Reading in Good Company

Announcing a ten-week slow read
of my English village mystery,
The Tale of Hill Top Farm.

You are invited to join me for a ten-week visit to the life and work of Beatrix Potter—treasured for her children’s tales, but equally remarkable for the story of her escape from the expectations of restrictive Victorian parents into an independent creative life.

On August 6, we’ll start with a series of four backstory posts about my early interest in Miss Potter, the several lives of this remarkable woman, the animal characters in the series, and the series narrator whose opinions often shape the story. Then on September 3, we’ll begin our slow read of The Tale of Hill Top Farm, my English village mystery about Beatrix and the life she creates on her own Lake District farm.

The book is the first in the Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter, an eight-book English village mystery series that spans1905 —1913, among the most creative years of Beatrix’s life. The Tale of Hill Top Farm is available in print (new and used), audio, and ebook editions, in libraries and bookstores, both locally and online. You can read in any edition, and there’s no need to begin before our launch date.

My weekly posts will provide synopses of the chapters, my author commentary, a Material Witness: a place, object, document, or research discovery that illuminates the story. You’ll also find a few leading questions, an invitation to join our discussion, and “What’s More”— extras from the research materials I gathered as I wrote the Cottage Tales.

September 3, 2026: Week 1
Chapters 1–4, Departures and Arrivals

September 10: Week 2
Chapters 5–6, We Get Acquainted

September 17: Week 3
Chapters 7–8, Too Many Bright Ideas

September 24: Week 4
Chapters 9–11, Facing Difficult Facts

October 1: Week 5
Chapters 12–14, Two Independent Women

October 8: Week 6
Chapters 15–17, The Mysteries Deepen

October 15: Week 7
Chapters 18–20, A Crisis and an Accident

October 22: Week 8
Chapters 21–23, In Which Things Happen

October 29: Week 9
Chapters 24–27, By Means of Which All Is Resolved

November 5, 2026: Week 10
Series Survey, A Tale of a Village

What’s Next? On Monday, August 3, I’ll be bringing you the August issue of All About Thyme. After that I’m taking a few weeks of quiet sabbatical. Then, beginning September 3, we’ll enter the world of the Cottage Tales together. I hope you’ll join us.