Search results for ""Bluemoose Books Ltd""

His name was Joseph, but for years they had called him Panenka, a name that was his sadness and his story. Panenka has spent 25 years living with the disastrous mistakes of his past, which have made him an exile in his home town and cost him his dearest relationships. Now aged 50, Panenka begins to rebuild an improvised family life with his estranged daughter and her seven year old son. But at night, Panenka suffers crippling headaches that he calls his Iron Mask. Faced with losing everything, he meets Esther, a woman who has come to live in the town to escape her own disappointments. Together, they find resonance in each other's experiences and learn new ways to let love into their broken lives.

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'Cerys receives an unexpected inheritance but there are rules attached, twisted rules that have to be followed if she is to receive it in full . As she settles into her new life, she begins to feel trapped and senses that the villagers, her sister and a man she keeps seeing on a bicycle are constantly watching her. Cerys, desperate to control her own future, decides to try break free but the past is ever present and dictates her fate.'

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John Wilson dreamt of becoming a renowned composer. His first symphony lost in a bombed-out Manchester pub, John sets aside music for literature, writing under the name Anthony Burgess. Decades later, alone once more in the city, he encounters three spectres from his past. They refer to him as Our Jackie, and he senses the façade of Burgess begin to crumble. Walking rain-soaked streets he is drawn back to his past lives in pre-independent Malaya, wartime London, 1960s Europe, and 1970s America. Traversing continents, this once working-class lad becomes one of twentieth century Europe's literary greats, but what of those left behind, and of those bound to him and is it possible to recreate your own history? We've dug three graves for you, Mr Burgess. One for your body, One for your books, And one for your ego.

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As university term gives way to the summer break she is plagued by dark memories and the only person there for her is her cousin - a cousin that no one else can see - together they embark on a journey that changes Jen and her world forever. 'Haunting, shape-shifting and tense, 'East Coast Road' takes the reader on a thrilling quest which challenges our preconceptions. Chilvers is a master storyteller and she guides us through the complexities of devotion, faith, tenderness, grief and desire, all set against the rugged coastal edges of north east England.' - HELEN MORT

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Eva and her son Torin have to leave London and move back to Ireland. Eva to find the daughter she left behind and Torin from a life that was threatening his freedom. It is about dislocation and becoming unanchored and the need for a home and belonging and the disturbance when you're wrenched out of your environment.

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Mukesh Agarwal sits alone in the Black Eagle pub, unaware that a riot is brewing or that Billy, his youngest son, is still out on his bike ...A mile away in the family home in Church Street, Anila, one of the three Agarwal girls, is reading Smash Hits and listening to Radio One as she sprawls across the bottom bunk, oblivious to the monumental tragedy that is about to hit her family ...It is 1981 and Handsworth is teetering on the brink of collapse. Factories are closing, unemployment is high, the National Front are marching and the neglected inner cities are ablaze as riots breakout across Thatcher's fractured Britain. The Agarwals are facing their own nightmares but family, pop music, protest, unexpected friendships and a community that refuses to disappear all contribute to easing their personal pain and that of Handsworth itself.THE HANDSWORTH TIMES is a story of loss and transition, and pulling together because ultimately, there is such a thing as society.

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Life is good for reformed standup Hayden McGlynn. He's living in rent-free luxury in London's Kentish Town. His soon-to-be new agent is the hottest in the business. The rights to his autobiographical screenplay, set in his native Dublin, have been snapped up. The future is money. The future is success. The future is Hayden McGlynn. But Hayden has a problem. Screen Hayden is none other than Wolfe Swift, The Greatest Actor Of This Or Any Other Age. And Wolfe Swift, as he prepares for the part, becomes Hayden McGlynn! Is the world ready for two Haydens? He also has a second problem. He's committed one murder and got away with it. He hasn't committed a second murder. What if he gets done for that? Which leads to problem number three. The screenplay is autobiographical. Has Hayden inadvertently grassed himself up? Hewbris, a post-postmodern crime anti-thriller in the same vein as cult classic Sloot, posits five levels of comedy, lands Hayden with six biological mothers, and proves the existence of God through a joke. Which came as a shock to the author.

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When her mother dies, SAKTHI must unravel the truth to escape the same fate but with tragic consequences for everyone close to her. This is a story of love, sacrifice and hope from The North of England.

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Mo Moore, estranged daughter of a sex-aid entrepreneur, regards her father as good as dead. And then he really does die and leaves her all his wealth. Stuck in a job in elderly care, newly single, and with nothing and no-one to keep her in England, Mo does what she’s always done when things get tough: she runs. It could have been anywhere, but a classified ad catches Mo’s eye, and it takes her to China. She lands in Pingdi, a remote mountain village that for centuries supplied dildos to the Imperial bedchamber, and whose revived sex-aid factory is in a financial fix. Soon Mo finds herself on the wrong side of the authorities and needing all the help she can get: China is a land of pointing fingers and blind eyes, of closed doors and open secrets, of rules and recklessness – a place, she discovers, where it’s not easy to be female.

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When three brothers find a dead magpie and peg it to the washing line, the resurrection re-enactment becomes a portent of tragedy to come, and a reminder of past guilt and trauma. In Captain Jesus we see a family struggle to cope as loss rips through their lives; through the teenage eyes of their mother, twenty years earlier, we glimpse the events that shape her response. The icons, influences and family histories that define faith connect the two narratives as the family gradually heals, thanks to the quietness of love and the natural world.

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Malka grows up in the Old City of Jerusalem in the confines of the Ultra-orthodox Jewish community. Meandering through the narrow streets she finds herself at the door of one of the city's most renowned and reclusive mystics and discovers her father's top rabbinical student, Russian immigrant Moshe studying forbidden Kabbalistic texts. She has a disturbing vision of a tree of prayers growing up inside the house, and the prayers all seem to be talking to her. The prayers become a giant bird, and chase her from the house. Malka has unwittingly uncovered a great mystical gift. Kabbalists believe that since the world was spoken into existence, if they can hear and understand that original Divine language, they can use it themselves, to shape and manipulate reality. Once in a millennia, a kabbalist is born with this ability. It turns out that Malka is one of them. After a disastrous first date with Moshe, Malka flees Jerusalem for Safed where she is drawn into a cult called Mystical Encounters, run by charismatic cult leader Avner Marcus. Avner is unsettled by Malka's authenticity, and she is not allowed to attend classes. Her only friends are former night club singer Shira, and traumatised ex-soldier Evven. Malka sets up her own mystical retreat in the woods, at an abandoned construction site. When she reveals this to Avner, he forces her to take him there and tries to rape her. Malka manages to evade him, and then burns down the cult after manipulating the Modern Hebrew word for Electricity, Chashmal Malka heads for Tel Avi, and sleeps rough on the beaches of the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Jaffa. Here she is discovered by legendary Arab chef Rukh Baraka, who is seeking to rekindle his career by training Arab and Israeli street children to create extraordinary food for his new restaurant, the Leviathan. Malka bonds with fellow runaway Mahmoud, who is escaping the wrath of his Imam father at his "deviant" sexuality. Mahmoud reveals the city behind the city, the hidden Palestinian history of which Malka has been ignorant. Moshe has been trying to find Malka and is forced to confront some of his own demons, including the disappearance of his younger sister when she was in his care. Moshe swears that he will not lose another girl he loves.

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Under the intense summer sun on the Essex coast a gull falls from the sky and strikes an unassuming local council worker sitting on the beach below. From that moment on he is obsessed, a crazed visionary repeatedly depicting the scene and the unknown figure within in it which filled his view at the moment of impact. The mysterious beauty of his creations draw others to him but can they lay hold of that which possess him? And what of his anonymous muse?

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It’s not what you think, it rarely is, so flick the remains of your rubbish cigarette down the drain and don’t pay too much attention to the rumours. Things have been going missing from the bedroom of the woman with the purple eye shadow. Stewart tries to pull in the punters at the ailing nightclub by installing a car park diorama of gorillas and meerkats. Meanwhile, Yvonne gets a new job and nobody knows what’s happened to Daz. At Jonnie Rabbett’s shooting club, Barbara ‘Bunny’ Rabbett dispenses pork pies and sage advice, “It’ll be right, love.” Vincent smokes cigarettes, smells of paint and finally gets to the bottom of what exactly happened to Dame Judy. He must ring Kirsten and let her know! Paul’s life flashes before him as he drives around town in his aromatic van, “I’m here for the chickens!” he shouts. Sports and Social is a collection of short stories about the remarkable everyday things that happen when remarkable everyday people get together.

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'A polyphonic novel of Teha'amana, Tahitian muse and child-bride to Paul Gaugin, from her point of view conveyed through the myths and legends of the islands.'

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Mo Moore, estranged daughter of a sex-aid entrepreneur, regards her father as good as dead. And then he really does die and leaves her all his wealth. Stuck in a job in elderly care, newly single, and with nothing and no-one to keep her in England, Mo does what she's always done when things get tough: she runs. It could have been anywhere, but a classified ad catches Mo's eye, and it takes her to China. She lands in Pingdi, a remote mountain village that for centuries supplied dildos to the Imperial bedchamber, and whose revived sex-aid factory is in a financial fix. Soon Mo finds herself on the wrong side of the authorities and needing all the help she can get: China is a land of pointing fingers and blind eyes, of closed doors and open secrets, of rules and recklessness - a place, she discovers, where it's not easy to be female.

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John Wilson dreamt of becoming a renowned composer. John sets aside music for literature, writing under the name Anthony Burgess. Decades later, alone once more in Manchester, he encounters three spectres from his past. They refer to him as Our Jackie, and he senses the facade of Burgess begin to crumble. Walking rain-soaked streets he is drawn back to his past lives in pre-independent Malaya, wartime London, 1960s Europe, and 1970s America. Traversing continents, this once working-class lad becomes one of twentieth century Europe's literary greats, but what of those left behind, and of those bound to him and is it possible to recreate your own history? We've dug three graves for you, Mr Burgess. One for your body, One for your books, And one for your ego.

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When Michael Connolly was a child in the 1970s, his mother told him about all the things that happened to her in that place. All that the nuns had done. The doctors encouraged her to talk, and talk she did. She even tried to tell the public. She wrote letters to the newspapers. She made signs and picketed Mass. The good pious parishioners silenced her. The doctors told her she was delusional. Her husband didn't post her letters. Her son didn't believe her. Three decades later, still caught in the guilt from that time, Michael sits watching the news about the mother and baby homes unfolding, and realises, with his mother long gone, that she had been telling the truth all those years ago. Fallen is a stark and beautifully written account of the impact on one family of a shameful chapter in modern Irish

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A post-postmodern crime novel set on the clean streets of Dublin’s leafiest suburb, Sloot has at its heart an accidental detective who’d rather write his own Celtic-screwball-noir than solve the crime, and a narrator who loses the plot. Literally. Sound complicated? Not so. Thanks to a revolutionary structure, The Inquisitive Bullet, it’s simplicity itself. Detours include proof that psychoanalysis is the oldest profession, validation of the dictum `For what is comedy but tragedy with loose trousers’, and a brief aside on the possibility of an Irishman having multiple birth mothers. While the plot bullet speeds, inquisitively, towards its target – the final full stop.

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When award-winning journalist Marcus Murray's latest story uncovers a corrupt alliance between a UK bank, the arms trade and the government, it seems he has triumphed again in his quest for the truth. But he is accused of fabrication and nothing in his life makes sense any more, including the disappearance twenty years ago of his best friend, Melanie. Why did she vanish, and who is the body recently discovered in a Kent orchard? A timeless story of how love and enduring friendship shape who we are, the novel exposes the fault lines in our reality and who and what we believe to be true, including ourselves.

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EVERYWHERE IS SOMEWHERE is a memoir from Naseem Khan, the daughter of an Indian father and German mother, whose seminal book, The Art Britain ignores, framed the argument that by dismissing or ignoring `minority arts’ in Britain, the UK was depriving itself of one of the most enriching features of its artistic life. Without Naseem’s vision perhaps some of the most gifted writers, painters, dancers or musicians would never see their work reach an audience. As award winning poet Jacob Ross says `In hindsight, and in the light of the subsequent impact of BAME arts and culture on British society, Khan’s assertion was visionary. This is a writer whose legacy will remain for us, inspirational and lasting.’ But by highlighting the missed chances and opportunities of the past Naseem signals what hope there is for the future, written by someone whose gift was to bring people together, breaking down the walls of ignorance and enabling everyone to move forward. Naseem didn’t have all the answers and the arts can’t heal all divisions but EVERYWHERE IS SOMEWHERE may be the book we all reach too when we are in need of some kind of answer to what is going on today in these times.

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Ghost Mountain is a fable-like novel about a mountain that appears suddenly, and the way in which its manifestation ripples through the lives of characters in the surrounding community.

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Growing up in a council house in Leeds, Wes Brown dreamed of becoming a 'real' man like the ones in his ex-pro wrestler dad's tales of heroes and villains, gods and monsters. The only problem was he never told him they were fake. In this modern-day Pinocchio story, Wes follows in his father's footsteps in the hope of coming to terms with the fictions that make a man.

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A polyphonic novel of Teha'amana, Tahitian muse and child-bride to Paul Gaugin, from her point of view conveyed through the myths and legends of the islands. 'A feminist masterpiece.'

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Roanville, Kentucky 1977. Marie Higginbottam's life is transformed when the 'Paris' ballet, comes to town. Guided by 'Chopin' the 19th century pianist, full of artistic and dietary advice & Misty, the world's first female Elvis impersonator, she rises above the religious mania of her father, to dance her way out of her small town existence.

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Jimmy Noone walks from one side of a sprawling city to the other, looking for Betwa, a friend he found and lost on the bustling city streets. Jimmy becomes the catalyst for lost lives colliding, exposing stories of tenderness, devotion, displacement and tragedy, and the subtle threads of commonality which intersect them all, making the invisible, visible again. BBC Two Book Club Choice - Between The Covers

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‘I loved your book which brightened up my life no end. I laughed out loud so hard that I frightened the cat. I think you are a wonderful writer. So few books that say they are funny actually are and yours is magnificent.’ Cathy Rentzenbrink

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Sally's son Dan has come back home from college after completing his performing arts degree. He needs rent-free accommodation, friends, a love life, and somewhere to perform his arts. Sally herself is taking a career break from teaching English. She's tired of teaching year eleven pupils about the Mockingbird. She wants to kill the bird and stuff it with all the redundant apostrophe's' she's ever seen in twenty years of marking essays. She needs a rest. She does not need her adult son Dan, his current girlfriend, his previous girlfriend and his old school friend to move in and share her kitchen and their lives with her. Sally could seek out her own friends to let off steam, but her friends prefer her to keep her steam to herself. They're busy, and too much steam makes it difficult for them to see their own problems clearly. Sally's husband Bill is an ambitious politician. A tranquil, unexceptional home-life would work well for Bill and his career. In his line of work he needs unconventional domestic arrangements like he needs ladies underwear in his briefcase. However, when Bill looks to his wife for her proper support, Sally does something outrageous ...

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How would it be if four lunatics went on a tremendous adventure, reshaping their pasts and futures as they went, including killing Mussolini? What if one of those people were a fascinating, forgotten aristocratic assassin and the others a fellow life co-patient, James Joyce's daughter Lucia, another the first psychoanalysis patient, known to history simply as 'Anna O,' and finally 19th Century Paris's Queen of the Hysterics, Blanche Wittmann? That would be extraordinary, wouldn't it? How would it all be possible? Because, as the assassin Lady Violet Gibson would tell you, those who are confined have the very best imaginations.

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LEONARD AND HUNGRY PAUL is the story of two friends who ordinarily would remain uncelebrated. It finds a value and specialness in them that is not immediately apparent and prompts the idea that maybe we could learn from the people that we overlook in life. Leonard and Hungry Paul change the world differently to the rest of us: we try and change it by effort and force; they change it by discovering the small things they can do well and offering them to others.

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