I’m not far off: 94 completed, and a couple I’m reading slowly that I should finish on December 31st. Marcia Willett 's early life was devoted to the ballet, but her dreams of becoming a ballerina ended when she grew out of the classical proportions required. And that is just the work she has published under her own name, she has even written some novels under the pen name Willa Marsh.

The church, too often, has introduced rules and regulations that turn people away, or - at the other extreme - has tried much too hard to use evangelistic methods and techniques, which are often more harmful than helpful. It’s one of a small number of books in the series that doesn’t take place at the Chalet School at all; instead it revolves around Jo Maynard and her three closest friends, Marie, Frieda and Simone, when they and their young children go for a summer break in a holiday home in a village near the moors. It didn’t matter at all that I had read the fill-in that follows, although if I had been reading for the first time there would have been spoilers. My only slight irritation with this book is the last paragraph which feels a bit trite, although I suppose it was typical of the era, tying everything up neatly.

The house they converge on may be fictional, but everywhere else they go is likely to be very familiar – the Dartington Hall gardens and Cider Press Centre, the Cott Inn, Buckfast Abbey, various galleries and cafes in Totnes. Readers of the Chadwick Trilogy will be delighted to meet the family again in 'Christmas At The Keep', a short novella which will be published as a small format hardback in time for Christmas. That’s the case for ‘A Collector of Hearts’, a novella that I apparently downloaded about a decade ago but have only just read. The book feels more up-to-date than some of the earlier books; unsurprising as it’s set in the 1970s rather than the 1940s, although the older Lone Piners are only a couple of years older, and the twins Mary and Dickie just one year older than they were in the first book.

I need those these days (not because bad stuff is happening at home)–there’s so much discord in the world I like to escape into them sometimes. When an American publisher bought Marcia’s next book (or maybe it was the one after that, it is now such a long time ago I really can’t remember the finer details) Marcia phoned me to tell me this wonderful news!Although Joey and her friends quickly befriend Phoebe, and they all spend time together much of the story revolves around the small children and their antics. Ever the professional, Marcia managed to deliver her final book under her contract to Transworld and it will be published in October 2022. On the other hand, if you’re bothered by even minor bad language or hints of immorality, or if you’re a fundamentalist of any kind (including atheism) then you might find this book disturbing or worse.