Search results for ""author benjamin myers""

WINNER OF THE GORDON BURN PRIZE An unflinching portrait of contemporary Traveller culture by the award-winning author of The Gallows Pole John-John wants to escape his past. But the legacy of brutality left by his boxer father, King of the Gypsies, Mac Wisdom, overshadows his life. His new job as an ice cream man should offer freedom, but instead pulls him into the dark recesses of a northern town where his family name is mud. When he attempts to trade prejudice and parole officers for the solace of the rural landscape, Mac’s bloody downfall threatens John-John’s very survival.

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**Selected for BBC 2 Between the Covers 2022** **The BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick** **Longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2022** 'In this folksy, magnetic tale, two outsiders seek healing and enlightenment by creating crop formations in a Wiltshire field ... A memorable hymn to beauty' OBSERVER 'The pleasures of this bountiful novel are like a glass of cool water on a parched summer day' THE TIMES ‘A spirited and anarchic novel... a roiling, rollicking crop-circle folk tale’ GUARDIAN England, 1989. Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men – traumatized Falklands veteran Calvert, and affable, chaotic Redbone – set out nightly in a clapped-out camper van to undertake an extraordinary project. Under cover of darkness, the two men traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns. As the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation – and that an unlikely and beautiful friendship has taken root as the wheat ripens from green to gold. Moving and exhilarating, tender and slyly witty, The Perfect Golden Circle is a captivating novel about the futility of war, the destruction of the English countryside, class inequality – and the power of beauty to heal trauma and fight power. 'Brilliantly constructed and steeped in rural atmosphere' FINANCIAL TIMES, Best summer books of 2022

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'In this folksy, magnetic tale, two outsiders seek healing and enlightenment by creating crop formations in a Wiltshire field ... A memorable hymn to beauty' OBSERVER 'The pleasures of this bountiful novel are like a glass of cool water on a parched summer day' THE TIMES England, 1989. Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men – traumatized Falklands veteran Calvert, and affable, chaotic Redbone – set out nightly in a clapped-out camper van to undertake an extraordinary project. Under cover of darkness, the two men traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns. As the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation – and that an unlikely and beautiful friendship has taken root as the wheat ripens from green to gold.

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Winner of the Portico Prize for Literature and the Northern Writers’ Award ‘A brilliant, brutal novel’ ROBERT MACFARLANE A girl and a baby. A priest and a poacher. A savage pursuit through the landscape of a changing rural England. When a teenage girl leaves the workhouse and abducts a child placed in her care, the local priest is called upon to retrieve them. Chased through the Cumbrian mountains of a distant past, the girl fights starvation and the elements, encountering the hermits, farmers and hunters who occupy the remote hillside communities. An American Southern Gothic tale set against the violent beauty of Northern England, Beastings is a sparse and poetic novel about morality, motherhood and corruption.

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____________________ The inspiration for the BBC TV series, directed by Shane Meadows and starring Tom Burke, George MacKay and Thomas Turgoose WINNER OF THE 2018 WALTER SCOTT PRIZE ____________________ ‘Powerful, visceral writing, historical fiction at its best. Benjamin Myers is one to watch’ - Pat Barker ‘Phenomenal’ - Sebastian Barry ‘Superb’ - The Times ____________________ From his remote moorland home, David Hartley assembles a gang of weavers and land-workers to embark upon a criminal enterprise that will capsize the economy and become the biggest fraud in British history. They are the Cragg Vale Coiners and their business is ‘clipping’ – the forging of coins, a treasonous offence punishable by death. When an excise officer vows to bring them down and with the industrial age set to change the face of England forever, Hartley’s empire begins to crumble. Forensically assembled, The Gallows Pole is a true story of resistance and a rarely told alternative history of the North. ____________________ 'One of my books of the year … It’s the best thing Myers has done' - Robert Macfarlane, Big Issue Books of the Year

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**SOON TO BE A MAJOR FILM STARRING HELENA BONHAM-CARTER** FROM THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE GALLOWS POLE COMES A POWERFUL NEW NOVEL A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR _______________________ ‘What a radical thing, these days, to have written a book so full of warmth and kindness ... Gorgeous’ - Max Porter, author of Lanny ‘Glorious ... Leaves an indelible impression ... A moving and subtle novel in many ways, infused with a love of the minute pleasures in life, and the lasting regrets’ – Scotland on Sunday _______________________ One summer following the Second World War, Robert Appleyard sets out on foot from his Durham village. Sixteen and the son of a coal miner, he makes his way across the northern countryside until he reaches the former smuggling village of Robin Hood’s Bay. There he meets Dulcie, an eccentric, worldly, older woman who lives in a ramshackle cottage facing out to sea. Staying with Dulcie, Robert’s life opens into one of rich food, sea-swimming, sunburn and poetry. The two come from different worlds, yet as the summer months pass, they form an unlikely friendship that will profoundly alter their futures. _______________________ An i Book of the Year A Reading Agency Book of the Year A BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick A BBC Radio 4 'Book at Bedtime' An Observer Pick for 2019

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‘Ben Myers is the master of English rural noir, and with Turning Blue, he has created a whole new genre: folk crime … this is by turns gripping, ghastly and unputdownable’ PAUL KINGSNORTH In the depths of winter in an isolated Yorkshire hamlet, a teenage girl, Melanie Muncy, is missing. The elite detective unit Cold Storage dispatches its best man to investigate. DI Jim Brindle may be obsessive, taciturn and solitary, but nobody on the force is more relentless in pursuing justice. Local journalist Roddy Mace has sacrificed a high-flying career as a reporter in London to take up a role with the local newspaper. For him the Muncy case offers the chance of redemption. Darker forces are at work than either man has realised. On a farm high above the hamlet, Steven Rutter, a destitute loner, harbours secrets that will shock even the hardened Brindle. Nobody knows the bleak moors and their hiding places better than him. As Brindle and Mace begin to prise the secrets of the case from the tight-lipped locals, their investigation leads first to the pillars of the community and finally to a local celebrity who has his own hiding places, and his own dark tastes.

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'One of the most singular, moving and crucial voices of our times' David Peace In Male Tears, a debut collection of stories that brings together over fifteen years of work, Benjamin Myers lays bare the male psyche in all its fragility, complexity and failure, its hubris and forbidden tenderness. Farmers, fairground workers and wandering pilgrims, gruesome gamekeepers, bare-knuckle boxers and ex-cons with secret passions, the men that populate these unsettling, wild and wistful stories form a multi-faceted, era-spanning portrait of just what it means to be a man.

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**Shortlisted for the Portico Prize 2019**; The astonishing new work of non-fiction from the prize-winning author of The Gallows Pole and The Offing.; Under the Rock is about badgers, balsam, history, nettles, mythology, moorlands, mosses, poetry, bats, wild swimming, slugs, recession, floods, logging, peacocks, community, apples, asbestos, quarries, geology, industrial music, owls, stone walls, farming, anxiety, relocation, the North, woodpiles, folklore, landslides, ruins, terriers, woodlands, ravens, dales, valleys, walking, animal skulls, trespassing, crows, factories, maps, rain – lots of rain – and a great big rock.; ______________; ‘Extraordinary, elemental … never less than compelling: this is a wild, dark grimoire of a book’ – TLS; ‘Exceptionally engaging … beguiling … this is a startling, unclassifiable book’ – Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman; ‘Compelling … admirable and engrossing. Myers writes of the rain with a poet’s eye worthy of Hughes’ – Erica Wagner, New Statesman; ‘A bone-tingling book’ – Richard Benson, author of The Valley and The Farm; ‘A truly elemental read from which I emerged subtly changed... It has all the makings of a classic’ – Miriam Darlington, author of Otter Country and Owl Sense

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A warm, tender and funny story about unlikely friendships, second chances, and the magic of soul music *Selected as a book of 2024 by the Guardian and New Statesman**''A book of rare charm by a writer who understands the magic of music'' Ian Rankin''An entertaining tale of grit, fecklessness and Northern Soul'' Daily Telegraph''The book you didn''t know you need'' Bobby Palmer''A tale of soul music and second chances'' Guardian''The laureate of friendship, a chronicler of unexpected, transformative connection'' Wendy Erskine''A meditation on grief, love, and the redemptive power of music'' Observer____________________________________Dinah has always lived in Scarborough. Trapped with her feckless husband and useless son, her one release comes at her town's Northern Soul nights, where she gets to put on her best and lose herself in the

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**Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2023** **Shortlisted for the Winston Graham Historical Prize** **Chosen as a book of the year 2023 by The Times, Guardian, Telegraph and New Statesman** ‘An epic the north has long deserved’ FINANCIAL TIMES ‘A sensational piece of storytelling … A singular and significant achievement’ GUARDIAN ‘Marvellous, artful, enchanted’ DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Cements Myers’s standing as one of our finest, and most deftly imaginative, writers' I NEWS The triumphant new novel from the Walter Scott Prize-winning author of The Gallows Pole and The Offing Cuddy is a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patron saint of the North of England. Incorporating poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts to create a novel like no other, Cuddy straddles historical eras - from the first Christian-slaying Viking invaders of the holy island of Lindisfarne in the 8th century to a contemporary England defined by class and austerity. Along the way we meet brewers and masons, archers and academics, monks and labourers, their visionary voices and stories echoing through their ancestors and down the ages. And all the while at the centre sits Durham Cathedral and the lives of those who live and work around this place of pilgrimage – their dreams, desires, connections and communities.

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As autumn draws in, a series of unexplained vicious attacks occur in a small northern town renowned for being a bohemian backwater. As the national media descends, local journalist Roddy Mace attempts to tell the story, but finds the very nature of truth brought into question. He turns to disgraced detective James Brindle for help. When further attacks occur the shattered community becomes the focus of an accelerating media that favours immediacy over truth. Murder and myth collide in a folk-crime story about place, identity and the tangled lives of those who never leave.

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A warm, tender and funny story about unlikely friendships, second chances, and the magic of soul music *Selected as a book of 2024 by the Guardian and New Statesman**''A book of rare charm by a writer who understands the magic of music'' Ian Rankin''An entertaining tale of grit, fecklessness and Northern Soul'' Daily Telegraph''The book you didn''t know you need'' Bobby Palmer''A tale of soul music and second chances'' Guardian''The laureate of friendship, a chronicler of unexpected, transformative connection'' Wendy Erskine''A meditation on grief, love, and the redemptive power of music'' Observer____________________________________Dinah has always lived in Scarborough. Trapped with her feckless husband and useless son, her one release comes at her town's Northern Soul nights, where she gets to put on her best and lose herself in the

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`A bone-tingling book' - Richard Benson; Carved from the land above Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire, Scout Rock is a steep crag overlooking wooded slopes and weed-tangled plateaus. To many it is unremarkable; to others it is a doomed place where 18th-century thieves hid out, where the town tip once sat, and where suicides leapt to their deaths. Its brooding form presided over the early years of Ted Hughes, who called Scout Rock `my spiritual midwife . . . both the curtain and backdrop to existence'.; Into this beautiful, dark and complex landscape steps Benjamin Myers, asking: are unremarkable places made remarkable by the minds that map them? Seeking a new life and finding solace in nature's power of renewal, Myers excavates stories both human and elemental. The result is a lyrical and unflinching investigation into nature, literature, history, memory and the meaning of place in modern Britain.; UNDER THE ROCK is about badgers, balsam, history, nettles, mythology, moorlands, mosses, poetry, bats, wild swimming, slugs, recession, floods, logging, peacocks, community, apples, asbestos, quarries, geology, industrial music, owls, stone walls, farming, anxiety, relocation, the North, woodpiles, folklore, landslides, ruins, terriers, woodlands, ravens, dales, valleys, walking, animal skulls, trespassing, crows, factories, maps, rain - lots of rain - and a great big rock.

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Millstone Grit takes the form of a fifty mile walk through the West Riding and East Lancashire, exploring the industrial towns and moors. Glyn Hughes had grown up in the Cheshire countryside but on moving to the Pennines was deeply shocked by the impact of industry on the natural world; but over time he found beauty in its special landscapes and came to love the people who lived in them. In Millstone Grit the author investigates the specific culture of place - with chapters on Methodism and the Luddites, interviewing a millworker, examining the awakening of an urban working-class consciousness. Hughes is always observant, careful, poetic and no-nonsense, this new edition will find readers keen to rediscover his vision of the north.

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Introduced by Benjamin MyersIn the centre of a 1960s hospital ward sits a curtained-off bed, guarded by a policeman. In it lies a murderer, hidden from view and likely to die before he can be hanged for his crime. In the closed, regimented society of the ward, his invisible presence fractures and rebuilds the way the other patients see the world. In the face of someone who has shattered all social covenants, life can no longer continue according to the rules. Upturning conventions from morality to masculinity to class to prejudice, The Foot of Clive is a masterclass on humanity from the Booker Prize-winning author of G.

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