A CHEW Valley artist has recently had her second book published.

‘After the Horses’ by Mary Griese has been compared to the tones of ‘Cider With Rosie’ and ‘Cold Comfort Farm’, with some darker moments.

Mary’s debut novel, ‘Where Crows Would Die’, was published in 2020 by Y Lolfa in Wales. It is set in the Welsh mountains and - to her delight - was labelled Welsh Noir.

Her second book, published by Crumps Barn Studio, is the story of Margo - the sole groom at a small stud farm of Arabian horses. The remote Cotswold hamlet is inhabited by faded gentry, farmers and hippies in an air of eccentricity.

It’s the early 70s, a time of home-made bread, clothes, wine and beer, under the directive of John Seymour’s Self-Sufficiency bible. But all is not as it first seems - the horses are highly strung, the people have very strange habits and the sinister legacy of the previous groom haunts every shadow.

Mary runs writing classes and has both won and been placed in short story competitions. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University from 2010. A treasured possession is a letter from the late Beryl Bainbridge including: ‘I get many manuscripts - many – and most are so dreary I hesitate to turn the page. Yours is immediately different. I think it’s terrific. I really mean that. You use language like paint, with an attention to light and shade. You have a very individual slant on life and that is what makes a novelist’.

Mary is also an acclaimed water-colour artist. She studied graphic design at the Royal West of England College of Art in Bristol in the 70s and since then has specialised in painting farm livestock. Her commissions come from agricultural societies and farmers from many parts of the world. She’s traded as Slightly Sheepish for over 40 years.