Search results for ""cinder house""

It''s after a night in Cardiff''s loudest gay bar that Toni first lays eyes on Gav, a retired Welsh boxer, and his boyfriend Karol, an aspiring Polish photographer. The trio soon fall into an intimate, ambiguous love triangle. After a tragic event at a beach in Swansea, the trio are ripped apart, and Toni escapes to London, becoming caught between a convenient, loveless relationship and an illicit, lustful affair. Lost halfway between the British future she has always wanted, and the Eastern European past she has been running from, Toni can only wonder where and with whom she really belongs. Above Us The Sea is an ode to the tangled remains of lost loves and the imprints left by grieving souls, yearning for connection. This is a story of aching and emerging, intimacy and distance, set against an increasingly hostile landscape.

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A Time's best sci-fi book of the year 2023 'It's inside every parent to want to carry their child's terror. It's the thing they never tell you about. Watching your child grow up, watching your child learn to suffer...' When lorry driver Dougie Alport carries out a deadly attack on his employer's head office, the reverberations of his actions unleash a grief in his wife Maureen that threatens to reveal the secret she has spent years hiding from their son, Boyd. Moving north to start again is Maureen's best response. But as the walls begin to throb with mould and his mother slips from his grasp, Boyd decides to flee, finding solace with a new friend at the landfill site on the edge of town. Here, a startling discovery upends Boyd's new life and forces him into a reckoning with his mother, her past, and his future. A visceral story of collective memory and moss-coated horror, Lamb asks us how far we'd go to protect those we love, and how intensely we are bound to those who have come before us.

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WAITING FOR TED charts the destruction of Rosalind and Ted’s relationship at the hands of an expensive chaise longue. Rosie comes from a wealthy, upper- class background. She dreams of being a traditional housewife to her big strong working man, cooking, tending the house and instagramming her perfect life. But she also needs to fill her house with things that she can Instagram, so when Ted bans her from spending any more of her father’s money on her ‘work’ as an interior design influencer until she’s actually earning, she begins to scheme – only to watch her schemes unravel, and the rest of her life with them. Told in a series of reflections over the course of an evening spent waiting for Ted, Rosie charts her relationship’s downfall, how she drifted from her only friend (who she never really liked anyway), how she contributed to the breakdown in her parents’ marriage, how she never really let Ted into her perfect world, how she drove them to their spectacular breakdown, and as she does it becomes increasingly clear to the reader that Ted may not be coming home at all.

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Gala, a young trans woman, works at a hostel in New Mexico. She is obsessed with the Get Happies, the quintessential 1960s Californian band, helmed by its resident genius, B—-. Gala needs to know: Why did the band stop making music? Why did they never release their rumored album, Summer Fun?

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Esther lives in the Pennines with her father. She is obsessed with experimenting with ways to pass out: from snorting Daz powder to attempted autoasphyxiation in a serviced apartment in north London. But what happens when you take something too far? And what has Esther's mother, a beautiful dancer wasting away in her bedroom, to do with it all?

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"Ant is borderline obsessed with funerals, likening the events to weddings as gatherings he looks forward to. Yet, when a childhood friend passes, Ant's veneer starts to crumble. Weirdly funny, Whiteout Conditions tracks Ant and his friend Vince as they make their way through Chicogoland's suburbs, which, in Shah's telling, are as harrowing as any arctic climate." --Wendy J. Fox, BuzzFeed '15 Small Press Books To Kick Off Your 2020 Reading Season' Ant is back in Chicago for a funeral, and he typically enjoys funerals. Since most of his family has passed away, he finds himself attracted to their endearing qualities: the hyperbolic language, the stoner altar boy, seeing friends in suits for the first time. That is, until the tragic death of Ray -- Ant's childhood friend, Vince's teenage cousin. Ray was the younger third-wheel that Ant and Vince were stuck babysitting while in high school, and his sudden death makes national news. In the depths of a brutal Midwest winter, Ant rides with Vince through the falling snow to Ray's funeral, an event that has been accruing a sense of consequence. With a poet's sensibility, Shah navigates the murky responsibilities of adulthood, grief, toxic masculinity, and the tragedy of revenge in this haunting Midwestern noir.

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For as long as humans have existed, they have asked: What if? Science fiction was a defining genre of the postwar era, and its current boom across books, film and TV shows no sign of slowing. Space ships, time travel, aliens and artificial intelligence continue to obsess us, and dreams of the apocalypse haunt our own post-pandemic age. But what is it that compels writers to imagine the future? Writing the Future gathers some of the best contemporary writers of science fiction, speculative fiction, dystopia and eco-fiction to explain their craft and explore the many worlds upon which our imaginations might land. Authors such as Toby Litt, Nina Allan, Adam Roberts and Una McCormack reveal how to balance scientific research with creative freedom, examine the different forms the written text might evolve into, and offer practical advice on giving life to your own vision of the future. Whether you're a reader, a seasoned writer looking to hone your skills, or a beginner who's just starting out, Writing the Future provides valuable insights into the craft of imagining the worlds of tomorrow.

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In the aftermath of the Iraq war, an odd Iraqi man entranced by Americana and old Western movies dresses in double denim and roams a lawless landscape in search of his own Western story. Amidst the disorder he meets a young girl, and together they set out across the tank strewn desert on his trusty camel to find safety. Written with a simplicity of direction that captivates like a film, The Muslim Cowboy is an extraordinary and mesmerising literary debut about the search for identity, the struggle to reconcile conflicting values, and sacrifice as that great virtue we all must embrace in order to find meaning and purpose in a world of chaos.

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Currowan is a portrait of tragedy, survival and the power of community. Bronwyn tells her story and those of many others - what they saw, thought and felt as they battled the most ferocious fire Australia has ever seen.

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High up on the 17th floor of a South London council block, a study circle is being held. They re studying the Koran and Ishaq has been attending for five years now, but official interest in the group is building. With an EDL march in just a few days time, some of them think they might be under surveillance. Ishaq is secure in his identity as British and Muslim but, as papers discuss Asian sex gangs in the North and a European politician appears on television discussing a final solution, he wonders if Britain itself sees him the same way. When he runs into Shams, an old friend looking for work, Ishaq offers to help him out. And that s all it takes to begin a chain reaction that will collide with extremism, nationalism, and MI5.

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In peace-agreement Ulster a mother rears her two daughters, as her husband is decommissioned from his violent paramilitary past.In Florida a septuagenarian runs a community refuge for women and the authorities have surrounded it as a threat to national security. In laboratories all over the world the human genome is being dissected and decoded.In Three Dreams in the Key of G three female voices, Mother, Crone and Creatrix, unknowingly influence each other's fates as each battles to assert themselves and discover their voices in hostile environments.

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Leeds the melting pot. A Spanish ham cutter, a Columbian chicken sexier, an Italian usher, a Cape Verdean actor, an Iraqi-Kurd ghost writer and a widow of Leeds weave their way towards the Playhouse for The Death of Margaret Thatcher.

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Hardback literary fiction novel from debut author, Harry Gallon.

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In northeast Los Angeles, wildfires rage and coyotes stalk the neighbourhood streets. The wind blows heavy with smoke and, inside a rented bungalow on hilly Lemoyne Street, the air grows heavy with something else. Ropey closes his checking account and transfers his net worth to his sock drawer. Megan sharpens pencils and chops produce to obsession. Lyle tightens his grip on his girlfriend Egypt, whose growing dependence makes her question everything, especially Lyle. And Captain America, the cat of the house, finds his orange coat giving way to a nest of bleeding sores. As the fires burn ever closer, will the four friends wake up to their false paradise?

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Heather, Rachel and Antonia are going to Almanby. Heather needs to find her boyfriend who, like so many, went and never came back. Rachel has a mysterious package to deliver, and her life depends on it. And Antonia - poor, lovestruck Antonia just wants the chance to spend the day with Heather. So off they set through the idyllic yet perilous English countryside, in which nature thrives in abundance and summer lasts forever. And as they travel through ever-shifting geography and encounter strange voices in the fizz of shortwave radio, the harder it becomes to tell friend from foe. Creepy, dreamlike, unsettling and unforgettable - you are about to join the privileged few who come to understand exactly why we don''t go to Almanby.

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Sacred artifacts have gone missing from the Minnesota Red Earth Reservation and the suspect list is growing. While it could be the racists from the bordering town, or a young man struggling with problems, or the county coroner and his cronies, the need for answers and apprehending the culprit is amplified when the Tribal Chairman, is murdered.

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In 1972, during the chaotic days of miners' strikes and the three-day week, Bridget 'Brix' Shipley moves to Plunge Hill to start her new job as a medical secretary at the local hospital. As she writes to Maurice, her younger brother, sick at home, it becomes clear that not all is well at Plunge Hill.

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London, early-1970s. In a city plagued by football violence, Republican bombings, blackouts and virulent racism, a new urban myth is taking hold. Among the broken down estates, crumbling squats and failed projects of a dying metropolis, whispered sightings of a malevolent figure nicknamed the Judderman are spreading. A manifestation of the sick psyche of a city, or something else?

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The Hollow Shore is both fictional and real. It is a place where flowers undermine railway tracks, relationships decay and monsters lurk. It is the shoreline of a receding, retreating England. This is where things fall apart, waste away and fade from memory.

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''Maybe it was the sense that the poles of her world had lost their charge. The poles imposing order, dividing sense from nonsense, reality from unreality, love from hate, Mark from Clarissa. That they were all falsely opposed repetitions of the same delusion. That the house she lived in was just an optical illusion in the light of an undifferentiated unknown.'' Jacky ''The Beetle'' McKenzie is, if you ask her, the most sensible and rational person in the world. Unfortunately, her ordinary and the rest of the world''s ordinary don''t mix. To the rest of the world, she is belligerent, weird, obsessive, angry and volatile. Always, in the background, husband Mark and girlfriend Clarissa have one eye on each other, both asking the same question - which of them will she push too far first? Which of them will abandon her, and which will be left to pick up the pieces? A Scarab Where the Heart Should Be invites us into the mind of one of the world''s few true individuals as she embarks on her

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In a torrent of stream-of-consciousness fragments, the unnamed narrator of Blood Red recounts the aftermath of her failed marriage in explicit, sensual detail. She falls in and out of love, parties with her friends, skates around the city at night, does a lot of drugs, and gives in to her impulses. Her internal monologue is punctuated by bouts of trypophobia, an obsessive cataloguing of holes that empty, fill, widen, and threaten to swallow her entirely. Blood courses through her every encounter from periods, fights, accidents, wounds, sex, streaming to and from her fixation with holes. Blood is a vibrant reminder of her physicality, a manifestation of her interiority, a link to memories and sensations-until its abrupt absence changes everything. Provocative and raw, Blood Red is a fierce portrayal of a woman navigating the grey-or red-zones of her uncertainties and paradoxical urges. A subversive grappling with what it means to wrest power over one's body, Blood Red revels in the narrator's autonomy to make choices and face the outcomes, no matter the scale.

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Through storytelling rhymes and vulnerable narratives in conversation with both contemporary Hip-Hop culture and systemic anti-Blackness, 808s & Otherworlds pieces together a speculative reality where Blackfolk are simultaneously superhuman and dehumanized.

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Iris has never left the big house in the country she shares with Mammy and the servants. When The Ladies arrive, she finds that she must appease her dead relatives. Other stories in this collection explore themes of motherhood and the fragile body, family dynamics and small town tensions, unusual traditions and metamorphosis. Dead Relatives and Other Stories is the highly anticipated, no-holds-barred short story collection from Lucie McKnight Hardy, and readers can expect more of the suspense and trepidation evident in her debut novel, Water Shall Refuse Them. Not for the faint-hearted, Dead Relatives invites you behind closed doors, and will leave you wondering if it's better that they're kept shut and firmly locked.

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It's December 2016 and Toby and Angelica are going back to their father's farm for Christmas. Now that they live in London and Berlin respectively - eschewing the family trade in favour of more creative pursuits - this return to the pastoral also feels like a return to the parochial.

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From M.R. James to Shirley Jackson, the Uncanny has long provided fertile ground for writers – and recent years have seen a notable resurgence in both literature and film. But how does the Uncanny work? What can a writer do to ensure their fiction haunts the reader’s imagination? Writing the Uncanny sees some of the best contemporary authors explain what drew them to horror, ghost stories, folklore and beyond, and reveal how to craft unsettling fiction which resonates. Authors such as Jeremy Dyson, Alison Moore, Jenn Ashworth and Catriona Ward share their insights on psychogeography, fairy tales, cultural tradition and the supernatural, and offer practical advice on their different approaches to the genre. Writing the Uncanny is an essential guide for both the casual reader and the aspiring writer of strange tales.

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Summer 1972. Jon's adult life is about to begin. While exploring his late-father's study, Jon comes across a strange unpublished novel his father left behind. Fiction and reality blend a little too closely, and when he discovers a hidden appendix he learns that his father's imagination was more terrifying and more powerful than he ever thought.

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Organ donation is in its infancy and Daisy Howard, who is giving a kidney to her aunt, is in the hands of a pioneering surgeon. After the operation, Daisy is desperate to get back to her family, yet the days go by and she remains in the hospital; meanwhile, an old friend keeps visiting with news of home, and Daisy becomes increasingly uneasy.

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An Ojibwa woman has been found dead on the outskirts of the Minnesota Red Earth Reservation. The coroner ruled the death a suicide, but after an ex-lover comes back into her life saying foul play was involved, Renee LaRoche wants to prove otherwise.

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It''s the summer of 1982 and fourteen-year-old Swanna Swain is the only one left at camp. The place is a ghost town by the time her mother Val finally shows up six hours late-stoned and radiant-in a Ford pickup driven by Borislav, her new young Russian lover. Assuming she is headed home to her air-conditioned Upper West Side apartment, Swanna and her lovable younger brother Madding are instead dragged to Vermont-to an artist colony where kids are not welcome and they are forced to sleep in the back of the truck, while Val is cosy inside the house with the Russian. Then Swanna meets Dennis, a handsome married father of two, at a bowling alley, and, knowing a thing or two about seduction from Judy Blume, her best friend at camp, and her own parents'' many affairs-she sets out to convince Dennis to help her. But love seldom obeys rules, and even a tough, smart, city girl like Swanna might not be able to handle falling in love. Best-selling novelist Jennifer Belle returns with a kind of in

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An ex-con hired to fix up a school bus for a couple living off the grid in the desert finds himself in the middle of their tattered relationship. An electrician''s plan to take his young nephew on a hike in the mountains, as a break from the motel room where they live, goes awry thanks to an untrustworthy new coworker. A night custodian makes the mistake of revealing too much about his work at a medical research facility to a girl who shares his passion for death metal. A relapsing addict struggles to square his desire for a White woman he meets in a writing class with family expectations and traditions. Set in and around Flagstaff, the stories in Sinking Bell depict violent collisions of love, cultures, and racism. In his gritty and searching fiction debut, Bojan Louis draws empathetic portraits of day laborers, metalheads, motel managers, aspiring writers and musicians, construction workers, people passing through with the hope of something better somewhere else. His characters strai

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One mistake can unravel everything... She only left her daughter in the car for a minute; just a quick minute whilst she ran into the shop. She barely thought twice about making the decision, but it soon began to consume her every thought. And not just her thoughts, but those of every neighbour, police officer and social security worker in a fifteen mile radius. But this is her child. Surely she knows best? After she'd made the move to a small town in Scotland, the rolling hills and blustery beaches seemed to be the perfect backdrop for her and her four year-old daughter, Emily, to start again. It wasn't always easy just the two of them, but Liz was sure that she could manage this time. And now this? Sometimes, one mistake is all it takes to unravel everything.

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`We came out here to begin again. We came out here for the clear air and a fresh start. No one said to us: beware of fresh starts. No one said to us: God knows what will begin.’ Timely and suspenseful, Sealed is a gripping modern fable on motherhood, a terrifying portrait of ordinary people under threat from their own bodies and from the world around them. With elements of speculative fiction and the macabre, this is also an unforgettable story about a mother’s fight to survive. Heavily pregnant Alice and her partner Pete are done with the city. Above all, Alice is haunted by the rumours of the skin sealing epidemic starting to infect the urban population. Surely their new remote mountain house will offer safety, a place to forget the nightmares and start their little family. But the mountains and their people hold a different kind of danger.With their relationship under intolerable pressure, violence erupts and Alice is faced with the unthinkable as she fights to protect her unborn child.

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After two decades spent in the US, L-J is on a flight back to his native Suffolk to visit family and his childhood coastal home. His flight is straightforward, as per design, until it hits a glitch – an unexpected and dramatic cabin decompression – which suggests that all that L-J expects from this trip cannot be counted on.

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It's a quiet house, sheltered, standing in a mass of tangled old trees called the Holtwood. Raymond watches it. He's been watching it, through a gap in the fence at the bottom of the garden, for weeks. Thinking about the elderly owners, Mr and Mrs Latch, who took him in one night when he was a frightened boy caught up in an emergency. Mr Latch showed him something that was kept in a wardrobe in the spare room. He can't remember what it was. He only knows how sick it made him feel. Raymond watches Holt House. He has to remember what he saw. He has to get inside.

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A forensic entomologist tries to solve the inexplicable murder of his wife, who impossibly seems to have been killed in a forest at the same time she was asleep in bed with him. A husband becomes concerned by his wife''s strange behaviour, which includes sleepwalking, muttering strange phrases, and a bizarre erotic fascination with octopi. A woman visits a witch doctor who promises to forge an unbreakable bond between her and the man of her dreams, but things go horribly awry after the man dies. And four high school friends reunite twenty years later at a class reunion and must face the long-buried truth of a demonic experience from their youth. The history of Mexico is drenched in blood, from the sacrifices of the ancient Aztecs to the bloodthirsty conquest of the Spanish to modern-day violent crime, and that legacy of violence and death pervades these stories. They blend the genres of horror and noir in inventive ways and run the gamut from chilling to weirdly unsettling to darkly fu

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Hardback literary novel with elements of speculative fiction.

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"At minus five degrees, even the densest blood materials start to turn: the beginnings of a human heart will still into black ice." Callum has been given an opportunity: Jozsef's house is the perfect place to live - plenty of room, a sought-after London location and filled with priceless works of art. All that Jozsef asks in return is for some company while he's ill and the promise that if it all gets too much, someone will be there to help him at the end. It's fortunate then, when Callum meets Lauren who works in Human Resources and specialises in getting rid of people. Jozsef welcomes them both inside, and so begins a deadly spiral of violence. Pushed ever onwards by the poison of ambition, and haunted by loses from the past, these characters are drawn together in a catastrophe of endings. Naomi Booth's second novel is a groundbreaking dissection of class, xenophobia and compassion. Exit Management will seize you in its cold hands and show you the dark heart within us all.

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