Charlotte Williams

Starting Strong: Your First Steps into Animal-Assisted Interventions is a practical, inspiring guide for anyone curious about working alongside animals to support people’s wellbeing. Whether you are a teacher, therapist, youth worker or simply someone drawn to the power of human–animal connection, this book will help you take your first confident steps into the world of Animal-Assisted Interventions (AAI). Written in a warm, down-to-earth voice by Charlotte Williams, a frontline practitioner and founder of a respected UK-based therapeutic organisation, Starting Strong shares hard-earned insights, case examples and powerful moments of growth, failure and learning. It offers clear guidance on the why, how and what of AAI, from ethical foundations to practical session ideas, without overwhelming jargon or unrealistic promises. This is not a clinical textbook or a feel-good memoir. It is a toolkit for action. Readers will come away with a deeper understanding of what AAI really involves, how to get started safely and ethically, and how to reflect, grow and stay grounded as they develop their own approach. If you believe animals have something important to offer in support of human healing and connection, this book will help you turn that belief into practice.

'In its exploration of geographical, racial and cultural dislocation, Sugar and Slate is in the finest tradition of work to have emerged from the black diaspora in recent times' Gary Younge, GuardianA powerful, radiant memoir from writer Charlotte Williams exploring the intertwined history of Wales, Africa and the CaribbeanThe daughter of a white Welsh-speaking mother and a Black father from Guyana, Charlotte Williams' childhood world was one of mixed messages, dominated by the feeling that 'somehow to be half Welsh and half Afro-Caribbean was always to be half of something but never quite anything whole at all'.Sugar and Slate tells the fascinating story of her journey of self-discovery, toing and froing between the small north Wales town where she grew up, Africa and the Caribbean. Blending memoir with historical research, Sugar and Slate delves deep into Black Welsh history, revealing the nation as home to one of the first interracial marriages in Britain in 1768, and a site of Britain's first major race riots in 1919.Powerful, lyrical and intimate, Williams' experience casts light on Wales and Welshness, illuminating what it is to be racially marginalized within a community, which is itself marginalized within Britain, and offering a unique insight into the complex Black history of Wales.A title in the Black Britain: Writing Back series - selected by Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo, this series rediscovers and celebrates pioneering books depicting black Britain that remap the nation.

In association with Planet Books, a new edition of this seminal book of Welsh literature with an introduction by Professor Hazel V. Carby. 'It is Williams's Welshness that makes the examination of her mixed-race identity distinctive, but it is the humour, candour and facility of her style that make it exceptional . . . an engaging and perceptive voice describing an engrossing and particular personal story.' Gary Younge A mixed-race young woman, the daughter of a white Welsh-speaking mother and black father from Guyana, grows up in a small town on the coast of north Wales. From there she travels to Africa, the Caribbean and finally back to Wales. Sugar and Slate is a story of movement and dislocation in which there is a constant pull of to-ing and fro-ing, going away and coming back with always a sense of being 'half home'. This is both a personal memoir and a story that speaks to the wider experience of mixed-race Britons. It is a story of Welshness and a story of Wales and above all a story for those of us who look over our shoulder across the sea to some other place. It would have been so much easier if I had been able to say, 'I come from Africa,' then maybe added under my breath, 'the long way round.' Instead, the Africa thing hung about me like a Welsh Not, a heavy encumbrance on my soul; a Not-identity; an awkward reminder of what I was or what I wasn't. Once at a seminar, one of those occasions when the word Diaspora crops up too many times and where there aren't too many of us present, the only other Diaspora-person sought me out. His eyes caught mine in recognition of something I can't say I could name, yet I must have responded because later as we chatted over fizzy water and conference packs, he offered quite uninvited and with all the authority of an African: 'People like you? You gotta get digging and if you dig deep enough you're gonna find Africa.'

A little girl searches for that special something to make her home complete. When she visits the animal shelter she finds the answer. Can Pablo the rescue cat rescue her?

Jessica Mayhew has a new client at her psychotherapy practice. Artist Pandora Powell is in shock following the death of her mother, Ursula, who was murdered during the theft of a valuable painting at her studio. And Jess has problems of her own, as she struggles to adjust to the demands of being a single parent.Pandora is a beautiful but shy and vulnerable young woman who has grown up in the shadow of her famous ancestors, the Welsh painters Augustus and Gwen John, and under the wing of her twin sister, Isobel. There is a suggestion that Isobel's husband, art dealer Blake Thomas, might be responsible for Ursula's murder. Blake is riding high with the success of his latest protégé, reclusive ex-miner and would-be revolutionary Hefin Morris, who is fast becoming the enfant terrible of the contemporary art world.When Blake too dies in mysterious circumstances, Jessica is drawn into a quest that not only leads her into mortal danger but also threatens to destroy her entire moral code as a therapist.Black Valley tells the story of how Jessica and Pandora, as therapist and client, slip between their different roles, becoming caught in a net from which neither can escape - except through treachery and betrayal.

Therapist-turned-reluctant detective Jessica Mayhew is on the trail once again in this smart, fast-paced novel of suspense from Charlotte Williams--author of the debut The House on the Cliff--a tautly written psychological thriller that ventures deep into the recesses of the mind.Jessica Mayhew has enough problems without getting wrapped up in her patients' drama. Her separation from her husband doesn't seem as amicable as she once thought, and her daughters are drifting away as fast as they're growing up. But her new client--chic, moody, obsessive painter Elinor Powell--has a way of drawing people in and soon Jessica's getting involved with what seems to be a most artful murder.Elinor presents a rare professional challenge. She blames herself for keeping a valuable portrait in her studio, where her mother was killed in an unsolved robbery. An attack of claustrophobia is interfering with her work, as is her deepening paranoia about her twin sister, Isobel, and her brother-in-law, Blake, a ruthless art dealer. But when Jessica meets the entire unhappy family at the debut show of Blake's prot g --a reclusive ex-miner producing gloomy canvases in the Black Mountains of southeast Wales--she starts to wonder whether Elinor might be on to something. Might there be more to her mother's death? Could Blake have been involved? And just what's going on in those lonely hills?Set against the otherworldly Welsh countryside, Black Valley is a novel rich in character, intrigue, and harrowing dangers.

A riveting psychological crime novel featuring Jessica Mayhew, a therapist who becomes entangled in the long-dormant murder mystery that haunts her patient's familyJessica Mayhew is a sharp, successful therapist with a thriving practice and a loving family at home. But actor Gwydion Morgan's dramatic appearance at her office coincides with a turbulent moment in her life: her husband has just confessed to a one-night stand with a much younger woman. Gwydion, son of the famous stage director Evan Morgan, is good-looking and talented but mentally fragile, tormented by an intriguing phobia. When his mother phones to say he is suicidal, Jessica, determined to trace the cause of his distress, decides to make a house call.The Morgans live in a grand clifftop mansion overlooking the rocky Welsh coast. It seems to be a remote paradise, but there's something sinister about the place, too. Jessica learns that an au pair who cared for Gwydion drowned in the bay under mysterious circumstances. In her quest to help her client, to whom she's becoming increasingly attached, Jessica becomes ensnared in the Morgan family mystery, which soon becomes an explosive public scandal--one that puts her directly in harm's way. All the while, Jessica is doing her best to keep her marriage and family together--but her connection with Gwydion is impossible to ignore.A smart, sexy novel of suspense, The House on the Cliff will keep you gripped until the very end.