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Fingers crossed...

My current best Writers on AbcTales August 2025 5. luigi_pagano – Luigi 4. The Story Teller – JPB 3. Caldwell – Christopher 2. rhiannonw – Rhiannon 1. swindonwoody – Maggie And we have a promising newcomer, Carrie Brown.

Alison is quite beautiful. I bought this graphic novel for a quid. I’d like to say its smudged cover art stood out. But I know less about art than music. There are, of course, different kinds of art and music. In terms of making a living from art, 99% have no chance, Graphic novelists and poets have less of a chance that that. Alison, the narrator, whose life we follow from pane to pain in 1958, in Bridgeport, Dorset. There she is as a baby with...

‘Stand under a tree and exchange breath with it’. Can you love a tree? Mandy Haggith likes to think so. My track record is mottled. My mates and me attacked trees with knives to practice stabbing. What kind of tree? I’ve no idea. A tree is a tree. We also tried cutting one down with a hand axe. The tree refused to die. We hardly made a dent in it. You don’t of course dent trees. The Scolytus scolytus beetle is a serial elm tree killer and far...

Gavin Francis is an Edinburgh GP with around 4000 patients on his books. He also works as a locum on the Scottish Islands. Harris springs to mind. I’ve read (and reviewed) his first book, Island Dreams . (‘Islands can be a testing ground’ as can Covid-19)? He mirrors Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Years: ‘the best physic against the plague is to run away from it’. We’ve become overfamiliar with the term ‘essential worker’, face masks and...

The author C S Lewis made a radio broadcast in the 1940s about people who said that they accepted Jesus as a great moral teacher but didn't accept his claim to be God. How could someone who mistakenly claimed to be God be a great moral teacher? The two don't go together. If Jesus believes he is God and he isn't, he is insane, like a man who thinks he is a poached egg. If Jesus knew he wasn't God and was lying, he would be the devil of Hell...

‘No-one will protect what they don’t care about, and no-one will care about what they’ve never experienced.’ Attenborough’s quote had me thinking about how the rich—who’ve never experienced poverty—demonise the poor. Jane Smith is an artist, zoologist and poet. The combination gives her an authorial voice. Her artwork illustrates her journey. Harris, St Kilda, North Uist, Eigg, Loch Archaig, Argyll Hotspot, Knapdale, Islay, Dumfries, and even...

East London Tom Brown Uncle Nolan Indian Ocean