Search results for ""Muswell Press""

Morning rush hour on the London tube. Laurie Bateman witnesses a terrible accident. Life had been looking up - she's dating a new man and finally getting praise at work. But after the accident everything seems to plummet downhill. In the space of a few days her flat is burgled and her flatmate assaulted - she loses her phone and then her job. Are these events linked? Perhaps what she had seen was something more sinister?Compelled to investigate, Laurie finds herself in serious danger and is soon fleeing for her life through tube tunnels in the dead of night - the hunter has become the hunted.

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Burt, the hound of Beelzebub, has risen from the dead, Gadget the miniature horse has moved into the kitchen and Tommy has decided to expand his beer business, and on the advice of his wife Rose, is thinking about distilling gin, what can possibly go wrong? With Brexit looming, a second baby on the way, and sales of IPA beer plummeting, trouble is brewing in the Loire. Shortlisted for the Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards 2019, Tommy Barnes' first book, A Beer in the Loire, told the tale of a year lurching from disaster to disaster as attempted to escape the rat race by starting a brewery in one of the finest wine-producing regions on the planet.

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Guilty. One word on a beggar's cardboard sign. And now he is dead, stabbed in a wintry Copenhagen street, the second homeless victim in as many weeks. Dagbladet reporter Jensen, stumbling across the body on her way to work, calls her ex lover DI Henrik Jungersen. As, inevitably, old passions are rekindled, so are old regrets, and that is just the start of Jensen's troubles. The front page is an open goal, but nothing feels right..... When a third body turns up, it seems certain that a serial killer is on the loose. But why pick on the homeless? And is the link to an old murder case just a coincidence? With her teenage apprentice Gustav, Jensen soon finds herself putting everything on the line to discover exactly who is guilty ...

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The anthology comprises 42 stories, non-fiction pieces, flash fiction and poetry, the winning entries from an international competition to capture the best of Queer writing today. This is writing that explores characters, stories and experiences beyond the mainstream. Celebrating the fascinating, the forbidden, the subversive, and even the mundane, but in essence, the view from outside.

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1944, Italy RAF nurse Maggie Jones and Captain Jim Howard meet and marry in wartime Rome. A blissful whirlwind romance settles into a workaday life back in post-war England. 1980, London Maggie and Jim’s newly graduated daughter Vivien struggles in a dingy flat with her unplanned baby and distant difficult partner, wondering where her life is going. 2010 Surrey Granddaughter Sarah arrives in the Surrey countryside, planning an idyllic upbringing for her boys. Instead she finds herself deeply and illicitly attracted to Finn, a troubled local teenager. And then there is Flavia the Italian girl, who connects them all. Three generations united by family yet torn by a secret held tight for generations.

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Classic Espionage reissued for the first time in 30 years. Phyllis Bottome taught Ian Fleming to write. Seven years after publication Fleming's Casino Royale was published with striking similarities

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Set in a close-knit Pennsylvania suburb in the grip of winter, A Quiet Life follows three people grappling with loss and finding a tender wisdom in their grief. Ethan's debut novel A Little Hope received widespread UK coverage and will be published in paperback to coincide with A Quiet Life. Scribner will publish A Quiet Life in November'22.

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A double life with a single purpose getting away with murder.

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When the body of Alex Ballantyne is found in Barnes Pond the police are baffled. Who could want to kill the newly retired teacher? Investigations bring them to St Jude s, the prestigious private school where Ballantyne taught, and to the discovery that Ballantyne had been blackmailing several of his colleagues. Sex. Money. Drugs. It seems that Ballantyne knew all about his victims secrets, and they were prepared to pay to buy his silence. Is one of the St Jude s staff the killer? And, if so, which one? DI Moriarty s on the case and he s soon discovering that nothing is quite as it seems. So runs the blurb of Schooled in Murder , a crime novel written by Ben Joseph, who is found dead in Barnes Pond the morning after giving a talk as part of the Barnes Book Festival. DI Garibaldi and his team are shocked to discover that the writer has been killed in exactly the same place, and in exactly the same way, as the victim in Schooled in Murder . When they look at the novel they see more connections with real life. Ben Joseph is the pseudonym of Liam Allerton who , like the victim in his novel, is a retired teacher. And he taught at St Mark s, a school very similar to St Jude s, the school in his novel. But is that where the similarities end? How much of Allerton s own life, and the lives of those he knew, had he put into his novel? And could the clue to the killer s identity lie in its pages?

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Having thwarted murderous poachers in The Rhino Conspiracy, the Veteran, Thandi and Mkhize are back in a new fight battling to save elephant herds from being callously killed for their ivory, whilst trying to block wholesale political corruption and money laundering in contemporary South Africa. Will diminishing elephant numbers be reversed? Will the forces of good triumph over the vicious looters? Can the annual trillion-dollar money laundering trade by brought to heel by a brave whistle blower? Peter Hain s gripping second thriller builds to a dramatic climax, the action switching from wildlife to politics, from bushveld to city, from high finance to poaching. A vivid and gripping journey into the competing worlds of activism and corruption.

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The anthology will be published in May 2023, just ahead of Pride. Containing 30 stories, non-fiction pieces, flash fiction and poetry, the winning entries from an international competition to capture the best of Queer writing today. Entry is open to anyone, without restriction. Submissions will open on 15th August and close on 1st October 2022. Winning authors will be notified in November 2022.

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The full story of the IRA bombing campaign of 1974 the biggest miscarriage of justice in British History. This is the book that campaigned for the Guildford Four's innocence revised and updated with new evidence 50 years on

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A series of murders targets the nation's best known poets. Remarkably, they are being murdered in a way that reflects the style of their poems. Victor Priest is given the task of finding the murderer but when a car bomb is discovered in his car, by the eccentric and hilarious young couple turned detectives, a desperate confrontation takes place

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In 1951 the Australian writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston left grey, post-war London for Greece. Settling first on the tiny island of Kalymnos, then Hydra, their plan was to live simply and focus on their writing, away from the noise of the big city. The result is two of Charmian Clift's best known and most loved books, the memoirs Mermaid Singing and Peel Me a Lotus. Mermaid Singing relays the culture shock and the sheer delight of their first year on the tiny sponge-fishing island of Kalymnos. Clift paints an evocative picture of the characters and sun-drenched rhythms of traditional life, long before backpackers and mass tourism descended. On Hydra, featured in the companion volume, Peel Me a Lotus, Clift and Johnston became the centre of an informal community of artists and writers including the then unknown Leonard Cohen who lodged with them, and his future girlfriend Marianne Ihlen.

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He arrives in the shape of Detective Inspector Stanley Low. Brilliant and bipolar. He hates everyone almost as much as he hates himself. Singapore doesn't want him, and he doesn't want to be in London. There are too many bad memories. Low is plunged into a polarised city, where xenophobia and intolerance feed screaming echo chambers. His desperate race to find a far-right serial killer will lead him to charismatic Neo-Nazi leaders, incendiary radio hosts and Met Police officers who don't appreciate the foreigner's interference. As Low confronts the darkest corners of a racist soul, the Chinese detective is the wrong face in the wrong place. But he's the right copper for the job. London is about to meet the bloody foreigner who won't walk away.

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London,1999. Michael Keats is mourning the death of his wife, killed in a hit and run accident in Northern Italy. His discovery that she had been having an affair devastates him and he sets out to find the identity of her lover. That journey leads him to the villages of the Valtellina, where he becomes embroiled in a crime of treachery and revenge. The brutal repercussions of the war are still reverberating, and as Michael uncovers the truth of his wife's affair, he reveals five decades of duplicity and deception.

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Behind every mask lies a killer truth. Mick Jagger. Bob Dylan. Paul McCartney. David Bowie. Debbie Harry. They're icons. Legends. And together they form the ultimate supergroup - The Okay Boomers. It s quite some band and it s quite incredible to see them playing the Bull s Head in Barnes on a Sunday night.

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A trans gay man reconnects with his female past - utterly original, completely engrossing. Told with honesty and humour, as if a trans David Sedaris had a love child with Pema Chodron, the Zen Buddhist nun

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Originally published in Europe in the 1950s to avoid prosecution for obscenity, The Gaudy Image is one of the most important "lost" gay novels. Set in New Orleans and featuring a colorful cast of louche but lovable characters, the story follows Titania aka Thomas Schwartz through the backstreets, bars and club of the French Quarter in search of the perfect lover--the Gaudy Image. This beautifully written story is both elegant and caustically humorous, erotic and sympathetic.

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As he moseys from east to west, driving slowly, stopping frequently he meets Trump's countrymen and women - white, black, Hispanic, Asian, native American; Christian, Muslim, atheist, Mormon, Mennonite; rich, middling, poor. They talk about everything from slavery and Indian reservations to , Butch Cassidy, and Marilyn Monroe. Everyone has something to say about Donald Trump, whether they love him or hate him, and the outcome of the presidential election Reynolds follows the direction of history, the direction taken by explorers and pioneer settlers. As he travels he conjures a vivid picture of the US then and now; its landscape and its people in all their diversity

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On the morning after Boat Race Day, a man's body is found in a nature reserve beside the Thames. He has been viciously stabbed, his tongue cut out, and an Oxford college scarf stuffed in his mouth. The body is identified as that of Nick Bellamy, last seen at the charity quiz organised by his Oxford contemporary, the popular newsreader Melissa Matthews. Enter DI Garibaldi, whose first task is to look into Bellamy's contemporaries from Balfour College. In particular, the surprise 'final round' of questions at this year's charity quiz in which guests were invited to guess whether allegations about Melissa Matthews and her Oxford friends are true. These allegations range from plagiarism and shoplifting to sextortion and murder...

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Low goes undercover returning to a world that the city refuses to acknowledge; a world of gambling addiction, crime syndicates, international money launderers, immoral celebrities and corrupt politicians, all living in Asia's cleanest metropolis. Marina Sins Bay may be the sparkling embodiment of the island's devotion to economic prosperity, yet a corrupt underworld lies within the 'Monaco' of Asia. As Inspector Low gets closer to the unpalatable truth, he will demand answers to questions that society has chosen to ignore for too long. The first in a trilogy of Inspector Low crime thrillers

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Nature or nurture? The impact of traumatic childhood experience reverberates into the grown-up world of Frank, Alice and Henry – children from three families suffering the fall-out from their early life. Frank, a working-class boy abused by his step-father, Alice, physically handicapped and frustrated, Henry, the less clever son of wealthy ambitious parentsFrom a rundown estate in Eastleigh, a small town in Darlington and an affluent Cotswold home, each character grapples with the life fate has handed them. Until by chance they all come together in adulthood, the repercussions are explosive.

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Will dwindling elephant numbers be reversed? Will the forces of good triumph over the vicious looters? Can the annual trillion-dollar money laundering trade by brought to heel by a brave whistle blower? Peter Hain's gripping second thriller builds to a dramatic climax, the action switching from wildlife to politics, from bushveld to city, from high finance to poaching. A vivid and gripping journey into the competing worlds of activism and corruption.

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This is the tale of life lived large, a collection of uproarious and often moving stories spanning 60 years, from Geoff's youth as a clothes obsessed Jewish suedehead, hanging out in Tottenham dancehalls, via straight Bowie Boy frequenting London's gay clubs, gender confusion in Manhattan's Studio 54, and on to huge career success as a screenwriter. I have been a fly-pitcher working out of a suitcase, a kitchen porter at Jewish functions, and flogged suits to Nigerians down Brick Lane market. I was the singer in a much-loved culty punk band the Leyton Buzzards, a floppy-haired pop star in Modern Romance, a songwriter, and record producer. I wrote a gay anthem for John Waters drag queen muse Divine, worked as journalist and restaurant critic for style magazines The Face and Arena, before becoming a successful writer and producer of TV comedy. I then wrote a couple of films, one of which, Kinky Boots' became a Tony Award winning Broadway stage show. With a cast ranging from local oddballs to international celebrities, Geoff Deane's unique take on the world is only matched by his extraordinary use of language which combines Cockney rhyming slang with Yiddish and a smattering of Polari

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Wartime Paris and contemporary London feature in this page turning-novel which is at once a captivating love story and a compelling mystery. Filmmaker Beatrice Palmentier is about to make two journeys, one back a thousand years to Saxon London, the other to wartime France. Along the way she finds love and discovers some truths about herself.

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A riveting Gay thriller set in the early days of the Aids epidemic. When Clive Spook, learns of the early death of his adored ex-love, Dennis, he embarks on a journey which takes him across the Atlantic. As he does so he uncovers the FBI's involvement the mid-eighties AIDS epidemic and finds himself in fear for his own life.

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In the last decade over 6,000 rhinos have been killed in South Africa. Relentless poaching for their horns has led to a catastrophic fall in black rhino numbers. Meanwhile a corrupt South African government turns a blind eye to the international trade in rhino horn. This is the background to Peter Hain’s brilliantly pacey and timely thriller. Battling to defend the dwindling rhino population, a veteran freedom fighter is forced to break his lifetime loyalty to the ANC as he confronts corruption at the very highest level. The stakes are high. Can the country’s ancient rhino herd be saved from extinction by state-sponsored poaching? Has Mandela’s ‘rainbow nation’ been irretrievably betrayed by political corruption and cronyism?

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The winner of the Polari First Book Prize 2023. Having stormed out two years ago, it won't be easy, nor will returning to the haunted river beside the house where words ripple beneath the surface washing up all sorts of memories. Joe turns to his sister, Birdee, the only person who has ever listened. But she can't help him. Then there's Tim Fysh, local fisherman and long-time lover. But reviving their bond is bound to be trouble. As the water settles and Joe learns the truth about the river, he finds that we all have the capability to hate, and that we can all make the choice not to. Ransom's fractured, distinctive prose highlights the beauty and brutality of his story, his extraordinarily vivid sense of place saturates the reader with the wet of the river, and the salty tang of the sea.

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Two members of a Gentleman's Club begin a conversation over a copy of the Sanitary World and Drainage Observer. The discussion turns to where `relief' may be obtained after drinking quantities of tea or lager when walking through the streets of London. We are told that the `places that have no attendants afford excellent rendezvous to people who wish to meet out of doors and yet escape the eye of the Busy.' (police). The book could be read at as an entertaining, straight forward guide to London's public conveniences but yet to our more sceptical eye it is patently a guide to where men could meet like-minded men in an era when homosexuality was illegal. It remains a classic whether taken at face value or not. This title is one of the first on the Muswell Press LGBT+ list launching in Autumn 2019

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Copenhagen is a mysterious city where strange and sinister things often happen. Menacing and at times darkly humorous there are echoes of Roald Dahl and Daphne du Maurier in these stories, many of which have been specially commissioned for BBC Radio 4. From the commuter who bitterly regrets falling asleep on a late-night train in Last Train to Helsingør, to the mushroom hunter prepared to kill to guard her secret in The Chanterelles of Østvig. Here, the land of ‘hygge’ becomes one of twilight and shadows, as canny antique dealers and property sharks get their comeuppance at the hands of old ladies in Conning Mrs Vinterberg, and ghosts go off-script in The Wailing Girl. Deliciously dark and chilling, this is Nordic Noir at its finest.

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Spring 1855 and Virginian farmer John Dickinson has a dangerous secret that will lead to a tragic decision. The family's riches have been wasted by his reckless brother who holds all of them hostage and, adding fuel to John's desperation, the enslaved workers have been visited by a Canadian abolitionist who pushes them to escape. One does, and his pursuit of freedom involves a dangerous quest to find his mother and child North of the border. Meanwhile, the Dickinson family become fugitives of another kind, escaping their losses in a wagon en route to a new life in the West. Confronted by hunger, fear and a near fatal river boat accident, each member of the family is tested to their limits.

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London is angry, divided and obsessed with foreigners. A dead Asian and some racist graffiti in Chinatown might trigger the race war that the white supremacists of the Make England Great Again movement have been hoping for. They just need a tipping point. And he arrives in the shape of Detective Inspector Stanley Low. He's brilliant. He's bipolar. He hates everyone almost as much as he hates himself. Singapore doesn't want him and he doesn't want to be in London for a criminology lecture. There are too many bad memories, like Detective Sergeant Ramila Mistry, who asks for Low's help. The dead Asian was Singaporean. Against everyone's better judgement, Low is plunged into a polarised city, where xenophobia and intolerance feed screaming echo chambers. His desperate race to find a far-right serial killer will lead him to charismatic Neo-Nazi leaders, incendiary radio hosts and Metropolitan Police officers who don't appreciate the foreigner's interference. No one wants him there, but too many victims with Asian faces keep him there. He craves vengeance, particularly when the murderer makes it personal and promises to kill the only woman that Low ever loved. The Chinese detective is the wrong face in the wrong place. But he's the right copper for the job. London is about to meet the bloody foreigner who won't walk away.

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Obsessed with his ex-girlfriend, Alistair Haston heads off to Greece, where she is on holiday. Mugged on the harbourside in Paros, he is robbed of everything. So when Ricky a charming Aussie, shows up and offers Alistair a job recruiting tourists to pose for his wealthy boss, Heinrich, a charismatic, German artist, Alistair accepts. He soon realises that it is more than just painting that Heinrich has in mind. Swept away on a tide of wild parties, wild sex, fine food and drugs Haston sheds his reserve and throws himself headlong into the pursuit of pleasure. Until, the body of a missing tourist is found and the finger of blame points to Haston. His world collapses. Arrested but allowed to escape, the body count piles up and Haston finds himself on the run by land and sea on a journey more breathtaking and more frightening than his wildest dreams.

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Noel Cumming’s life is about to change irrevocably. After witnessing a brutal murder he is recruited to assist the police by acting as the lure for the elusive killer. That killer has been targeting gay men. Undercover, Noel moves deeper and deeper into the dark side of Manhattan’s gay scene. A journey that stirs his own desires, until he forgets that he is only playing a role. Now available in a new edition for the first time in 10 years. Felice Picano is a multiple prize-winning author, including PEN, Hemingway and Lamda awards

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In desperation, the authorities turn to the one man they loathe almost as much as the killer himself - Detective Inspector Stanley Low. Angry, bipolar and unrepentant, his career is in tatters, but he is also the only man capable of understanding what drives the serial killer. Low must solve the case quickly, stop a serial killer, and save his sanity. The second in the popular Inspector Low series, Rich Kill Poor Kill is a dark, disturbing examination of the income divide that exists even in death.

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On the morning after Boat Race Day, a man's body is found in a nature reserve beside the Thames. He has been viciously stabbed, his tongue cut out, and an Oxford college scarf stuffed in his mouth. The body is identified as that of Nick Bellamy, last seen at the charity quiz organised by his Oxford contemporary, the popular newsreader Melissa Matthews. Enter DI Garibaldi, whose first task is to look into Bellamy's contemporaries from Balfour College. In particular, the surprise 'final round' of questions at this year's charity quiz in which guests were invited to guess whether allegations about Melissa Matthews and her Oxford friends are true. These allegations range from plagiarism and shoplifting to sextortion and murder...

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The cracks in Clementine and Edouard's marriage are becoming impossible to ignore. Her work as a perfumer is no longer providing solace and her sense of self is withering. Then, decades after the disturbing end of a bisexual love triangle, Clementine's former lover Racha resurfaces and her world tilts. What does she want, if not revenge? Set in Paris and Provence, this is a beautifully written, intimate portrait of a woman navigating conflicting desires whilst dreaming of a fulfilling future.

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A powerful, poignant and pacey adoption memoir which reads like a thriller. When her adoptive mother died in 2009 Donna Freed set out to track down her birth mother. What she discovered was truly shocking - she was the daughter of a pair of infamous con artists, at the heart of one of the biggest true crime stories to grip the USA in the 1960s. Previously redacted records from the infamous *Louise Wise Services in New York revealed that Donna’s mother (27, Jewish and single), her father (40, Catholic, married with 4 children), had hatched a plan to defraud an insurance company and run off to Spain to raise Donna. Further investigation revealed that in 1967, Donna’s mother, Mira Lindenmaier, faked her own death in a drowning accident off City Island in the Bronx for the double indemnity insurance money. Donna loved her tricky, unconventional adoptive mother, but was now keen to meet her birth mother and find out how and why her parents abandoned her. How would she feel towards Mira, her ‘real’ Mum. How has becoming a mother herself impacted on her feelings towards her two mothers? Gripping and fast-paced, this extraordinary memoir is also incredibly moving tackling fundamental questions about motherhood and identity, nature vs nurture.

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This is an intelligent thriller introducing a brilliant anti-heroine whose actions grip the reader right from the first page. Cilla is a 22-year-old contract killer, specialising in the dry job: a murder which is interpreted by the world as death by natural causes. She is an amoral anti-heroine that the reader has little choice but to root for. She breaks the "Charlies Angels" mould: She's not pretty, she's not physically strong, she doesn't fight men with karate kicks in high heels. She is trained to outwit her opponents and run away when necessary. Her weapon of choice is poison. Death By Natural Causes is perfect for fans of Bella Mackie's HOW TO KILL YOUR FAMILY and the television shows KILLING EVE and THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT.

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A moving, life-affirming novel focussing on the residents of Wharton as they face everyday fears and desires, a lost love, a stalled career, a diagnosis that pulls at the heartstrings, for readers of Olive Kitteridge and A Spool of Blue Thread. In the small town of Wharton, Connecticut, lives are beginning to unravel. A husband betrays his wife. A son struggles with addiction. A widow misses her late spouse. At the heart of these interlinking stories is one couple: Freddie and Greg Tyler. Greg has just been diagnosed with a brutal form of cancer. He intends to handle this the way he has faced everything else: through grit and determination. But can he successfully overcome his illness? How will the Freddie and their daughter cope if he doesn't? How do the other residents of Wharton learn to live with loss and find happiness again? Celebrating the grace in everyday life, this powerful debut immerses the reader in a community of friends, family, and neighbours and identifies the ways that love and forgiveness can help us survive even the most difficult of life's challenges.

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An Autumnal Sunday morning, a hungover jogger stumbles across a dead body, covered in blood, in Barnes Old Common Cemetery, a long-abandoned Gothic graveyard frequented by druggies and drunkards.The victim has spent the summer working in Italy for the wealthy Rivetti family, who appear have something to hide, as do his bosses at the high-end Forum Tutorial Agency. And, why are his old friends, who he'd been partying with the night before, quite so reticent when questioned? Enter D I Garibaldi, the Met's only non-driving, country music loving detective. His first step, to unravel the complex workings of the private tuition company, the Forum Agency.

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Five years after witnessing murder on the Aegean island of Paros, Alistair Haston receives a call from a man claiming to be his son s grandfather, but Alistair has no knowledge of a son .until now.

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The absorbing story of how the author and her husband cultivated a Persian garden in the dry soil of Spain. Karen Moloney takes the reader on a journey of discovery, plant expertise and frustration. The account is funny and lively and underlying the facts is a story about love

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As he moseys from east to west, driving slowly, stopping frequently he meets a huge variety of Americans - white, black, Hispanic, Asian, native American; Christian, Muslim, atheist, Mormon, Mennonite; rich, middling, poor. They talk about everything from slavery, Indian reservations, fracking and forest fires to baseball, beer, the blues, Butch Cassidy, and Marilyn Monroe. Everyone has something to say about Donald Trump, from those who `love him' to those who `hate him. 'Reynolds follows the direction of history, the direction taken by explorers and pioneer settlers. As he travels he conjures a vivid picture of the US then and now; its landscape and its people in all their diversity

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Set mostly in Iran, but making forays to London, Germany, and the transit area of a Ukrainian airport, the stories are brilliantly deft in summoning up the dilemmas of their protagonists, be they characters who are kicking against the confines of the society into which they are born, or characters wanting to embrace those confines. Nour is a brave and acute observer of how the human spirit fights free of social repression in all its guises. These are stories that argue for nuance in a world that wants to make things black and white.

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