Biography
After completing a BA and an MA at the University of Manchester, A.M. Howell now writes policy documents for local government. In 2015, she was one of 15 writers selected to take part in the Curtis Brown Creative Writing for Children Course, tutored by children’s author Catherine Johnson. A.M. Howell lives in rural Suffolk with her husband and two sons, and was inspired to write The Garden of Lost Secrets by the discovery of a 100-year-old gardener’s notebook at Ickworth House in Suffolk. Her second children’s novel is The House of One Hundred Clocks, which published in 2020.
Shortlisted Books by A M Howell
The Garden of Lost Secrets
A wonderfully atmospheric story, full of skilfully layered secrets
Andy Shepherd, author of The Boy Who Grew Dragons
It was the discovery of a 100-year-old gardener's notebook at Ickworth House in Suffolk which fired the imagination of author A. M. Howell. Who wrote in it? Who would have worked in this garden over a century ago? What would they have thought of the world they were living in?
The Garden of Lost Secrets will take you into a world of mystery and war. Clara is sent to stay with her formidable aunt and uncle in the Gardener's Cottage of a country estate. But amongst the hothouses and sweeping grounds hide many secrets: a locked room and a hidden key, and a mysterious boy who only appears in the gardens at night...Except Clara has a secret of her own — a terrible one, buried in the pocket of her pinafore. And for Clara to unravel the garden's secrets, she will have to face up to a truth she can't bring herself to acknowledge and a war she's desperate to forget...
This book was shortlisted in: 2021
