Jane will read from her novel It Continued with the Cowries, published by Goose River Press, (Waldoboro, ME) in 2023. Her reading will be accompanied by pictures from Scottish island locations related to the book, and other pictures from her 2023 travels in England and Scotland. It Continued with the Cowries is the sequel to It Began with the Marbles, which was the subject of Jane’s book talk and slide show at the Jesup in December 2022. “Cowries” begins with the tragic death of an elderly man who was the last link to a famous glass factory that flourished in a Scottish coastal town for many decades. Although at first ruled an accident, evidence begins to suggest otherwise. Local police Chief Helen is tasked with getting to the truth, without causing permanent divisions among the town’s prominent families. Meanwhile, the long-running character Margaret, a young Portland-based lawyer now living in Scotland, is on a quest to find cowries on Scottish beaches and becomes entangled in Helen’s wide-ranging investigation.

 A native of Scotland, Jane divides her time between Scotland and MDI. Her recent fiction writing is inspired by her travels in England and Scotland, including the Scottish islands. Her first novel, a courtroom-mountaineering story entitled Because it’s There, was published by Bennett & Hastings Publishers in Seattle, WA, and was a finalist in the Indie Excellence Awards. She has also published three novels including The Birsay Trilogy, based on her travels to Orkney in northern Scotland.

 Two of her short stories were published in the Goose River Anthology, for 2019 and 2021 (Goose River Press, Waldoboro, ME). Jane’s novel It Began with the Marbles was published by Goose River Press in April 2022. This novel features some of the characters from The Birsay Trilogy, but it begins a new series set in Scotland and Maine. The novel was reviewed in the Beach Reads section of Beachcombing Magazine, in November/December 2022, with the reviewer calling it an “enchanting story” that will inspire sea glass seekers to research the provenance and history of pieces they find.