Category: Books and writers

Seven Ghostly Spins – A brush with the supernatural, by Patricia Bossano

‘When isolated from the bustle of civilisation, the mind slips unfettered.’

Seven Ghostly Spins contains six paranormal tales that are short enough to read during a commuter ride to work. (But will you then feel a bit too disturbed to carry on as usual that day?) One tale, ‘Abiku’, is a creepy novella perhaps best read when safely at home with the lights turned on.

‘Amelia’s mouth opened and an infinite, desolate scream escaped.’

I am not a frequent reader of ghost or horror tales. Although the author offers tantalising notes on the inspirations for this collection, for instance, that one of the stories is based on “a real walk in the moonlight”, I still began by thinking, “All right then, so let’s just see if you can get to me.”

Fellow Baffled Ones, these stories got to me.

We get crumbling houses and overgrown paths in abandoned gardens, dark basements, cemeteries, fortune tellers, and birds ominously pecking at the window. Yet, as the book’s subtitle suggests, the stories are more about ‘brushes’ with the supernatural than with horror. We are offered different levels of the mind and of sight, portals that open unexpectedly, places that seemingly tug at the mind, objects that influence actions.

‘I close my eyes and I float for a while, not in my room but in a dream. I think I should go home but I don’t know how. I’m not worried though ‘.

‘Alison’ is the sweetest ghost story I’ve encountered although very sad.  It’s based on the legend of a girl who died in a real theatre in San Francisco.

‘By The Iron Gate‘ is as much about the pathos of a woman’s tightly restricted life as about the supernatural. ‘I would grab the iron bars and stare into the moonlit garden, like a prisoner longing to return to her cell.‘ In ‘She Caught A Ride’, a hazing goes wrong, and in ‘Carolina  Blue’ a chiffon dress leads to a fateful encounter of the heart. The dully named story called ‘205 1/2, 25th Street’ is anything but as a man’s viewing of a real estate purchase turns into a chilling time slip through to the actions of his forebears.

I enjoyed these stories both for the brushes with supernatural elements and also for the well written glimpses of the characters’ lives wherein time and again a carefully added word or phrase by the author turns the ordinary into something else. Why not let your own mind slip unfettered for a while. I think you may close the book, as I did, feeling thoughtful about particular ‘odd’ events in your own lives.

Seven Ghostly Spins, by Patricia Bossano, with featured author Kelsey E Gerard, is published by Water Bearer Press. Patricia Bossano has also written Faery Sight, Nahia,  and Cradle Gift.

Where to unshroud it: From Amazon in Kindle and soft cover, Barnes and Noble in Kobo and soft cover,  also Waterstones . Hardcover editions are also available. Or, ask your friendly local bookstore to order it in for you, and for your friends who appreciate a frission of the supernatural.

Patricia also wrote Love and Homegrown Magic, which I loved. See my review here.

You are at Baffled Bear Books, brought to you by Mark, who is Guardian and blundering typist for Mawson Bear, one of this bright world’s few published bears. Mawson is the writer bear of It’s A Bright World To Feel Lost In and of She Ran Away From Love and of Dreamy Days and Random Naps.

The Dark Poet, by Kathryn Gossow

The book’s dedication: For all the girls who loved a boy they shouldn’t have, and all the broken boys that heal’.

A homeless man gets breakfast. A woman plucks limes in her garden. A student and his girlfriend run into an old school acquaintance. Ordinary days and lives. But these eight interlinked stories soon slide us toward brooding hearts, deceit, addiction, and the shadows of domestic violence. These vulnerable people, hungry for connection, veer toward Paul, the Dark Poet.

‘He is a dark planet and around him circles floundering stars .. People caught in his orbit, lovers as debris caught in his gravitational pull’. P.17.

Paul is that dangerous creature, the charismatic man. The sort of man who can break a woman ‘into a million pieces if he smiled with just the wrong smile followed by just the right sneer’. P. 38.

Kathryn Gossow’s skill is to create this character, who we soon grasp is Bad News, and who yet grimly fascinates. As a reader I got caught in his orbit too.

I particularly admire good short stories, and this collection, moreover, left me thinking about people I have known. I think that it will have that effect on most readers. What will you think about?

For instance, who, really, are the people around us? Could the woman next door be a seer? Could that homeless man pluck a story from our hearts? Will that luminous elven girl one day become a guilt wracked women in the aisles?

The Dark Poet is available at Amazon here.

Kathryn Gossow is the author of Cassandra, whose central character, a seer, features in one of the stories in The Dark Poet.

Mark is guardian and blundering typist for Mawson, one of this bright world’s few published bears.

Cassandra, by Kathryn Gossow: Shortlisted for Best Fantasy Novel 2017 in Aurealis Awards

Shortlisted for the Best Fantasy Novel 2017 in the Australian Aurealis Awards.

She dreams of plane crashes, earthquakes, tsunamis, bloody coups. She dreams of the stallion sweeping down the hill … . P. 197

Foreboding. Everything in the early chapters of Cassandra author Kathryn Gossow instills a sense of ‘foreboding’. Possibilities thicken of dark changes to come. Would they concern Paulo, or Athena, or a secret in this family? Or would they thunder down on Cassie herself like the ominous horse in her nightmares?

Cassandra: A princess of Troy and priestess of Apollo. She was cursed to utter true prophecies but to never be believed. (Wiki)

What if you could foresee people’s futures, for instance, that one kid on the school bus will die of bowel cancer, another will briefly shine on the stage but never become famous? A wonderful ability, yes? But what if you fill with dread and cannot make out why. Then Something happens. If you had warned people, and if they had believed you, could you have diverted that accident or mistake from happening? In the old legend, of course, Cassie’s namesake Cassandra felt cursed.

The Snake: Some versions of the legend have Cassandra falling asleep in a temple, where the snakes licked her ears so that she could hear the future. (Wiki.)

Cassie seems like an ordinary girl who gets bitten by a snake on a farm in Queensland. Her little brother predicts a drought, she grows to be a grumpy teenager troubled by visions, she scowls at her mother in the ordinary teenage way, she worries about her great-aunt and her Poppy .. Wait a minute. Bitten by a snake? Visions? Her brother foretells a drought? Wasn’t there a legend …?

The Brother: Some versions of the legend give Cassandra a brother, Helenus. Like her, he was always correct in his predictions. Unlike her, he was believed. (Wiki.)

She tries to make one true friend, Athena, who introduces her to the Tarot. (‘Her thoughts swirl with colour and the patterns and the meanings of the cards’. P. 77). She clumsily attempts to fit in with the cool kids, she experiments with alcohol and dope, her visions worsen, she is keen on a boy named Paulo .. Wait, wait. Athena? ‘Paulo’ .. or ‘Apollo’? Didn’t Apollo’s priestesses take hallucinogens to enhance their visions?

Apollo: Many versions of the myth relate that Cassandra incurred the god Apollo’s wrath by refusing him sex, after promising herself to him in exchange for the power of prophecy. (Wiki.)

Cassandra can be read is a ‘coming of age’ novel in that it concerns teenage insecurities and self-doubts, the cruel cut and thrust of cliques and friendships, and the tensions within families. But I think you will also soon be reading it, as I did, mindful of the big questions about fate and destiny, and mulling over the extent to which each of one’s decisions cuts away previous possibilities and opens up new ones.

Kathryn Gossow is also the author of The Dark Poet. An older Cassie, the central character of Cassandra features in the stories in The Dark Poet.

(The images of the book in this post are courtesy of Odyssey Books and the author.)

Mark, your reviewer here at Baffled Bear Books, is guardian and blundering typist for Mawson, one of this bright world’s few published bears.

Starchild: The Age of Akra, by Vacen Taylor. First book in the saga

Starchild: The Age of Akra (Starchild, #1)
by Vacen Taylor

Soon after we start following Mai on her quest to the Valley of a Thousand Thoughts, we come upon a terrifying sandgroper, a mountain lair and a spider-flax – not just any spider-flax, mind you, but one that must be milked by perhaps the most annoying brother who ever had to accompany a girl on a pilgrimage. Although, it was hardly Long’s fault that his little sister got selected by the Elders for this journey. And his reluctance to approach the spider-flax seemed an entirely reasonable response to me. (What is a spider-flax? The book’s glossary of this world’s creatures, human and otherwise, nearly all of them dangerous, will tell you.)

What brother wouldn’t be suspicious of this Akra character, the strange boy who Mai and Long stumble across? For how long will Mai and Long have to rely on Akra, whose  uncontrolled powers throw them into one predicament after another? An adventure full of strangeness and perils- and this is just the beginning!

For more on the series see Vacen Taylors website, The StarchildSeries.com.

Where to find it: The whole Age of Akra series is available at Amazon, and Bookshop Org .

Songlines, The Sentinels of Eden Book 1, by Carolyn Denman

I got four angry strides away before Harry changed the course of my life with six easy words. “Can you hear the river crying?” Lainie, Ch. 8

From Back Cover Description: ‘In the heart of the Wimmera region of Victoria, an ancient gateway to Eden is kept hidden and safe by a creature so powerful that even the moon would obey her commands – at least it would if she had any idea that she wasn’t just a normal girl about to finish high school.

‘Your mother’s grave is a lie.’ Harry to Lainie.

Synopsis:  Lainie’s days are filled with study, repairing fences,  ‘pulling stubborn lambs out of angry ewes’, and contemplating a future beyond this one-grain-silo town.

When the two important adults in her life, Aunt Lily and Harry, try to tell her that the mother she never knew is actually alive in some ‘Eden’, she reacts with anger. Though not clued up on the Book of Genesis, Lainie is sure the original Garden was not in the Great Southern Land (Australia). Besides, her mother lies buried. Harry, though, disappears. This is the catalyst for Lainie to seek out her roots.

This unusual adventure, aimed at Young Adults, is so thoughtful it deserves a wide readership. It mixes a coming-of-age tale and romance with ancient memories, religious motifs and mythologies.

The slow burn narrative begins in a nowheresville ‘where the creeks are named after dead animals’. Carolyn Denman  builds the details of school life, farm work and hikes through the fire-prone bush until the fantastical elements seem to arise quite plausibly from this backdrop .

I see it as an engrossing story of protecting the one Eden we all have now, our Earth. Lainie and her friends, Bane, Noah and Tessa, represent our only hope –  young people. Earth’s enemies are symbolised by the mining giant Kolsom. But there is more going on than the struggle between these Sentinels of a special place and Kolsom’s devious agents. Something seems to be going badly wrong with the nature of Eden itself.

Don’t be fooled by the early steady pace; the acceleration toward the utterly unforeseeable events took me by surprise. You are bound to want to know what on earth – and Eden – is going to happen next. Fortunately, the sequels are now available too.

I smiled at him, winked, then stepped across the boundary into Paradise.

Note on song lines: To Indigenous Australians, a songline, or dreaming track, is one of the paths across the land or sky which mark the route followed by creator-beings. These made the earth and everything in it. This early time is called the Dreamtime or the Dreaming. Carolyn Denman  says in the foreword, ‘My desire is that this tale reflects the co-existance and interconnectedness of belief systems.’

A word on the dialogue: Some of the lively terms sprinkling the novel might be new and fun to readers beyond Australia: you will hear of colours, for instance, ‘as bright as a tradies wardrobe’, and of dorks, drongos, fairy bread, even a mention of the legendary drop bears*.

Songlines: The Sentinels of Eden is now a complete series. You can read more about them at Carolyn Denman’s website.

Where to find them: through Bookshop Org and Amazon.

*What’s a drop bear? Not telling.

You are at Baffled Bear Books. Here writes Mark, guardian of Mawson Bear.
Mawson is a Ponderer of Baffling Things and one of this bright world’s few published bears.  He is the writer bear of It’s A Bright World To Feel Lost In. Mawson has many qualitites but he is not a drop bear.

 

Tell me a story, Babushka received a great Kirkus Review!

“Timely, with relevance to today’s difficult Ukrainian struggle as history is repeated.” — Kirkus Reviews Full review here. [PRE-ORDER] Buy it in pre-order here. [BOOK TOUR] Join us here if you can post a review anywhere. You’ll receive an ebook and a media kit! [WORLDWIDE GIVEAWAY] Find the clickable KittyBerry hidden in the cover here […] that is, click on the link just below.🙂

Tell me a story, Babushka received a great Kirkus Review!

The direction Baba’s story takes surprises herself as well as her granddaughter. This folk tale ‘about memories and families’ begins with a lovely cottage in the Ukraine and a little girl ‘poor of money but rich of soul.’ But all too soon the Monsters come. And everything changes forever. 

Mawson Bear reads about what happens to a little girl in the story that Babushka tells. The cover is from an older edition

What will happen to our princess and all the other children in this frightening world. After sad events, the little girl finds a matryoshka doll, and inside the doll a message of hope. Will the children be able to escape to safety? Listen closely, as Babushka unfolds her story.

Mawson’s Guardian says: This story is set during ‘The Holodomor’ in the Ukraine in the 1930s. I had no idea about the Holodomor. Here I am learning about it from a kids book. And its well worth grownups reading it too.
In 1932 in the time of Stalin, Soviet soldiers stripped the Ukraine of so much grain that millions died of famine. They transported thousands of people to Siberia. It is a hard story of awful history, here shown in a deftly written children’s picture book.

With this story of drama and hope, Carola Schmidt has, I think, created a wonderful little book that confronts a hard part of history that will intrigue grownups as well as children.

Boumund Bear and Mawson read three of Carola Schmidt’s books, Tell Me A Story Babushka, Babushka is Homesick and Chubby’s Tale.

About the Author: Carola Schmidt, the author of the Babushka Tales series, is a Pediatric Oncology Pharmacist. She has written scientific books on paediatric oncology and also, for children and their families, Chubby’s Tale . Mawson and friends proudly read and reviewed Chubby’s brave story here. You can find Chubby on Twitter and on Facebook.

Carola’s Amazon Author Page is here where you can find these books and her other titles listed.

You can also read here about: Babushka is Homesick.

Scotland The Brave on Lake Windermere

Scotty Bear is on a cruise boat on Lake Windermere under an overcast sky

Welcome to the adventures of Scotland The Brave in the UK of Great Britain. With his Guardians, Scotty explored London, Stonehenge and Bath, Exeter and Plymouth, Glastonbury, Cardiff and Ludlow, and Chester, and Liverpool. (You can catch up with the story by clicking those links.)

Next, they mounted their trusty Tour Bus and traveled due north to the Lake District in Cumbria . This is a land of great rugged hills with marvelous names like Brow Haw, Skidded, and Dow Crag.

Location of Windermere

CUMBRIA.  They were passing through a land with much history. According to the Romans, the Carvetii tribe were here long ago. The Romans came and conquered them, as Romans tended to do. When the Romans finally left, around 400 CE, a little Brittonic kingdom grew up around here called Rheged.

About 300 years later, Rheged was swallowed up by its neighbour, the Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Later came the Vikings to settle and trade. And then of course came the Normans. For a classic children’s story about those times, take a look at The Shield Ring. by Rosemary Sutcliff.

Guardian Mark is forever astonished at how much history the various peoples of Britain have managed to squash into such little bits of land. And the sheep graze on.

LAKE WINDERMERE. These days, thousands of tourists like Scotty and his Guardians pour in to the Lake District. This is another kind of invasion, but a much nicer one. Tourists come there to hike the great hills and to go boating on the big lakes of Windermere and Coniston Waters. Beatrix Potter lived in the Lake District and Wordsworth fell in love with it.

Scotty cruises Lake Windermere in the Lake District of England

Windermere is 11 miles long and up to a mile wide. (The English have yet to invent Kilometers). We arrived on The Lakeside and Haverthwaite Steam Train which runs from Haverthwaite to the southern end of Lake Windermere. From the piers at Lakeside Station we set out to cruise on this lake renowned in poems and novels.

Lake Windermere in the Lake District of England

Scotty loved the cruise. Between showers of rain he popped out on to the deck and took in the hills and sights all around. He wanted to write a Romantic Poem about it tradition of the Romantics inspired by the Lake District. Perhaps he could have sketched the scenery too. However, his paws struggle with quills.

Lots of people like to sail on the lake. There were sailing vessels moored everywhere and a lot of boat houses and little jetties.

There are fine houses and holidaying places around much of the shore, and a lot of woods.

Eventually they arrived at a town called Bowness. They wandered about the fore-shore and admired the holiday attractions and parks and gardens.

Birds mob tourists at Bowness
Birds at Bowness

If you are braver even than Scotland the Brave, you might risk going down on to the little beaches where you can get mobbed by swans and ducks. In their determination to get a bit of food, the smaller birds will even land on you. The rain drifted away and Scotty posed for another ‘Scottie’ or selfie or two.

Scotty at Bowness and Windermere

Guardian Mark tried rather hopelessly to identify the hills and peaks that are visible from the lake. Scale Head, perhaps? Claire Height maybe. And perhaps Castlewood Hill and Black Braw and Great Green How were somewhere in the distance. What splendid names, anyway.

We boarded the tour bus and travelled north through beautiful countryside. We were now making our dash for Gretna Green just as in all the finest Regency Period romances.

In the next episode, Scotty crosses an invisible border to arrive in Scotland at last. Don’t miss that one! (Click on the FOLLOW buttons so as to not miss anything.)

BOOKS with Scotland in them (our Scotty, that is)

Scotty is the star of a very special book called When A Brave Bear Fights Cancer: A Get Well Soon Gift by Carola Schmidt. In the book, Scotty a little bear who gets a bad sickness called cancer. He’s worried and often scared because cancer is scary.  But the doctors and nurses and other patients help him. The book is to help kids feel much more brave when they are getting treatment. It’s available in paperback and Kindle. Look for the brave little bear wearing trews on the cover.

You can also see Scotty in all the books by Mawson. One is called It’s A Bright World To Feel Lost In (in that one he delivers the post) and another is She Ran Away From Love (he delivers the post again.) In Dreamy Days and Random Naps you can see him being a king and also a superb guitarist. Don’t miss that one! This is what the books look like:

Mawson’s Guardian says: You can find Mawson’s books on this Link here, and on his Writer-Bear Page on Amazon.

You are at Baffled Bear Books, brought to you by Mark, who is Guardian and blundering typist for Mawson Bear, one of this bright world’s few published bears. Mawson is the writer bear of It’s A Bright World To Feel Lost In and of She Ran Away From Love and of Dreamy Days and Random Naps.

What Do Your Bears Want To Get You for Christmas? More Books, of course

Mawson’s Guardian Says: Fortunately, we happen to know about books that are entirely suitable for your bears. They are suitable too for everyone you know who loves them. Oh yes, our Mawson the Writer-bear’s little books are just the thing to get your paws on

As everyone knows, bears read books. They’re not just sitting idly on your bookshelves -they are reading. But when they aren’t looking you can take out the books and read them yourself!

Our publisher is Odyssey Books. Just type in www.odysseybooks.com.au and there they will be. They will look like this:

What Mawson's books look like on Odyssey Books Website
What Mawson’s books look like on Odyssey Books Website

Plonk Down Your Paw: Just click on this blue stuff right here to find them. Collect them all for your bears, for your plushie loving friends, or … Just for yourself. Carry them about and dip into on dreary days.

Where else to find them

KINDLE TOO: Mawson’s books, It’s A Bright World To Feel Lost In and She Ran Away From Love , are FREE on Kindle Unlimited on most Amazon regions. Or buy the Kindles for only around $US 3. All the books are in soft cover copies that you can keep and turn to whenever you feel a bit too baffled, a bit too ruffled, and just want a cosy world to sink into.

Happy Christmas reading for you and all your bears and friends.

‘Eyes of a Hunting Cat’: Jane Austen’s short novel, Lady Susan

 Lady Susan, a short novel in letter form, remains unknown to many Austen fans even though a movie version, Love and Friendship, was made recently.

The Tedettes Jane Austen Bookclub with their discoveries about Jane Austen
The Tedettes Jane Austen Bookclub with their discoveries about Jane Austen

The novel is packed with exquisitely written barbs and eyebrow-raising cynicisms, the best delivered by Lady Susan herself as she confides her schemes to her ally, Mrs Johnson. Here is Lady Susan speaking of the wickedly expensive schooling of her 16 year old daughter, Frederica.

Not one lover to her list

“To be mistress of French, Italian, German, Music, Singing, Drawing etc. will gain a woman some applause but will not add one lover to her list.”

Austen is thought to have written Lady Susan before Northanger Abbey, but exactly when is not known.  The Austen-philes quoted below guess at 1803, 1805 and 1808, which puts Austen in her mid to late twenties. She wrote the first version of Pride and Prejudice, of course, when younger still.

A Lion In The Path

“Lady Susan … (is) a lion in the path of those persons who would call Jane Austen charming, soothing, refreshing etc.  G. H Lewes, when he recommended Charlotte Bronte to “follow the counsel which shines out of Miss Austen’s mild eyes” was unaware of Lady Susan, where Miss Austen’s eyes are those of a hunting cat. … In controlled grimness it looks forward to a masterpiece never written.”

Sylvia Townsend Warner, novelist, wrote the assessment above in a 1951 essay published by The British Council.  (The essay, sadly, is probably no longer available, even if you do have one shilling and sixpence net*).

Before Becky Sharp there was Lady Susan

But David Cecil, author of  A Portrait of Jane Austen , is among many Austen-philes determined to keep Miss Jane’s eyes as mild as possible.

“Lady Susan Vernon is a sort of blue-blooded Becky Sharp, an unscrupulous adventuress, far more sensational in her evil doing than any character in Jane Austen’s later books.”

The Tedettes Jane Austen Book Club knit and read
The Tedettes Jane Austen Bookclub (and Knitters). Their main bother is to find the bonnets.

Cecil thinks of the novel as a youthful experiment, even a mistake.

“It is lively and readable … All the same, Lady Susan is not a success. Jane Austen had no acquaintance with smart society and has to describe it from hearsay: with the result that her picture lacks the intimate reality with with she portrays the country gentry … We may suppose she realised this for she made no effort to have the book published in her lifetime … She was gradually learning her art.”

The Perils of Gout

Mawson’s Guardian thinks that if a reader’s frisson of guilty delight is a desirable part of entertainment then young Austen had thoroughly learnt her art.  Even the brutal lines in Lady Susan  that make Cecil wince are delivered superbly. Here is Lady Susan commiserating with Mrs Johnson about her husband’s gout.

“My dear Alicia, of what mistake were you guilty in marrying a man of his age!  just old enough to be formal, ungovernable, and to have the gout – too old to be agreeable, and too young to die”.

Mr Johnson (Stephen Fry in the movie) has forbidden Alicia from seeing Lady Susan on pain of her being despatched to his properties in America if she persists, for he believes Lady Susan to be a Bad Influence.  If you’ve never seen Fry play a ruthless role, watch on as he delivers the line, “I hear the Atlantic crossing is very cold this time of year”.

Subtle, Terrifying

The Teddettes Jane Austen Book Club with their editions of Jane Austen novels
The Tedettes with their prized Folio editions of Jane Austen’s work

 Richard Church, in the Foreword to the Folio edition of Austen’s shorter works, is perplexed that Austen even penned such a work as Lady Susan.

“This is a masterpiece, powerful, subtle and terrifying. It is as cruel as Les Liaisons Dangerous by de Lachol. This Lady Susan may well be compared to  ..  Madame de Merteuil for coldness of soul, amoral cruely and icy lust. What was this feature of Jane Austens’s personality? so primitive, unladylike and deadly? Here was no chronicler of the drawing room and the country house tea party.”

 Bright Eyes

“In her person she was very attractive. Her figure was rather tall and slender, her step light and firm, and her whole appearance one of health and animation. In complexion she was a clear brunette with a rich colour, she had full round cheeks  with a mouth and nose rather small but well-formed, bright hazel eyes and brown hair forming natural curls around her face.”

What kind of eyes did Jane Austen really have?   Here is a word-portrait penned by her nephew. (Jane and Cassandra loved the role of Aunts.)

Hmm, so hazel eyes, greenish eyes, and bright. The green of a hunting cat’s eyes, perhaps?

Take your own look at Lady Susan who herself certainly seems to deserve that description. And then enjoy Kate Beckinsale’s excellent portrayal in the inexplicably renamed, but otherwise guiltily-delightful film, Love and Friendship.

Where to find Lady Susan, in various editions: On Amazon and at Booktopia.

 

Books by Mawson, one of this bright world’s few published Writer-Bears

Do you sometimes feel a bit muddled about, well, Things ?

Sometimes rather ruffled when Things just go and, well, Happen ?

Sometimes feel confused one moment and completely baffled the next?

Mawson and friends look at his little books

It’s not easy being Grownup. All this business of having to be sophisticated and industrious all day long! It just wears you down. But when you arrive in Mawson’s cosy world, the frazzled reader can flop down among the cushions and relax.

Here you can find the answers to just about nothing at all. You can forget you ever had questions anyway.

Mawson writes little books that are not full of the answers to life. Or perhaps they are

Mawson and his friends are befuddled about most things most of the time – just like so many of us. And that’s all right.

She Ran Away From Love,is all about his friend Frilly feeling hopelessly baffled by Big Questions.

‘A magical little grand tour into the meaning of happiness.‘
Sharri Williams Author of The Maybelline Story.

In It’s A Bright World To Feel Lost In , Mawson attempts to put into words that mysterious feeling of Feeling Lost.

Its A Bright World To Feel Lost In, by Mawson

‘A book about optimism, searching for new adventures, and making the most of life and love.’
Review on Goodreads by Debbie Young, author of the Sophie Sayer Mysteries.

Dreamy Days and Random Naps looks at the joys of naps, sleeps, snacks, hopes and dreams.

‘Mawson is a precious teddy  who should be a staple read on every little one’s bookshelf. He certainly has a home on ours.  I know he certainly inspired my own inner child.’
Lyndie, Bookaholic reviews.