Search results for ""Cinnamon Press""

A book of lyrical landscape poetry set in the Cambridgeshire Fens and with a mission to revise and overturn common impressions of this landscape, powerfully revealing the intrinsic interest, peculiarity and dynamism of the Fens. -- Cinnamon Press

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I am Eve. Collector of words. I look them up. I write them down. I knead them into sentences. I am the story. When her mum rescues a book from a garbage can, Eve's life changes. She reads her way into the stories, into a place in the world, worlds she never knew existed. Eve becomes the story. Everything is possible. But with adulthood comes deception and betrayal; to survive Eve strips life bare. No stories, no people, no connection. But the stories are determined to win her back.

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Saoirse grows up hearing the extraordinary stories of family members who died before her birth or in early childhood. Her aunt Miriam, who believed she had lived across a thousand years to be with her lover in each generation, the Moorish Princess Casilda. Her grandmother, Daireann. more than a healer and wise woman, and her father, Oisin, an alchemist and magician. But who is Saoirse? I was Casilda's mother more than a thousand years ago, she tells her mother, Sarah. Tucked away under a mountain in Roscommon in Oisin's family home, Saoirse meets Faolan, a local boy lost in their garden maze. As they play out stories from myth, Faolan's loyalty and love grows, but Saoirse craves adventure and is not easily won. As their paths diverge, one momentous event threatens everything, leading Saoirse into a maze from which she might never emerge and taking Faolan on a quest on which their lives depend. Spanning back into the mists of pre-history; travelling from Roscommon to Paris, Prague to Brittany, Budapest to Nice, Zaragoza to Tromso, and bringing together Celtic mythology from Ireland and Brittany, Saoirse's Crossing asks questions of identity as contemporary as they are ancient, exploring the lengths we will go to for love.

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Following Roy’s boyhood in post-war rural Bedfordshire Open Strings immerses us in the countryside with its changing seasons and characters who accompany Roy as he makes the transition from childhood to adolescence. Often naïve, Roy struggles to understand much of the behaviour he witnesses, yet makes discoveries about himself and the human condition. Moving from ‘Flood’ with its echoes of Bruno Schulz’s Street of Crocodiles and merging of memory, imagination and dream to the onset of school, that results in a vow of silence, and through the friendships, rivalries, hero-worship, first loves and moments of pushing the boundaries of behaviour that come with these early life stages, we arrive at ‘GDAE’ in which violence between strangers leaves Roy fleeing the scene as he has fled from other dilemmas. A poignant and convincing novella, Open Strings examines the way we make sense of the world with its moments of euphoria, its bewildering protocols, the strange behaviour of others and the small acts of betrayal that mark us deeply. Humane, engaging and authentic, Open Strings is a finely-observed collection and a compelling read.

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Welcome-welcome-welcome-welcome to Being Young! And to the inner life and internet ragepage of Natasha [Redacted]. Her rst name is all you’re getting: there are too many haters, trolls and stupid adults out there. Iffen you understand me then you’ve picked up the rhythm of my heartbeat and maybe you’re a friend. But that means you’re a potential danger too, if you get too close and you know too much—be careful. Original, compelling and moving, Natasha [Redacted] is a coming of age story that charts the costs of trying to survive in the poisonous jungle that is ‘growing up’. Family breakdown, friends who turn out to be anything but friends, parents and their love interests who want bland conformity above all else, Internet wars and real-world violence populate Natasha’s Internet ‘ragepage’. And we see Natasha too though her self-appraising ‘sleevenotes’, penned some unknown time after the events that she describes. At the end of it all, has she grown up? Will you like the answer anymore than Natasha does? Whatever the answer—if you’ve ever loved music with a matchless passion, wanted to form a band and play a gig on the Moon, you could be the friend that Natasha is waiting for. Read on...

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For Eleanor Barton, fleeing from the bombs of the Birmingham Blitz during World War II changes her life. On the Isles of Scilly, she negotiates a teaching contract, her own sexual awakening, and a decision about her future that will have repercussions for decades. Her course is set when she sails from the UK on the Queen Mary as one of thousands of GI brides. But the path she has chosen will not be an easy one. Struggling with issues of infidelity, gas-lighting, her 'outsider's' experience of racial apartheid in 1950s America and living within the bounds of Catholic teaching on contraception and marriage, Eleanor faces an uncertain future. But she persists, bolstered by her love for her daughter, Sadie. Spanning the 1940s to 1980s, Eleanor faces a stream of new challenges-not least the struggle to overturn the Decree of Nullity granted to her American husband by the Catholic Church, and her waning health. But a return visit to Scilly brings her life full circle and demonstrates the endurance of deep love. Exquisitely realised characters and a powerful story unite in Waiting for the All Clear, L.B. Gray's debut novel, to immerse readers in the ageless questions of what it means to make a good life and what are the boundaries that must be defended if we are to remain true to our own stories.

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How does a 5-year old girl navigate deep loss after a tragic car accident leaves her motherless? Charting a life-long process of sifting through grief and rediscovering hope, Memoirs of a Mask Maker honors the women who stepped in to help the girl stitch together a beautiful life-a grandmother, a neighbor and a pharmacist in Japan... Years later, when the global pandemic forced Kathryn Graven and everyone else inside, she responded by sewing hundreds of colorful masks for family, friends local mail carriers, friendly and not-so friendly neighbors, teachers, nurses and complete strangers. Each one included a note of encouragement as she discovered that making masks required not only artistic skills but re-learning how to tend grief and reclaim joy. Now, as global society faces immeasurable individual and collective grief, these lessons are gathered for a new crop of motherless daughters facing grief, and to begin a new conversation with readers about how we gather our tears and mend the tears.

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In Rhondda Burning paintings and poems mirror one another, reflecting on life in the eponymous valley or in the area around Cardigan Bay, with its wide horizons. Havard looks at his native environments with the eyes of both one who belongs and a wanderer whose long association with Spain impressed on him the kinship between the sister arts and the benefits that come when poets and painters breathe the same air. Growing up in a steep-sided valley set Havard’s visual DNA. Ten miles daily to school and ten back, upstairs in a double-decker bus with outcrops of rock and slag flashing by, left its mark. Watching his father at a window, craning his neck to scour the mountain for a break in the spillaging mist… These images were processed slowly and this depth of observation shines through both image and text. Elegant, deft and vital, this collection is an embodiment of people, places and communities that invite us to listen and see.

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When artist, Eve, leaves London to live alone where no one knows her in small-town Shipden on the north Norfolk coast, little does she suspect that the next eighteen months will change everything. As she writes to and receives emails from her travelling daughter, Jez, Eve’s story unfolds, filtered through her particular perspective, while around her, in the old house converted to flats, strange characters inhabit her new life. People like Hester, the eccentric widow of a once well-known journalist and Amos, a troubled man searching for a wife. But the quiet life is not what it seems. Eve’s relationship with a local poet, Choker is disturbed when Leo, an actor from her past, finds her. When ex-military-man, Knox, moves in to the house as others leave, her new sense of home is under question. And even in this secluded place, there are those who know more about Eve than she knows herself, like the two old Russian sculptors who can tell her about her unknown father. Inhabiting this fragile borderline, will Eve be able to make a new life fostering unwanted and troubled children? Will hope win the day in this story of secrets, death, grief, and the bonds that tie mother and daughter? A compelling debut novel from poet and artist, Jenny Morris.

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Journalist Simon, reporting on the Knights of Camelot theme park run by an eccentric Marquess, is drawn into a tangle of intrigue, witchcraft, alternative lifestyles, mythology and secret technology as he investigates mysterious disappearances in Glastonbury, including his new girlfriend, Jenny. On Jenny's trail, Simon joins Abballon, a female dominated community inspired by worship of the goddess Gaia, where the role of men is to serve obediently, modern technology is banned and all must obey the tyrannical ruler, Philomena. Cast out from Abballon, Simon uncovers a fiendish plot by a deranged scientist to transform abducted people into mythical creatures, from centaurs to satyrs, intended to populate the Marquess's new Mythological Magick theme park. Will Simon be able to rescue Jenny in time to prevent her metamorphosis into a mermaid?

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Jenny Morris has a gift for observation translated into fresh and lyrical imagery. In Eye Level she looks beneath the surface of memory with a wistful but never sentimental gaze. Here memory stains your bones' and we enter a landscape where mortality is never far away, yet there is also hope and resilience here, the ways in which we pass on hope to the generations below us because The story must go on and on.' Along the way, ancestors are honoured, the places and people who form us are witnessed and new generations are celebrated. Eye Level is a compassionate and intelligent collection leavened with verbal dexterity and wry humour from a mature and accomplished voice. A delight to read and re-read.

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In the midst of international carnage and calamity, a beloved member of the family dies. How do we react? Where does the mourning for kith and kin end and mourning for greater humanity begin? This deeply personal and heartfelt poetry collection by the reknowned Lebanese poet, Omar Sabbagh, deep dives into the trauma of our days.

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Alex Ingram is well-acquainted with sorrow. He's overcome childhood polio to become a successful singer whose lyric voice lays bare the joy and pain of being alive.' When tragedy strikes again, Alex finds hope through the healing power of music. And an epiphany awaits... an unforeseen encounter that changes everything. Standing alone but reconnecting with characters from Carole Strachan's acclaimed debut, The Truth in Masquerade, The Tenor Man's Story returns to the world of classical music. With a vivid and compelling story of love and loss, reminding us that life can be wonderful, often in the most unexpected of ways.

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Rooted in the land he dwells on, attuned to the ancestral lines of place and body and the resonances between the two, in Aubrac David Batten records our at-oneness with the nature that humanity too often attempts to fragment. Lucid, deeply effective and intelligent, these poems take us into a landscape where the past speaks loudly to the present and to the future, letting us know that we are not alone, not apart. In a year in which the poet himself moves through cycles of chemotherapy, along with the randomness of death, life and renewal re-assert themselves with the movement of the seasons. As he observes nature with a keenness of vision and attention that is present in every line, nature returns the gaze. A collection that bears witness to the human and more than human.

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Award-winning poetry pamphlet from the author of My Body Remembers.

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Lucid, linguistically dextrous, and woven through with Welsh phrases, and words and passages in French, this exquisitely observed sequence of haiku and haibun was written during lockdown, though only refers to Covid elliptically. There is nothing obvious here—instead there are connections—with nature, with relationships, with what is lost and what is saved.

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It’s winter, 1553. A small Italian hill town is under siege… In this narrative of uncommon endurance Alex Josephy inhabits place and people with lively precision. Told in the voices of women, including a chorus, a nearby mountain and the fortress herself, the uniting voice of the pamphlet is a ‘girl’, through whose eyes we see the minute details of life under immense stress and feel the nuances of loss, hunger and uncertainty. Again Behold the Stars is an intense immersion into a lockdown that challenges all the senses, one utterly different from the modern experience of lockdown during the Covid pandemic, yet also hauntingly resonant with it. Most vitally, the empathy evoked reaches us across almost five centuries, making us care in the present.

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When the darkness rises again, the light will return wherever people stand their ground. Two years after the events of The Standing Ground, the tiny outpost of Y Tir in North Wales becomes a refuge for those who want to live without implants—permanent links to government surveillance that are threatening to dominate people’s lives again. But can Alys, Luke and Emrys thwart the growing threats of the new tech-giants whose offers of enhanced memories and virtual lives mask the erosion of privacy and even humanity? As new enemies threaten Y Tir’s existence, and old enemies emerge to sew seeds of destruction, Alys’ and Luke’s lives are put under increasing pressure. But there are also allies, not least Alys’ and Luke’s daughter, Iris, who appears to have fallen out of the mists of Greek legend and into Celtic myth. Can Iris, more strange and powerful even than Myrddin Emrys, also known as Merlin, save the day for Y Tir? Skilfully combining near-future technologies of surveillance and immersive media with Arthurian legend and Greek mythology, this story of suspense is full of convincing and extraordinary characters. A breath-taking conclusion to The Standing Ground trilogy. But does this story ever end?

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Sue Lewis’s Journey has the ability to combine a conversational tone with exquisite phrases and images that surprise without any need for showiness. The quiet elegance of the poems, the sound patterns and pressure on language combine with a sensibility of the fragility of life that nonetheless refuses to be crushed. There’s a yearning ache in these pieces that remains unsentimental and leaves space for what isn’t or can’t be said; an intelligence that pays attention to the deepest connections and celebrates ‘the everyday enchantment’. from ‘Transmuted' You are my consolation, turning up the way you have, riddling out this burnt and blackened year and I can’t ask for more. Spring will come, I know that now. The white magnolias.

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Responding to the fragile borders between climate change and mental health to evolve into conversations around trauma, change, care and the natural world, The Chalk Butterfly explores images of home and the paradoxes around our simultaneous care and un-care for nature and language. Working backwards through the butterfly's life cycle, each phase examines the tipping points, vanishing or fractured boundaries between our environments (internal and external), reflecting on the damaging ways we step on both the earth and humanity. Yet in these precise, exquisitely realised prose poems there is also celebration of the overwhelming urge to adapt and help life thrive, a turning away from the despair that would accept we might 'just about manage' or even fail in favour of moments of transformation.

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Bonnie Thurston’s Forgotten Futures: a memoir is a tender heart’s cry and a passionate celebration in one. There is deep poignancy and longing here, but not a mawkish or maudlin word. We travel in two landscapes — the world inhabited with wonder for each small detail, and the internal world of half a couple, observing both the relationship’s moments of grace, joy and intimacy and those of wounding, longing and loss. In supple, accessible language, honed to beauty, these poems resonate with a sense of the sacredness of small things and the transforming power of memory. 'When Love Is Passed' When love is passed to you on a bone china plate like Petits Fours on a doily, accept with gratitude. Life holds enough awful, heavy crockery, and we have all eaten more than our share of sand.

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In his most personal collection yet, Omar Sabbagh brings a concentrated gaze to bear on turbulent emotions. Morning Lit is a deep and sustained exploration of fatherhood, marriage and bereavement: of love and its shadow side, which is loss. Crammed with symbolism, it is a work of maturity both emotional and poetic. — Fiona Sampson Omar Sabbagh offers his readers deeply contemplative—and even more deeply felt—windows into both the seemingly relentless tensions and nearly transcendent joys of family life. Sabbagh masterfully demonstrates the full range of his poetic voice and craftsmanship, choosing most often to approach profound tribulation and self-interrogation within precisely contained rhymes and rhythms while bursting effusively into wholly charming exaltations in celebration of his daughter. Here, nothing is valued more than kindness, yet, with its abundant references to philosophy, psychology, history, and economic theory, Morning Lit: Portals After Alia reminds us that being present and open to the struggles and wonders of our own lives requires every resource of mind and heart we have. — Kathleen Graber, author of The River Twice Here is a paean to fatherhood in all its terrifying joy and vulnerability. It evokes the gratitude of the born-again parent, the wonder of being programmed ‘to love unconditionally’, of being compelled to ‘agree, and agree, and agree’, and of acknowledging that one’s love is now one’s ‘only, final fear’. Luminous, tender and gently delirious, Omar Sabbagh’s poems celebrate an awakening into a new sacredness. — Arundhathi Subramaniam Bursting with thoughtful and ebullient verse [that] spills-over with warmth and joy at the birth of a daughter, Alia. Omar Sabbagh adds his distinctive voice to the literature of fatherhood.— Amy Wack, Poetry Editor, Seren Books

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[P]oems like delicate essays, in the sense of attempts-circling, being-with, tentative and tender [...] poems like seed heads, fragility and delicacy, balanced, a symmetry [...] seeding more thinking [... a tender] engagement with moss, air, horizon, the political, the scientific, the human, the non-human and the spaces-between where these things meet. The space on the page, within the poems, and between the poet writing and the world observed, is so delicately balanced. - Dr. Kim Lasky slow build inside/outside what is left unsaid what is beneath what is noticed what is undeclared what evolves, enmeshes, becomes, denies visual-like camouflage like a movement-eyes dance on page, not sure where to go feeling accumulate through pattern of words - many unsaid, but felt What is near talks about what is far-deep time-what is within-unsaid earth suffering earth joy, despite it all - Chris Drury [an exploration of] the political, the specifics of natural things (eg. birds, moss, trees, landscape), boundaries and spaces; and the sense of place, all with sensuality and infinite sensitivity, including the self and its relationship to nature. We were especially aware of how [the poems] handle the very contemporary sense of language with all its problems of reference [exploring] the interconnectedness of all things through linguistic and visual means. - Professor Peter Abbs & Dr. Lisa Dart

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A unique, illustrated collection of poetry exploring themes of loss and togetherness.

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A young girl discovers that riding a bike is more than simply learning balance… A village is commandeered by the army for target practice… A drive south for the summer becomes a journey through language to an inner place… An unassuming young man is driven to murder… Weaving together compassion and acute observation with a fine ear for the nuance of identity and nationality, Isabelle Llasera’s debut short story collection is serious, humorous, tragic and inspiring by turns. Sometimes intimate, sometimes cast against broader backdrops, these stories show that the private and personal are always present. Smog demonstrates, time and again, that the big things in our lives are always less important than our fundamental humanity.

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A recipient of an Eric Gregory Award as a young poet, Ian Gregson’s debut collection, Call Centre Love Song went on to be shortlisted for a Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Described by Carol Rumens as ‘combining a postmodernist’s sense of ‘things being various’ with a traditionalist’s concern for shape and completeness’, Gregson’s work is formally diverse, eminently accessible and packed with wit, but this is never glib or throw-away. There is deep commentary going on in these poems, on how we make and break connections, on the possibilities and limits of language and perception. Brilliant, often funny, frequently poignant and always timely, The Slasher and the Vampire as Role Models, is a new and collected that shows Gregson at the height of his linguistic dexterity as poet with something real to say.

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How do we hold on to what is constant within us when circumstances challenge our sense of who we are? At the heart of the story is the mystery of Isabel Grey, a successful opera singer who disappeared in the late 1970s and has not been heard of since. Two musicians, facing life-changing crises of their own, decide to look for her. Stephen Bennett's career as an orchestral bassoonist has been ended by a violent mugging; singer Alice Wade is suffering serious vocal problems and trying to move on from the latest in a long line of failed relationships. Stephen takes a job as Archivist for Hope Street Theatre and becomes intrigued by a young woman who appeared there in the 1960s. Nearby, Alice is taking refuge in the house she's inherited from her godmother, Imogen, and while trawling through paraphernalia Imogen left behind, she learns of a sister, Isabel, about whom Imogen never spoke and who vanished forty years earlier. Their discoveries are woven into Isabel's gradually unfolding story, the silent language of keepsakes becoming signposts to the past, revealing the truth of what really happened. As Isabel emerges from the shadows, Alice faces the loss of all she values most. Not wanting her life to become a sad echo of Isabel's, she must face the future with courage and acceptance.

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In darkness, she walks the labyrinth. Confused. Lost. But not alone. In the Paris of 1970, the hippie revolution has yet to crash land and Minnette searches hungrily for a way to enlightenment. She finds it. Or she finds something and the path of her life is set. But, by the beginning of the 21st Century, Minnette is haunted by the shades of recurring dreams and recurring memories, unsure whether the city around her is as solid as it appears. She looks back on her life’s search — and on that a winter’s evening in Toledo when, for a moment, the gates to another world may have opened — and feels the defeat of a life thrown away. But something moves in the shadows, something that comes closer each evening. Combining a mind-spinning vision of another reality just a step away from our own with searing character study and sensual, impressionist prose, In Dreams the Minotaur Appears Last is the latest novel from the author of the ground-breaking anti-novel Vitus Dreams and the acclaimed short story collection, High City Walk.

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Kay Syrad's perceptive, surprising imagery and ability to see to the heart of things is never more acute than in this outstanding new collection, Inland. A novelist of psychological acuity, wit and intelligence; a collaborator with artists and musicians and a gifted editor, Kay Syrad’s formidable skill and deeply humane insights come together in her poetry to astonish, startle and delight. There is darkness here, but also light; there is sorrow and celebration; there are huge questions and the smallest moments exquisitely observed. Written with a graciousness of thought and an elegant control of language that makes these pieces sing, Inland marks Kay Syrad as an extraordinary poet.

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Tracing life from a childhood in an Italian-English family on Tyneside to becoming a Welsh-speaking freelance writer in Cardiff, Eisteddfod-winning author Tony Bianchi leads the reader through a series of increasingly bizarre vignettes. Each section is a free-standing short story but read together they form a ludic, untrustworthy autobiography where the rug of humdrum normality is constantly pulled from under our feet. Lured into trusting belief by the narrator’s direct, confiding tone, by the sometimes overwhelming weight of circumstantial geographical and historical detail, and by the photos and documents that seem to guarantee authenticity, again and again the reader is suddenly left rudderless, unsure of the boundaries between truth and fiction. Did Bianchi ever play football in a Cardiff park with notorious Serbian war-lord Arkan? Is the floor of his local pub a concrete realisation of an M.C. Escher painting?In England, Wales, and beyond, Bianchi introduces a series of extraordinary characters, from the devout, indulgence-collecting, organ-playing grandfather, to the plumber and Cumbrian nationalist Caedmon, or the piano-playing pharmacist with carpal tunnel syndrome. And whether at the centre of the narrative or reporting from the sidelines, there, constantly leading us on from one potentially disastrous situation to another, is the author as anti-hero, always earnestly self-deprecating, always reinventing himself, always challenging our assumptions about identity, time and memory.

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Poetry pamphlet on the theme of Parkinson's Disease

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Paul travels to work on a day like any other: filled with reflection and questions. But the chill is more than the wind slicing in off the North Sea and Paul's soul searching runs deeper, with no end in sight. Part autobiography, part humanist study, Rotterdam is a unique, moving text. -- Welsh Books Council

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Set in Serbia during the First World War, the lives of a brave soldier and a patriotic medical orderly interweave.

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In this prequel to The Standing Ground, we travel back two generations to the origins of the oppressive E-Government state that infiltrates every aspect of people’s lives in the decade following Brexit and a global pandemic. But, as the darkness overtakes Britain and other areas of Europe, the light of resistance wakes in a community that spans the Celtic outposts of Brittany and North Wales. And in a strange child, Myrddin Emrys, also known as Merlin.Weaving together Arthurian legend and exploratory fiction of the near future, The Roots of the Ground explores the human cost of a monoculture that tramples freedom and privacy and asserts with Carl Jung that:'As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.'

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Ruined by the 1929 stock market crash, Tristram finds himself penniless and stranded in Budapest, friendless and far from home. He's given a last chance to save himself-simply deliver an old locket to be repaired. But in a near miss road accident, the locket vanishes and he finds himself on the streets. Befriended by the suave but dissolute Voit, Tristram becomes convinced the locket has been stolen by the ruthless Attar Nox and he and Voit try to steal it back. The robbery goes wrong and Tristram finds himself on the run. Along the way, he meets Alba, Nox's fiancee and former prisoner. As they find temporary refuge in a small basement flat, Tristram is haunted by spectres past and present and, when their safety is finally shattered by the appearance of an unexpected ghost from his past, he is forced deeper into a quest that is stranger and more challenging than Tristram realises. Blending echoes of Celtic myth and Grail legend with an undercurrent of Alchemical thought, A Locket of Hermes is a spiritual quest towards a deeper reality, a deeper sense of self.

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Celebrating an increasingly interesting form that concentrates short prose pieces with the techniques of poetry brought to bear, this is the first anthology of its kind in the UK and features well known proponents of the prose poetry form such as George Szirtes and Pascale Petit, as well as emerging voices. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru

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Charting a life spent lost in numbers, is My Life in Receipts a memoir? Too fictionalised. A novella? Too close to the truth. All too recognisable? YES! From chanting times-tables and unlearning old money to discovering the sinking schoolroom ‘Maths Feeling’ that ends a child’s ambitions to be a ‘scientist’. From the promissory note of student days to the hard times of the dole giro. From the exuberance of the first wage packet to the pleasures and limits of being able to pay your way… My Life in Receipts plunges you into the world of bags full of threatening letters, intimidating bailiffs, bankruptcy, eviction—even imprisonment. Revealing the lives of people in a perpetual cost of living crisis, and the work of those who help them fight to reclaim their lives, this is a dark, original and tragi-comic exploration of the past, the future, money, debt: whether to flee, whether to fight. There are some victories, some routs—and, along the way, thoughts on electronic train tickets too. Andrew Dutton will make you laugh out loud, scream with righteous anger and, most of all, make you think.

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It’s the last months of the nineteenth century and twenty-two year old Euphemia Thorniwork, is out of step with the men’s world she lives in. A mathematical research student at Oxford, looked on with suspicion by her her tutor, Professor Milton, she is forced to collaborate with fellow-student, Leo Lazarus, also under suspicion—for being Jewish. At home in London, life is under pressure—for months a toxic fog has engulfed the city each evening, bringing illness to many, including Euphemia’s widowed mother. The fog has been accompanied by a wave of body-snatching and the body of Euphemia’s beloved cousin, Pearl, remains missing. Additionally, money is tight and Euphemia and her mother must move in with relatives who disapprove of her lifestyle. Haunted by dreams of Pearl in which numbers, a red heifer and Biblical purification rites provide insoluble clues, she discovers an article about communicating with the dead using sound waves. Determined to cling to rational explanations, Euphemia returns to Oxford, but when she begins to fall in love with Leo, and learns something of esoteric Judaism, their research takes an unconventional turn and the questions mount. Can Euphemia and Leo find the body snatchers? What is the origin of the toxic fog and can they find a way to defeat it? Will Leo and Euphemia’s love survive their religious divide? Blending Victorian romance and drama with a compelling supernatural story, The Sound of Gematria is an engaging debut novel not to be missed.

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Fleeing London at the outbreak of the Second World War, Merry and her siblings are taken far from home, leaving their father behind and cutting them off from the both the ‘real’ world and contact with other children. Peace takes them back to their life in London until the children grow and go their separate ways. And for Merry married life brings romance and daughters, but her husband’s illness also brings mounting financial pressures. Isolated from the excitement of Sixties London, anxious about money, Merry becomes increasingly aware of the religious, social and cultural family differences that run through generations of her family, silently accepted but constantly exerting their stresses. A fictional pot-pourri in prose and poetry, Say I am Merry explores love and loss and the way the stories of one generation are handed to the next. A poignant, ambitious and compelling debut.

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After a decade trying to accept that London is home, a devastating bereavement pushes 29 year old May to return to the rural Vermont town she fled so long ago. Ignoring her sister’s strong misgivings, she immerses herself in creating a healing garden, bringing people together with the food she loves to cook, and renovating a dilapidated farmhouse until she starts to find a sense of peace and purpose. But as spring turns to sultry summer and she is thrown increasingly together with Harley, the man she loved and left ten years before, May is torn. Will she take a risk and follow her heart, or go back to London where her ever loyal sister is longing for her return? Mish Cromer’s latest novel of love and friendship and the healing power of the natural environment explores the impact of family, trauma and loss, and the powerful need we all have to find the place where we belong. Praise for Mish Cromer’s debut novel: Alabama Chrome You’ll come for the wonderful characters — gruff Cassidy with a dark past, wise Lark, Belle and her beauty parlour, Evangeline the mechanic, Brooke Adler the hard-nosed reality TV presenter... then you’ll be swept away by the fantastic sense of place. Set in small-town Kentucky and focusing on the bar which acts as the town’s front porch where stories are told and secrets are ultimately revealed, Alabama Chrome is a beautifully written page-turner, told in a voice that will stay with you — along with the book's big heart. — Alison Chandler You begin to understand, reading this story, how important it is to allow yourself to be understood, — Joanne Merrison A compassionate and skilful tale of a soulful young man’s struggle, vividly intertwined with the characters of a remote US town who welcomed him, and their reaction to the arrival of a controversial reality TV presenter. A gripping read. — Isabella

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With nothing but a collection of vinyl records without a player, a shoebox of memories, and a lot of secrets, Cassidy is used to being alone. But when his camper-van breaks down in a snowstorm and he is rescued by a kind young woman, Lark, he finds himself working in a small-town bar and becoming part of the community. But with the arrival of an inscrutable new waitress, Reba, Cassidy finds himself unsettled by a sense of recognition. And there are further complications as Brooke Adler, reality TV host and hero of the town's inhabitants, arrives unexpectedly to shoot a new show. Cassidy is drawn into protecting Reba from the ghosts of her past only to discover that his own ghosts are chasing him and that he must find the courage to speak the truth, or risk losing everything, again. A story of family, both given and found, and the long shadow of domestic violence, Alabama Chrome interrogates the masks of the modern world, and what true kindness means.

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Frank Molinari faked his own death in a fire at the fairground he owned with his brother. Now he’s back, in debt, and looking to be bailed out, but as fatal events spin out of control, the past and present weave with mounting tension. For DI Tom Fairfax, whose daughter, Susie, died in the original fire, ghosts and guilt return, while Susie’s friend Leah, a local journalist consumed with blame, sees the mystery as an opportunity to escape the small Northern seaside town at last. 
Complicated by old grievances, dead ends, suspicion and hidden identities, The Weight of Bones is an exploration of the difficulty of finding either closure or justice in a world of intrigue and messy lives. 
What does Dolores, Frank’s lover, who was with Tom when Susie died, really know and what will it cost her? Why does Leah want Frank’s brother, Genaro, to be found guilty? How does Leah’s flatmate, the Rumanian, Mati, fit into the story and what is his connection to the mysterious Eva, and hers to Frank? And why does the arrival of the arrogant Chief Inspector Robert Nardone only add to the confusion, forcing Tom to finally turn to Leah for help?
 As a story of a POW interment camp on Orkney and an old love triangle begin surface, another story of jealousy and greed accompany it, leading back to the fair ground and to the explosive finale. 
A tangled and beautifully textured tale of murder, fires, deceit, blame and guilt. Densely written, with distinctive characters and a mystery that hooks from the opening line to an ending that refuses to be neat, The Weight of Bones is a thrilling debut.

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Forty-something divorcee Mel is struggling with infertility. But when she has to look after her step-grandson, four year-old Billy, Mel's life begins to change in ways she never expected. A deeply empathic, humane debut, Gratitude asks how we live now and how we make meaning in lives that rarely work to plan.

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Lying on a lounger outside a flyblown café near Naples, Mike reflects on the last few months. He'd set off for the wedding of the charismatic Al, whose closed community is in the Calder Valley. Three months later, Mike's wearing a white robe, standing over an open grave. Alan Newcombe vividly immerses us in the life of Gritstone House. There's no electricity or running water or contact with the outside world. And Al pulls the strings in a house where there's fraud, secret burials, and clandestine murder. Gothic, serious, yet brimming with wit and humour, Gritstone is an impressive debut.

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