“The duration of passion is proportionate to the original resistance of the woman.” Honoré de Balzac. Passage from THE WOLF AND THE LAMB, Book One of the Berkeley Trilogy     It was into this microcosm over which Mary had gained some degree of mastery, that Lord Berkeley made his incursion in gold lace and heavy regimental boots. One ...

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 An excerpt from my Marion Grace novel THE GODMOTHER, as yet unrevised and unedited.    When the new Editor of The Ashminster Post invited Bel to his office for a chat, things took a bizarre twist. He was motivated, imposing, and twenty years her senior. There was a peculiar panther-like magnetism about him. He spoke in tones of honeyed informality as he outlined plans for a ...

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An excerpt from my Marion Grace novel, THE GODMOTHER, as yet unrevised and unedited. Dysfunctional family wrestles with the aftermath of two World Wars in pre-Millennium Britain under its dour but charismatic oracle,Sibyl.   Sibyl had been twenty-seven when she met Edwin at a Revival Meeting in Begley, and thirty-one before they tied the knot. He was up there on the rostrum at the ...

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“Plough a straight furrow, lad," William's father would counsel. "Fix your eye on the far side and never look back."
The cultivation of crops and the tending of beasts ran in George Cooper's blood. Both his own and his wife's families had been farmers for generations so that William could not fail to possess an easy affinity with the land.
William loved the rolling Wreake Valley with ...

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 One hot Sunday around Lammastide in 1796, William took it into his head to walk to Melton Mowbray. He had a hankering to take Communion in Dr Ford's church and to hear one of his stimulating sermons. It was several years since the two had met and the eccentric Rector embraced William warmly and took him home to a duck dinner after the service. There the guest poured out his heart. ...

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 El Springador celebrates his prime on a very special occasion I have pawsed the high-octane adventure that is my life to let you folks know that today is my birthday. I'm five! Thirty-five in dog years – the canine calendar runs on bobbins – neither Pup Gregory nor Caesar (the fellow who invented canned dogfood) could get the hang of it. Einstein, of course, came up with his major ...

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