Flatlands is a homage to Paul Gallico's classic short story The Snow Goose. Freda is a twelve-year-old evacuee from East London, who has been sent away at the start of the war, leaving behind everything familiar to her, to escape the expected German bombing. In her new temporary home in Lincolnshire, Freda finds herself billeted with a strange, cold and, ultimately, abusive couple, whose lives mirror the barren landscape in which they live a hand to mouth existence, based upon subsistence farming and poaching. There, deprived of any warmth, she meets a young man - Philip Rhayader -a conscientious objector who has left Oxford and his prospective vocation in the church following a nervous breakdown. Slowly, he introduces her to the wonders of the natural world and its enduring power to heal.

God's Little Artist is a biography in verse of Welsh painter Gwen John (1876 - 1939). As with many female painters of the time, John's work was often overshadowed by that of her male contemporaries, especially her brother Augustus John. God's Little Artist is a celebration of her passionate life and work, illustrated with precision, authenticity and the keen painterly eye of the poet, novelist and art critic Sue Hubbard. "In fifty years' time," wrote the painter Augustus John, "I shall be remembered only as the brother of Gwen". Now, nearly 100 years after Gwen John's death, her younger brother's prescient words don't seem so surprising as her work experiences a resurrection alongside other previously neglected female artists. God's Little Artist begins with poems about Gwen John's early life spent in Tenby with her brother Augustus, under the dour glare of their solicitor, organ-playing father. They detail her time in London studying at the Slade School of Art, and her eventual move to Paris where she modelled for other artists. It was here that she met Auguste Rodin, who was thirty-six years her senior and by whom she was captivated. Through close observation, and a landscape of colour, these poems bring John's artistic eye to the fore. Minute details from a 'pink china cup' to the way a shawl 'hangs in a cloud of indigo grief' bring these poems to life. Her heart-breaking affair with Rodin is told through a series of wistful poems depicting the loneliness and depression she felt as he drifted away. In her introductory essay, Sue Hubbard discusses how the loss of Gwen John's mother when she was a child could have impacted her later life. She was an intensely private person, with a tendency to become fixated on people and relationships, as shown in the two thousand letters she wrote to Rodin over thirteen years, and, later, in her intense commitment to her faith. For John, God and art became inextricably linked and saintliness an obsessive goal. Gradually, John's descent into poor health seeps into the poems, culminating with her tragic premature death, hastened, perhaps, by the use of toxic lead white paint. Regardless of the tragedies and challenges she undoubtedly faced, Gwen John was a woman of great passion. With precision and authenticity, succinctness and warmth, Sue Hubbard animates her singular life.

Paula Modersohn-Becker was a pioneer of modern art in Europe, but denounced as degenerate by the Nazis after her death. Sue Hubbard draws on the artist's diaries and paintings to bring to life her singular existence, her battle to achieve independence and recognition and her intense relationship with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Not only do we discover Paula's vibrant personality and rich legacy of Expressionist paintings, but also come to understand something of the corrupted ideologies of the Third Reich. Written with the eye of a painter and the soul of a poet this moving story is a meditation on love, loss, memory and, ultimately, hope.

Hannah's Jewish identity is submerged and largely unidentified. Returning to her embryonic career as a photographer, she is convinced that if she finds her roots--some connection with her Jewish past--she will make sense of her life. A failed affair leads to a breakdown, and to her ex-husband gaining custody of her children. Left alone to rebuild her life she begins to realise that we each have to construct our own lives. Identity is not dependent on spurious notions of 'roots'or 'romance'.

This, London-based painter Sarah Medway’s second publication from Anomie Publishing, is devoted to the subject of the River Thames. The publication presents a series of twenty-eight oil paintings created in Medway’s canal-side studio in central London during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020-21. The Thames is beautiful, terrifying, powerful, alluring and dangerous. Medway captures the river’s eclectic dynamics, rhythms and energy through the language of abstract painting, the ripples, bubbles, eddies and currents, the reflections and refractions denoted through sinuous lines, ellipses and spots, dots and loops, flecks and swirls. Referencing 20th-century modernist movements such as De Stijl, Tachisme and post-war American Abstract Expressionism, Medway’s own, lyrical, often graphic approach to painting the Thames results in a vivid interplay between pattern and colour. The paintings have overt musical resonances – tempo, rhythm and dynamics as might be encountered in an orchestral score. Like the river, the paintings are at times joyous and playful, at other times brooding and menacing, yet always moving, in flux, traveling onwards towards the sea. An introductory text by critic and writer Sue Hubbard takes readers through the series, exploring how the paintings engage with the qualities and complexities of the river. An in-person conversation between Medway and writer, editor and curator Anna McNay provides insight into the artist’s life and work, discussing the processes by which Medway makes her paintings and the thinking behind them. Designed and produced by Peter B. Willberg, this foil-blocked, cloth-bound hardback publication with a special dustjacket also features an illustrated chronology documenting Medway’s life and career. Sarah Medway (b.1955, Seaton Carew, UK) is a painter based in London. As well as group exhibitions at institutions such as Tate Britain, the Whitechapel, the Royal Academy, the World Trade Center and Austin Museum of Art, Medway’s solo shows include Flowers East, London, Chelsea Hotel, New York, Kienbaum Gallery, Frankfurt, The Mandalai, Thailand, and Atelier Gallery, Spain. She has works in many public, private and corporate collections in the UK, US, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Hong Kong and Thailand.

Award-winning writer Sue Hubbard delivers a poignant story of transformation, conjuring the rugged beauty of County Kerry's coastline. Newly widowed, Martha Cassidy has returned to a remote cottage in a virtually abandoned village on the west coast of Ireland for reasons even she is uncertain of. Looking out from her window towards the dramatic rise of the Skelligs across the water, she reflects on the loss of Brendan, her husband and charming curator, his death stirring unresolved heartache from years gone by. Alone on the windswept headland, surrounded by miles of cold sea, the past closes in. As the days unfold, Martha searches for a way forward beyond grief, but finds herself drawn into a standoff between the entrepreneur Eugene Riordan and local hill farmer Paddy O'Connell. While the tension between them builds to a crisis that leaves Paddy in hospital, Martha encounters Colm, a talented but much younger musician and poet. Caught between its history and its future, the Celtic Tiger reels with change, and Martha faces redemptive choices that will change her life forever.

Sarah Medway's abstract paintings are a delicate, evocative and sincere investigation into the nature of light as it manifests itself through the myriad environments that surround us. She navigates us through the different seasons, sometimes on foreign shores - from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia and beyond - other times closer to her canal-side studio in central London. She leads us through different times of day and night, from dawn to dusk and long into the night. She takes us up to the skies, into sunlight and shade, clouds and fog, rainbows and sunsets. She takes us into fields, along the coastline, and far out to sea. With her distinctive vocabulary of abstract marks and shimmering palettes, her works build into complex webs of patterns and textures that capture something of the experience of perceiving light, colour and shapes as they filter through the atmosphere into our eyes, minds, memories and subconscious. That Medway's works take us on different journeys, into different environments and out to sea is certainly apt, as the body of work presented in this latest monograph on the artist takes the form of 56 canvases that were commissioned for display on the new P&O Cruises Britannia, the largest and highest-specification cruise ship built by the company to date, making regular voyages into the Med, to the Fjords, to the Canaries, the Caribbean and beyond. This substantial commission is one of the latest in a long line of commissions by P&O of original works of art by living artists. For the publication, specially commissioned texts by eminent art critics Andrew Lambirth and Sue Hubbard offer an illuminating and insightful introduction to Medway's oeuvre and to this significant new series of paintings. In addition to having participated in group exhibitions at institutions including Tate Britain, the Whitechapel, the Royal Academy, the World Trade Center and Austin Museum of Art, Medway has had solo exhibitions at venues including Flowers East, London, Chelsea Hotel, New York, Kienbaum Gallery, Frankfurt, The Mandalai, Thailand, and Atelier Gallery, Spain. She has works in many public, private and corporate collections in the UK, US, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Hong Kong and Thailand. Published by Anomie, the monograph has been designed by Peter B. Willberg with James Sutton, and printed in Italy by Castelli Bolis.