Have a sneak peek between the pages of Marie Conner, A Leading Lady by Elle Mott #Biography #WomenInHistory #WomensHistory #RecommendedReading

Marie Conner, A Leading Lady:
Her Life and Civic Leadership in a Bygone Era

by Elle Mott

Marie was born a girl. That was only her first mistake, according to her father.

    In an era when daughters and wives are not supposed to be concerned with matters outside the home, Marie is determined to prove him wrong. To do this, she must break down barriers placed on women in society, overcome difficulties that befall her, surpass hardships from the Great Depression, and then face an inevitable relocation.

         Marie steps into her community and into the hearts of many people to give her time and help with their needs. She wants nothing in return other than her father's acceptance as a worthy woman and yet, she gains much in return, even if it is not her father's praise. This is Marie’s story—of a rise from her girlhood angsts to become a leading lady—and much more.

This definitive biography is the empowering true story of one trailblazing woman who, in the mid-1900s in small-town America, changed her community and beyond for the better and forevermore.

Praise for Marie Conner, A Leading Lady:

"I enjoyed the fact that this was a personal story, since Marie was the author's great-grandmother. It was also wonderful to read about a time when women were honored for their charitable work and valued for being caring neighbors. In our age of materialism, we often lose sight of just how meaningful it can be to be part of a caring community. I especially appreciated the inclusion of several excerpts from Marie's articles describing the needs of others. Her willingness to serve was astonishing and inspiring. Those who enjoy reading the histories and personal stories of women, who are far too often overlooked, will enjoy Marie's story."
~ Samantha Wilcoxson, award-winning author of Luminous: The Story of a Radium Girl. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

"A deeply powerful memoir detailing the life of Marie Conner and the struggles she encountered as a woman growing up in a male-dominated society. The level of detail in this story is astonishing; I felt as though I could step right into Marie’s shoes, experiencing her triumphs and setbacks alongside her."
~ Kayla Frederick, bestselling author. 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

To Follow Life’s Lead (1948).

Marie stood poised and sported a houndstooth dress with an ascot scarf that flowed and dropped perfectly just below her neckline. Her polite smile, accentuated by red lipstick with rounded corners, conveyed a benevolent charm as she welcomed guests to a teachers’ reception on Thursday evening, September 16. Parents and PTA members showed up in a record-breaking attendance to meet sixty-three teachers in the south wing of Lebanon High School. Parents were handed name tags to pin on their suit jackets, and teachers wore corsages.

Marie greeted each person as they walked in, and the total in attendance numbered more than two hundred. Once everyone was seated comfortably in the high school’s Little Theater, Marie stepped up to the podium and introduced herself as the 1948—49 PTA president. Her attentive audience listened as she next introduced the superintendent of the Lebanon schools, Mr. James King.

Mr. King’s speech emphasized the student population growth. They now had 950 grade school students, up from the previous year’s 622. The high school was no exception in that it had increased to 1,620 students. He also gave mention to Green Acres School, which would soon open. With an expressed appreciation for all that the PTA was doing, Mr. King recognized that they had their hands full. In all plausibility, Marie held her head high and nodded with a can-do-attitude.

It was a tall order, but she had successfully led a Red Cross fund drive as residential chairman and had managed the unit’s finances with the American Legion. She was accustomed to organizing events and assuming responsibilities. She knew that this PTA presidential term would experience many firsts in their membership pool. They now had room mother presidents not only in the two grade schools but also in the high school, along with a greater number of committees and chairman positions. And, as Mr. King had said, another grade school would open later that school year, which meant even more room mothers for Marie and her officers to lead. She knew she could lead the PTA. If only her father could also have known that.  

© Elle Mott 2026

Universal Amazon Buy Link

Author's Website Buy Links Page

Elle Mott

Elle Mott is a creative nonfiction author who weaves advocacy and strength into her writing, empowering readers to find their purpose.

“Marie Conner, A Leading Lady" is her third book. She is also the author of “Out of Chaos: A Memoir” and “People Helping People”. 

Her next book, releasing this fall, will be as a contributing co-author to “When Women Talk, Notes From the Future: What I Would Tell My Younger Self”. Her other publications have been featured in literary journals, news magazines, and anthologies.

She has a background working in libraries, both at the college level and, for more than ten years, at the public library in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. While library work is her livelihood, writing is her passion. 

Elle grew up in Oregon and now makes her home in the suburbs of northern Kentucky with two cats and several pet birds.

Connect with Elle:

Website • Facebook • Twitter / X

AllAuthor • KoFi

Amazon Author Page • BookBub • Goodreads

Join us as author C.M. Gray introduces the main characters in his gripping thriller, One More Hour of Daylight #HistoricalFiction #WWIIThriller #RecommendedReading

One More Hour of Daylight

by C.M. Gray

From the Bestselling Author of Shadowland

On the first day of World War II, a young man makes a promise—one that will shape every choice he makes for the next four years.

Essex. September 1939.

A wounded German pilot drops from a clear autumn sky into a quiet English field. Seventeen-year-old Derrick finds him—broken and feverish. Not an enemy. Just a young man asking for one small mercy before everything ends.

One more hour of daylight. That is all I ask. A chance to breathe free air before whatever comes next.

Derrick gives him until morning.

When the stretcher comes, the pilot’s last words strike Derrick like a blow he will never stop feeling.

Scotland. France. Germany. 1941–1943.

In the mountains of Scotland, they teach him how to kill, how to lie, and how to endure things that break most men. Then they give him a new name, put him on a plane, and drop him into the dark.

As an SOE operative deep inside occupied Europe, Derrick Sedgley lives on false papers, borrowed names, and nerves worn to nothing by years in the shadows. He moves agents to safety, builds escape routes, and stays one breath ahead of the Gestapo.

Then a mission collapses—and everything changes.

Forced to run, Derrick finds himself moving through the most dangerous corners of occupied Europe alongside someone whose connection to his past he cannot yet see. As safe houses fall, loyalties fracture, and the frozen passes of the Pyrenees rise ahead like the edge of the world, Derrick begins to understand something.

The choice he made in an Essex field on the first day of the war has been leading him here all along.

Some debts cannot be paid.

Some can only be carried.

And some—if you are brave enough, and fortunate enough—can finally be laid to rest.

From the quiet fields of Essex to the mountains of Scotland, from the dangerous streets of Lyon to the shadows of wartime Hamburg and the high passes of the Pyrenees, One More Hour of Daylight is an unforgettable story of courage, guilt and redemption—of ordinary people forced to make impossible choices in extraordinary times.

Some promises can survive a war.

Some people can too.

For readers who believe that even in war, what matters most is who we choose to be.

Praise for One More Hour of Daylight:

"A beautifully written book with a perfect pace that kept me reading
from start to finish."
~ Bookcollector, Amazon 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

"A confident, carefully crafted novel that handles its subject matter with restraint, earning the weight it carries."
~ Indie Library, Goodreads 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

The People Behind the People:
Characters in One More Hour of Daylight

The characters that inhabit the pages of One More Hour of Daylight sprang, of course, from my imagination. But then again, most of them, like the places where the story unfolds, are in some way rooted in people I have known and places I have spent real time. What else can a writer honestly draw upon?

I grew up listening to my mother talk about her childhood on Riversdale Road in Romford: watching her father, my grandfather Cliff, assembling their Anderson shelter in the back garden, and then being led out half-asleep in the middle of the night to crouch inside it, listening to the bombers droning overhead in the darkness, the searchlights of London visible on the horizon, waiting for the all-clear to sound. Those are not invented details. They are memories that were handed to me across a kitchen table, and they find their way into the opening of One More Hour of Daylight almost exactly as they were told to me.

My grandfather's name was Cliff Sedgley. My father's name was Derrick. Both names, as readers of the novel will have noticed, are borrowed directly, the first for the father, the second for the son. My mother grew up, met my father, and moved to Brentwood, where I was born, and it is from that particular corner of Essex that the whole story grows.

In Warley, just outside Brentwood, my brother and I used to play in the woods with our friends. We called the place The Barracks, without quite knowing why; it was simply woods and a scattering of derelict buildings, old brick and broken concrete half-swallowed by undergrowth. We found buttons, spent cartridge casings, fragments of things we could not identify. It was only years later that I understood what we had been playing in: the ruins of Warley Barracks, the Victorian home of the Essex Regiment, the very training ground where Derrick Sedgley learns to be a soldier. I still find that remarkable. The place was in my childhood long before I knew what it was, waiting to become part of a story.

I have been fortunate enough to live and travel widely: India, Hong Kong, the Middle East. But in the 1990s I bought and restored an old farmhouse in Clomot, a small village in Burgundy, France. It is a beautiful part of the world, and one with a layered and complicated history, especially during the Second World War, when Burgundy was a principal area of operations for the French Resistance and for SOE agents inserted from Britain. It was, therefore, the natural place to send Derrick when he crosses into occupied France. I know those roads, those hills, those villages. I know the quality of the light in the early morning and the way the vineyards look in October. That knowledge is in every scene set there, even when it is invisible.

During the restoration of the farmhouse, we cleared out an old well, descending on a ladder to dig out the accumulated mud at the bottom, and among the debris we found several machine gun clips, corroded and silent after decades underground. I have never been able to stop wondering how they came to be there. What was their story? Had someone returned from a night operation and needed to dispose of the evidence quickly, before a patrol came? In my imagination, at least, it was Derrick and Jean-Luc Defaux who threw them down. Fiction, perhaps. But not entirely impossible.

The other landscape that shapes the later part of the novel is the Pyrenees. I have lived near Barcelona for a number of years, and on a clear morning I can see the mountains from my terrace as I drink my coffee. They are beautiful and they are brutal, and during the war they were a lifeline. The French Resistance and the SOE used routes across those mountains to move hundreds of people to safety: downed Allied airmen, Jewish families, political dissidents, escaped prisoners of war. The crossings were physically punishing and not always successful. Derrick and Lotte use one of those routes in the final section of the novel, pursued, as many real people were, by those who very much did not want them to reach the other side. I have walked parts of those mountains myself. I know what the air feels like up there, and what it means to look south and see Spain laid out below you.

So yes: the characters are fictional. There was no Derrick Sedgley, as far as I know. Ernst and Lotte Braun are names chosen from thin air. Poor Hilde, Tommy Briggs, Henri Marchand, Major Fenn, all of them are invented. And yet the inspiration behind every one of them has been entirely real: real places, real family memories, real history, and real people encountered along the way, their qualities borrowed and reshaped into something new.

I know these characters now as I know old friends. I know how Derrick moves through a room and what silences cost him. I know what Tommy sounds like when he is trying not to show that he is frightened. I know the particular stillness that Lotte carries, and what it conceals. That is the strange alchemy of writing fiction: you begin with fragments of the real world, people and places and half-remembered stories, and somewhere in the process they become entirely themselves, independent of their origins, alive on the page in a way that no longer belongs to you.

If this post has made you curious about any of them, I would be very glad indeed if you were to go and meet them properly.

Universal Buy Link

This novel is available to read on #KindleUnlimited.

C.M. Gray

C.M. Gray's first book, The Flight of the Griffin, was longlisted in the 2015 Times Chicken House Writing Competition. Shadowland, the first book in the Pendragon Saga, has so far received over 900 five-star reviews on Amazon. These things still genuinely astonish him, and he is deeply grateful for every one of them.

Most of his previous work has been fantasy: either pure fantasy or historical fantasy, the kind of writing where druids turn up uninvited and one of your main characters develops an unsettling affinity with wolves before you have quite decided what sort of book you are writing. Shadowland began with every intention of staying grounded in historical reality, the story of Uther Pendragon. It did not. It has turned out to be a popular book, so he does not complain.

His years travelling through Asia, India, Africa and the Middle East have a habit of finding their way onto the page. He has seen and done some fairly strange things along the way and met some extraordinary people, and writing fantasy has always felt, to him, only a short step from writing fact.

New for 2026

One More Hour of Daylight, marks C.M. Gray's return to writing. It was published in June 2026, marking a departure: pure historical fiction, no druids, no wolves. It follows Derrick Sedgley, a seventeen-year-old from Essex who makes a single moral choice in a field one September morning in 1939 and spends the next four years living with the consequences. From the Essex countryside to occupied France, from the mountains of Burgundy to the Pyrenees, it is a story about promises, betrayal, courage and the cost of doing the right thing too late.

And for those who have been waiting patiently for the Pendragon Saga to continue: the third book, Shadow's Heir, the story of Arthur Pendragon, follows in September 2026. More on that very soon.

C.M. Gray was born in England and grew up in the Essex countryside near the Suffolk border, which is where Derrick Sedgley grows up, too. The flat fields, the big skies and the particular quality of Essex light found their way into the book, whether he intended them to or not.

C.M. Gray is now very happily settled just outside Barcelona with his wonderful wife and partner in life, Adriana.

Connect with C.M.:
Amazon Author Page • Goodreads

Visit the Alhambra with acclaimed author Wendy J. Dunn – as featured in her captivating novel, The Duty of Daughters #HistoricalFiction #KatherineOfAragon #RecommendedReading

The Duty of Daughters

Falling Pomegranate Seeds, Book #1

by Wendy J. Dunn

Castile, 1490.

Doña Beatriz Galindo is an uneasy witness to the Holy War of Queen Isabel of Castile and her husband, Ferdinand, King of Aragon. A holy war pushing the Moors out of territories ruled by them for centuries.

Beatriz does not want a life like other women. She desires power over her own destiny. Even if this means walking a far harder road.

A passionate and respected scholar, Beatriz serves her friend Queen Isabel of Castile as her advisor. She also tutors the queen’s youngest child, Catalina of Aragon.

Dedicated to Queen Isabel and her children, Beatriz guides the young Catalina of Aragon to walk her own hard life road.

But can she prepare Catalina to be England’s queen?

Finalist in the 2020 CHAUCER Book Awards for pre-1750s Historical Fiction.

Remembering the Alhambra

Beatriz stepped deeper into the garden, her movements breaking apart the silver light. A few butterflies flew close to her face, the wings of one tickling her nose in passing. A haze of showering light rendered them into flying, living sapphires, their wings edged with bright rubies. Laughing with simple joy, Beatriz spun around, watching their beauty vanish into the dark recesses edging the garden. She stood there, her palms upraised, grieving again for beauty lost. She wanted to rail and weep at her empty hands. How long must I wait to see them filled? Then she scolded herself. She had so much more than most women she knew.

From The Duty of Daughters, first part of Falling Pomegranate Seeds: the Katherine of Aragon story.

I first visited Spain in 2007 – a long time ago – after writing my original vision of Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters, a novel that imagines the growing-up years of Catalina of Aragon, one day known as Katherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII. I wrote my first version of The Duty of Daughters through the point of view of the child Maria de Salinas, and then faced the fact I needed to write it through an adult point of view.

Beatriz Galindo

While I knew this had to be Catalina of Aragon’s tutor, Beatriz Galindo, I also despaired at the thought of starting again. So much so, it took completing my Masters of Writing and then my PhD – when I wrote The Light in the Labyrinth as my creative artefact – before I felt ready to return to this work in 2016.

But back to 2007. Researching Spain and the places Catalina would have known fired my desire to go to Spain myself. There was one place I especially wanted to see – the Alhambra.

Alhambra

Writing my first version, I kept on having visions of white butterflies, countless white butterflies, fluttering a graceful dance in a garden where sunlight flittered through pomegranate, orange and cypress trees. I did not know if the vision had any similarity to the reality of the gardens of the Alhambra, although an internet search reassured me that butterflies are indeed a part of the natural environment of the Alhambra. In fact, countless butterflies abound at the Alhambra.

Wendy J. Dunn at the Alhambra

My problem with imagining places still in existence today is that it only makes me more than yearn to see them with my own eyes. I live in Australia, but my imagination has never really latched onto the history of my beautiful homeland. My Australian ancestors only arrived here in the 1850s. Yes, I am fortunate enough to count a convict as a forebear (we call them Australian royalty!) and have followed the trail of one my ancestors in his search for gold (his brother struck it rich, not him), but that does not take it away the simple fact that my ancestry is mostly British, with my Irish blood singing loud in my veins, too. For many years now, I have wondered about ancestral memory – and if that may explain why my imagination is so fixated on Britain.

In my lifetime, I have managed to fund six trips to the United Kingdom. Four of those overseas trips include time in Europe. That includes a seventeen-day tour of Spain in 2007, when I was working on my first version of Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters.

Those magical days in Spain enriched and fed my imagination. I saw in my mind Beatriz Galindo, sitting in sunlit courtyards edged by heavenly inspired gardens and shaded by cypress and orange trees, and talking with Catalina and Maria de Salinas. I closed my eyes and smelled the perfume of flowers and heard in my mind the song of water cascading into stone water fountains. My then eleven-year-old son, who accompanied me on this wonderful adventure, was so impressed with all the water fountains we saw in Spain, he came home determined to convince his father to build one in our small front garden back in Australia. Alas, that never happened.

What happened was I fell in love in Spain – not with a person, but with a place; it is a love I know I share with so many. I only had a few hours at the Alhambra back in 2007. I remember well the grey sky, and my anxiety that a downpour of rain would spoil my long-awaited day. The rain held off until we left – long enough for the Alhambra to soak into my heart and psyche.  

Wendy & her son at the Alhambra

Once again, water fountains delighted my son, especially the stone lion protected fountain, which aptly named its courtyard: The Courtyard of the Lions. For myself, I delighted in Moorish architecture, water features and glorious gardens designed to feast the eye.

Tiled art in the Alhambra

The Alhambra was built by Badis ibn Habus, the Berber King of Granada, in the 11th century. There is a romantic legend that the Alhambra, meaning ‘red castle’, was built at night, under torchlight. The family of Catalina of Aragon took possession of it from the Moors in 1492, and her parents Isabel and Ferdinand used it for their royal court. It was Catalina’s primary home from the time she was seven to fifteen.

Arches in the Alhambra

Strolling in the gardens, it was easy to imagine Catalina there, growing up in this place of great beauty, until the day came when she would leave her parents forever. My time at the Alhambra helped me describe the palace and its surrounds in Falling Pomegranate Seeds: The Duty of Daughters. The stone interior and exterior seemed to me like delicate lace work – allowing light to filter in and out, dappling over floor and wall. The exquisite architecture of the Alhambra is married to water and its gardens. One water feature is very famous and has been the subject of countless photographs of tourists and the inspiration for artists. A long rectangular pool mirrors the arches of the partal façade in the Patio de los Arrayanes, or the court of the myrtles.

I was at the Alhambra for only a short time. It did not feel long enough, but it was long enough to embrace the Alhambra in my heart forever as one of my favourite places on Earth. I will never forget my time there, or its unbelievable beauties. It was also long enough to inspire my imagination. I saw Catalina and Maria practicing their dancing steps in The Courtyard of the Lion. I imagined them together in the bath of the Comares Palace, under a small stone dome cut with stars to let the light flicker like diamonds on the water. I saw them in the garden with Beatriz Galindo, sitting at her feet as she read them stories. I saw them preparing to say their last farewells before they started their long journey to England. To my immense delight, I have had readers let me know that they made the journey to the Alhambra because they read The Duty of Daughters.

Courtyard & arches,  Alhambra

Leaving the Alhambra, I promised to return one day. I was lucky enough to do that in 2019 – and I hope one day to make another return.

Catalina of Aragon never returned. But I have no doubt she never forgot her years growing up in the sunlight of Spain – or in the beauty that is the Alhambra.

Universal Buy Link – English Version

Universal Buy Link – Spanish Version

Wendy J. Dunn

Award-winning Australian author of Tudor historical fiction, specialising in Anne Boleyn and Katherine of Aragon novels.

Wendy J. Dunn is an award-winning Australian author, playwright and poet fascinated by Tudor history – so much so she was not surprised to discover a family connection to the Tudors, not long after the publication of her first Anne Boleyn novel narrating the Anne Boleyn story through the eyes of Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder. Her family tree reveals the intriguing fact that one of her ancestral families – possibly over three generations – had purchased land from both the Boleyn and Wyatt families to build up their own holdings. It seems likely Wendy’s ancestors knew the Wyatts and Boleyns personally.

Her second novel, The Light in the Labyrinth, set during final days of Anne Boleyn's life, revisits the Anne Boleyn story through the eyes of her niece Catherine Carey. The Duty of Daughters and All Manner of Things tells the story of Katherine of Aragon. Shades of Yellow tells the story of a woman writing a novel about Amy Robsart.

All Dunn's award-winning works weave together the lyricism of poetry with the pulse of history, creating stories of love, loss, and the endurance of the human spirit.

Connect with Wendy:

Website • Facebook • Instagram • Bluesky • Threads

Newsletter •  LinkedIn • BookBub

Amazon Author Page • TikTok • Goodreads