Maggie Hartwell

Maggie Hartwell spent thirty years as a county archivist in Gloucestershire, cataloguing parish records, land surveys, and the kind of local history that does not make it into books. When the council restructured and her post was eliminated, she found herself at fifty-five with more time than she knew what to do with and a folder on her laptop she had been adding to for years.

When her husband David died, she stayed in the Cotswolds village they had made their home. The quiet suited her. So did the research.

Thorn and Silence is her first novel.

She lives in a small stone cottage with a garden that is more ambitious than she is, a cat named after a minor Victorian botanist, and a reading chair positioned for maximum afternoon light. She walks every morning, rarely in the right shoes, and maintains strong opinions about the correct ratio of milk to tea.

She is working on the second Quiet Craft mystery.