THE BOOKS
This is our current bookshelf. More titles will be arriving shortly from Berlie Doherty, Pauline Chandler, Caroline Pitcher and, hopefully, from Bill Allerton too. Please keep checking back for updates. The books can be bought online from either ourselves or from Amazon at the same price. The links will take you to the relevant Amazon page where all the reviews will be available.
Click the covers to see inside!
My Brilliant Boobs
Sara Harding
ISBN 978-1739264376
A must-read book about battling breast cancer one blog at a time
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'Upfront, honest and heartbreaking' Sir Lenny Henry
'Sara is the Bridget Jones of Breast Cancer' Pink Ribbon Foundation
'Comedy - you won't read many other books about Breast Cancer like this one' Julia Bradbury
'Sex and the City with chemo' Sharon Ali, BBC
Sara Harding - music journalist and creative writer for Sir Lenny Henry had it all - brilliant boobs, a great job, fabulous friends, caring family, money in the bank, a new boyfriend and was living her best life. But that all changed four years ago when she was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer.
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This debut is a modern mash up of blog/book/diary/advice/memes/socials/testimony and photos making it a must read for whether you've had cancer or not.
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'During my cancer journey, I've experienced it all. I've gone from fabulous TV producer to foraging in food banks, being sick to Take That in the supermarket, an addiction to Jaffa Cakes, life saving treatment from the very sexy Dr Love, Sex, Drugs, Rock and Chemo, waiting room dramas, operation day disasters, Gemma Collins diva moments, wig woes, the shits, the pukes, hair loss, hallucinations, creepy dolls, council dinners, been told that my cancer wasn't 'on brand' and crying. Lots of crying'.
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Cancer is no laughing matter but humour is definitely a way to get through this horrific disease. So I've created this 'blook', which is part diary and part advice. This blog style book is for everyone - for friends, family, colleagues and carers. My mission is to get everyone to check their lumps and bumps, help us all get over the scary bits and laugh at the good times.
Firelight on Dark Water
Bill Allerton
ISBN 978-0-9930424-4-7
They're all in here... Seasons, Life change, Wishes, Cookery, Love, Sex, Death & Obsession, Giving, Hope, Need, Guile, Motorcycles, Guns, Trees and Bananas plus a smattering of Old Japanese Brake Parts.
This collection of short fiction has been a long time coming... written over a period of years they have now been reworked and collated for the first time in this edition. If you wish to be surprised (and I hope delighted) by the change in direction presented in each story, then this is the book for you. So sit back, and travel with me along unfamiliar paths of discovery... (Bill Allerton)
A Day for Tigers
ISBN 978-0-9930424-3-0
Bill Allerton
…it’s 1955 and you’ve just moved home. You go to the local newspaper shop for your Beano and find that they have a rack filled with ‘Astounding Science Fiction’, ‘Weird Fantasy’, ‘Wonder Stories’, ‘Mandrake the Magician’, with the occasional ‘Green Lantern’. To top it all, they have ‘The Eagle’, with its truly sensational drawings by Frank Hampson illustrating the stories of ‘Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future’.
Sci-Fi, I Love You. There. I’ve said it. And now there’s no going back.
In this book I have tried to recreate something of the sense of discovery that I felt when I first encountered this kind of story so, if, like me, you are still seven at heart, and also, like me, fell in love with the grand and the not-so-grand of Sci-Fi and Fantasy, then I hope you’ll find your heart again within these pages.
The Ophelia Box
Jenny Rodwell
ISBN 978-0-9930424-1-6
Capricious and unpredictable, yet intricately connected like the links of a chain, the stories of Ophelia and Asa twist and turn their way through the ripples caused by three intensely dysfunctional families… some by design, some by circumstance… and others by sheer madness.
Fearing that madness will be her fate, Ophelia hides away from the future in a world of her own making, where the photograph of the dark-eyed boy is her only true friend.
Lost and uncomfortable with a life that began in great uncertainty, Asa struggles to understand himself and his genetic inheritance through a search for his missing sister, Anna.
Never entirely certain of anything around him, least of all his own motives, Asa holds on to the few things that have real meaning in his life… the face of his sister, last seen through the window of a train… a memory of his parents’ shoes, and… most importantly… a lock of Ophelia’s hair.
Warrior Girl
Pauline Chandler
ISBN 978-0-9930424-0-9
Sumptuously written and described with great skill, this multi-layered story of the events surrounding Joan of Arc in the medieval France of the fifteenth century will leave you breathless by its scope and ability to pull together the politics, the violence, the aspirations of an oppressed people and a genuine atmosphere of the time. Chandler handles History from inside out, showing us the personal triumphs and great tragedies of people fighting within circumstances beyond their control. This book is un-put-downable, and the final resolution is so right it will make you gulp.
The Fox & The Fish
Bill Allerton
ISBN 978-0-9548373-2-7
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Welcome to The Shoal…
Take a tour of the world through the eyes of Julius McEarly ...a man escaping from the consequence of Life Itself …where the border between reality and his own imagination may be no more than a line scratched in the earth with a sharp stick…
Beset from all sides by Foxes, Lovers, Coffins, Friends and Tinkers …armed only with an anarchic vision of Freedom, Love and Immortality …he is finally trapped by the worst enemy of them all …Himself.
The Jeweller's Skin
Ruth Valentine
ISBN 978-0-9548373-4-1
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1946, and England is recovering from war. Change is everywhere. Even Holywell, a Victorian asylum outside London, has ambitions to reform.
Narcisa Humphreys, resident Cook at the hospital, has created a life of hard work and routine within the closed community of staff and patients. She has begun an affair, but still remains detached. Now her past is coming to light and that threatens not only her livelihood, but her hard-won sanity.
Reaching across the first half of the twentieth century, and from Kosovo to London, The Jeweller’s Skin is a story of exile, trauma and recovery, told with insight and humour in vivid, luminous prose.
11 o'clock
Chocolate Cake
Caroline Pitcher
ISBN 978-0-9548373-5-8
The Most Important Bus Stop at The Very Centre of The Universe...
This is the story of the summer just gone.
It’s the story of Lizzie and Star and me, Dodo, Pram Gran, Bottom Bob and Boss Woman, Tuba Boy and the Beautiful Stranger.
It’s also the story of Jono Watkins and my feet. Who’s telling this story?
Me! Emma Peek. Known to the chosen few as ‘M’.
Life changed for all of us this summer...
ISBN 978-0-9548373-8-9
Voices...
Shelley hears voices from the Mine... They are ancient, troubled and forgotten...
She can’t help but listen as they use her to make sense of their own past, but can she use their wisdom and experience to make sense of her own present and future? Only Time will tell.
As Shelley tries to unravel the mystery of her past, will she ever truly understand where she belongs?
‘It's not mine. Nothing is!'
Shelley's 17th winter will change her life forever…
Mine
Caroline Pitcher
Requiem
Berlie Doherty
ISBN 978-0-9548373-9-6
Ready...
...to sacrifice all that she has loved of her Irish childhood, Cecelia Deardon finds an unexpected strength for one final confrontation...
'I have great admiration for Requiem', Beryl Bainbridge
'Requiem made me angry... for all the right reasons...' Wendy Perriam
'Moments of near-Joycean epiphany... the narrative is startling' The Independent
Watch & Wait
The Anthology of Short Fiction
ISBN 978-0-9548373-1-0
An anthology of the finest short fiction today, from Authors such as: Marina Lewicka, Susan Elliott Wright, Danuta Reah (aka Carla Banks), Bryony Doran, Rony Robinson, Lesley Glaister, Judith Allnatt, Ian McMillan, Kirstin Zhang and Berlie Doherty plus ten other contributions.
All proceeds from this book are gifted to The Lymphoma Association UK, Charity no. 1068395