C R Searle

Hi, I have just finished the first draft of the new book I am writing, which some months ago I said I was hoping to soon complete, well, I have. So, I hope to have The Boy on the Bus published in September of this year. I will update you again as soon as, with thanks.

The four books I promised last year are now published and I very much hope you will be among the first to purchase, one or all of them, they are called and in no particular order, The Courtship of Byron Blisset, Silke, The House of Women and Finding James Jones, all of which I know you will enjoy.

They are all are between two hundred and three hundred pages long and fall into the category of novella, no chapters just brief headings, the design reflecting the intention of all the books to be read on the 'run' so to speak, on holiday, in a moment of leisure, on the bus, wherever. They are by intention stripped-back reads for people on the go who need a moment of respite in a busy day.

The Courtship of Byron Blisset, Silke and The House of Women all have powerful female characters who I think you will admire and strong, good men who care about women as male protagonists, so often lacking in feminist literature. Finding James Jones is a powerful story of self-exploration, self-discovery and coming of age in Victorian England.

Except for Silke, which is set in modern day London, the others are set in Victorian England between 1860 and 1880, so, the category historical novella would not be misplaced, nor would feminist literature, which might also make a strong claim. And because I like happy endings they all have mostly have happy endings, but if not happy by your assessment, they are all conclusive, that is, they all end. Only The House of Women invites a second book which I am very drawn to write, which, if I do, I think I will call, Elizabeth an important character in this story but perhaps a little understated. Beautiful, enigmatic, young and deeply in love with the male lead Captain Jack Shaw, as is, at least one other woman, in The House of Women. But who will win his heart.

The novella, is, I think, a wonderful way to tell a short story and having written a panoramic adventure for young, adult readers in seven full length books, called, The Rebus and the Parrot, and a long, complex murder mystery, called, The Love Street School Murders, it is a time for change!!

Three of the books, The Courtship of Byron Blisset, Silke and The House of Women combine to form a series of unrelated books I have called, Chapters. Finding James Jones is published outside this collection at this time because it is a little longer and a harder read. It is about a young man's journey of discovery. A love story in the traditional sense - boy meets girl, boy falls deeply in lover with girl but a love story made more complex by the transgressive love story he finds himself very much a part, he cannot separate himself from.

I have very much enjoyed the change and so I am writing a fifth book in this Chapters series of unrelated books called The Boy on the Bus, which is about a woman and the challenges she faces bringing up two teenage daughters alone, as she has done for many years. But a challenge made so much harder by the arrival in her life of her eldest daughter, Jess's, uninvited, live-in boyfriend who is determined to ruin her modestly cosy life. A young man who has driven her to the edge of despair whose sexual threats she can no longer tolerate.

Like all the books in the Chapters series, this book begins and ends in a day (as does Finding James Jones), a day made magical by the boy she meets on a bus, her daily commute. Not a boy, but a gorgeous young man who she falls in love with who changes her life forever. A young man in whose arms she knows she is stronger and more courageous than any threat life might throw at her. As with all the books in this Chapters series the end is worth the wait and they will not disappoint. Enjoy the read you are worth it.

C. R. Searle is a graduate of the University of Manchester, England, a Doctor of Philosophy, a Chartered Psychologist and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He is a mental health/illness specialist with expertise in counselling, psychotherapy and the social construction of identity and has worked in hospitals, higher education, the Middle East advising NGO's, governments and universities on education and training and latterly for a non-executive department of the UK government.

The Rebus and the Parrot is a seven part existential adventure in space, time and reality for young and older adults and was written with an inspirational debt to a number of distinguished British authors, all of whom I recommend you read, Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, whose books, including, Sherlock Holmes (of course), his perhaps lesser known, Rodney Stone, his Brigadier Gerard series, his The White Company and The Lost World were amongst the most important books of CR's teenage years. Stories that spoke to him of nobility, courage, duty, self-sacrifice, compassion and fidelity, attributes he hopes his own young heroes, particularly Lieutenant William 'Billy' Kepple, Duffy, Tom (not her real name), Polly and Marie-Ange, demonstrate in abundance. But a far greater debt is owed to C S Foresters, Horatio Hornblower series, Alexander Kent's, Richard Bolitho series, Dudley Popes, Nicholas Ramage series and Patrick O'Brian's, Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin series. Books so good they are classics only matched in recent years by my own and Bernard Cornwell's inimitable and vividly exciting historical novels. His, Sharp series, his Saxon Stories, his Warlord Chronicles, his Starbuck Chronicles, his Grail Quest and so many more.

If you like high adventure, mystery and romance and you would like to know how, why and who built the Great Pyramids of Giza and every megalithic monument stone structure prehistory has left us to wonder at, as we now more than ever wonder who did, read The Rebus and the Parrot. If you want to know that time travel is possible, as UFO's testify it is and the US Government know it is? Read the Rebus and the Parrot. That the Biblical belief God made the world in six days does not confound the laws of Quantum physics? That Quantum super positioning and entanglement are the magical properties of all matter - including us, so magical WE really can be in two places at once, including, multidimensional space and time? That the Darwinian conception of the origins of life is wrong? And how and why advanced artificial intelligence AI and the machines it is fast giving rise too, heralds a new mass extinction event that, if not stopped, will bring the world to an end and all life on it in 2084? That the climate change, war, famine, pestilence (Covid) and civil unrest we are now experiencing show us a future too awful to imagine but a future we can change if we solve the mystery of the Rebus of Akhenaten and unlock the secret of the Giza Pyramids and all the megalithic stone structure they connect too.

Regrettably The Love Street School Murders are now permanently withdrawn from sale, in paperback and in Kindle, and the original of this story, Valeria Doucet: The Evil and the Erotic, is now only available in paperback. The Love Street School Murders, was an attempt to reframe and rebrand Valeria Doucet: The Evil and the Erotic shifting the emphasis away from the erotic content, it certainly contains, to the complex psychological, existential noir murder mystery it always was, but this inadvertently breached Amazon Kindles strict rules about undifferentiated text. The two were the same book but with different covers and titles.