Welcome to Susanna Bavin's website.   I am a saga writer living in North Wales, but my books are all set in and around Manchester, which is where my family has lived for generations and where I grew up.

I have written four stand-alone sagas - The Deserter's Daughter, A Respectable Woman, The Sewing Room Girl and The Poor Relation.   Link to my author page on Amazon.

I also write as Polly Heron and Maisie Thomas.

As Polly Heron, I write The Surplus Girls 1920s saga series about young women striving for independence after the Great War.

As Maisie Thomas I write The Railway Girls saga series about the brave women and girls working on Britain's railways during the Second World War.

I am represented by Camilla Shestopal at Shesto Literary.

To find out about my books, please click on the tabs at the side.

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Finding me online:

Here are my Amazon author pages for me writing as Susanna and as Polly and Maisie.   

And here is my Twitter link for Susanna - and here are Polly's and Maisie's.

Here is my Polly Heron website, with lots more information about the Surplus Girls series.

And you can find me on Facebook on my Maisie Thomas author page for the latest information about all my books - Susanna's and Polly's as well as Maisie's. I also share snippets I've found in my research as well as other things I hope my readers will enjoy. As a community, every weekend we share what we're currently reading. We're a friendly lot, so do join us!

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Latest News: 

The Home Front Girls is available on Kindle or in paperback.

Throughout April, Springtime with the Railway Girls will be 99p on Amazon.

And of course you can request the book from your local public library. Coming from a family of lifelong library users, and as a former librarian, I love it when readers borrow my books!

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I am delighted to share with you the cover for the second Home Front Girls book, Courage for the Home Front Girls, which will be published in May.

If you would like to pre-order it, click here and it will take you to the Kindle page. The book will also be available in paperback, but the pre-order is not open yet.

lease take a look at my latest blog to find ways to order Springtime with the Railway Gir

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My Blog:  

In my latest blog, I'm sharing Jan Baynham's book-birthday celebtrations.

In an earlier blog, I explain something of the planning process that lay behind The Surplus Girls series; and also take a close look at Belinda, the heroine of book 1.   Click here to see the blog.

In a very popular blog, I looked at a Railway Girls character who captured readers' hearts from the moment she first appeared on the page.   To read about lovely Dot Green, click here.

And here is another very popular Railway Girls blog - this time concentrating on Joan. Click here.

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A Look at My Bookshelves:

These are the books that help me write my books.

The history of costume has been a great interest of mine for many years and here are some of the books that I refer to not just when I'm writing but also for pleasure.

This dictionary of words that entered the language in the 20th Century has been invaluable to me.

These are the railway books that have helped me write the Railway Girls series.

Here are some of my Second World War books:

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This cookery book - which a present to me on my 21st birthday - has proved invaluable as a reference tool.

Here are some of the books that helped provide meals in my Railway Girls books and Home Front Girls books.

Sometimes a couple of sentences is all it takes. A couple of lines from this book of oral history ended up inspiring a whole chapter of The Railway Girls in Love. (If you're wondering, it's the chapter involving the incendiary and the dustbin lid.)

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This Month in the Past:

On April 1st 2019, the audiobook of The Sewing Room Girl was published.

Throughout April 2019, I was busy writing The Railway Girls.   By the end of the month, I had got to 81,539 words.

....and in April 2020, I was writing my lockdown book, The Railway Girls in Love....

... while in the middle of April 2021, I finished writing book 4, Christmas with the Railway Girls....

.... and started work on New Beginnings for the Surplus Girls....

April 2022 was busy. I was working on the next Polly Heron book and editing A Christmas Miracle for the Railway Girls. Oh yes, and Hope for the Railway Girls was published, intrducing Margaret as a viewpoint character for the first time.

... and in April 2023, I edited The Home Front Girls and stared writing Springtime with the Railway Girls.   It was on April 25th that the official announcement was made that I had joined Bookouture and would be writing the Home Front Girls series.

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Polly Heron:

As Polly, I have written a 1920s quartet called The Surplus Girls. Surplus girls were that generation of young woman who, because of the loss of life on the battlefields of the First World War, missed out on the opportunity to marry - which was, of course, seen as the purpose of a woman's life at that time. Instead, they suddenly found themselves in the position of having to support themselves for a lifetime, and without the necessary education and training behind them.

The four Surplus Girls novels in order are:

The Surplus Girls

The Surplus Girls' Orphans

Christmas with the Surplus Girls

New Beginnings for the Surplus Girls

Here is the link to the series page on Amazon Kindle. The first two titles are on Kindle Unlimited.

The first three titles are also available as a 3-in-1 Kindle edition.