the story where she had to stop reading and simply sit quietly on her own and come to terms with an incident in the book.

Including the two I am currently writing for, I have written for a total of five publishers of print books, but I have always been with the same audiobook publisher and I've always had the same narrator - Julia. Both these relationships are very important to me.

I don't know whether authors are supposed to listen to their own audiobooks, but I love listening to mine because I know that Julia will add a new dimension to what I've written, and I love that. She is truly the best in the business and I'm proud that my books share a stage with her.