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One-year-old Iris is deaf. Her parents, Ben and Maggie, are devastated. So are their close friends Isobel and Eric. Isobel knows that her decision, taken years ago, not to have her own children vaccinated against measles is to blame for Iris's deafness. And Ben knows this too. To make matters worse, Isobel is the woman he fell in love with in his twenties - the woman who married his best friend. As he and Maggie start legal proceedings, Isobel's world begins to unravel. Lizzie Enfield's compelling new novel explores the hearts and minds of ordinary people as they struggle to come to terms with the choices they've made. Acutely observed and utterly gripping, it explores love and loss, guilt and recovery, with humour, honesty and page-turning prose.
A single call from his Czech girlfriend catapults Trevor into a serious crisis. Desperate to get his mojo back, he blazes down Highway 99 in a rented Dodge Neon. But soon his journey to California is fraught with peril, and all he has for protection are a semi-automatic pistol, his trusty plastic visor and a flea-ridden cat. As the drugs and the heartbreak kick in, the question is no longer whether Trevor will get over his girlfriend's infidelity, but whether he'll get out alive. A fast-paced and hilarious contemporary odyssey, told with a searing clarity reminiscent of Willy Vlautin or Patrick de Witt, The Drive has all the adventure and surrealism of Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - but overlaid with heartfelt yearning and hope.
Three cities, two years, one chance: from the author of the critically acclaimed debut So It Is — shortlisted for best first book at the Scottish Book Awards 2013 — comes the hard-hitting story of a young man determined to find his voice. Plucked from obscurity in Glasgow, Rab Dillon is about to become the next great protest singer. Seduced by promises of stardom, carrying only the guitar given to him by the girl who broke his heart, he travels down to London. There he records the debut album that will speak to the dispossessed, the disenfranchised and disheartened. One year later, he is sleeping rough on the streets of Brighton. A modern-day ballad set across three cities and two years, The Busker is a richly comic exposé of the music industry, the Occupy movement, homelessness, squatting — and failing to live up to the name you (almost) share with your hero. It is also the story of what survives when the flimsy dreams of fame fall apart.
In June 2020, a private Facebook group was set up for mothers of all ages and backgrounds to submit a sentence using the phrase 'Motherhood is ...', in order to represent their experiences of mothering during this challenging time. The aim was to collect the same number of sentences to the number of days the UK was in the first national lock-down; 92 in total. This number also took into account the length of time vulnerable mothers needed to shield. Over six months, 189 mothers joined the group, contributing a sentence and/or portrait picture of themselves drawn by their children which have been added to the book. The sentences are presented alongside beautiful artworks by artists who are mothers.
Includes preview of the author's Light in the Shadows.
Donna Morris has chosen to do her probationary year as detective constable in the small seaside town of Scarborough. But on her first day, a body is found in the woods: the corpse of Henrik Grünttor presents itself as that of a homeless man, dead from his own drug use. However, until recently, Grünttor had been working at the local GCHQ centre on the Russian section and the postmortem reveals the cause of his death to be uncertain. Now in her early fifties, Donna has her own reasons for wanting to be in Scarborough, ones she would prefer to keep from her colleagues. For she's not been drawn there by the landscape or the light, or even the beach, but to be closer to her wayward daughter - a daughter serving time in the nearby prison for GBH. Yet beyond even this, Donna hides another secret: she grew up in East Berlin, escaping across the wall in the early 1980s. Due to the circumstances of her past Donna is drawn to the dead man whose background is not dissimilar to hers... and her persistence reveals there are several people who wanted Grünttor dead -- and gathered around him in his final days like a wake of crows...
'Simply wonderful.' - BEN FOGLE 'Kate's book has the warmth and calming effect of a log fire and a glass of wine. Unknit your brow and let go. It's a treat.' - GARETH MALONE 'Kate Humble pours her enviable knowledge into attainable goals. It's a winning combination and the prize - a life in balance with nature - is definitely worth claiming.' - LUCY SIEGLE 'As ever, where Kate leads, I follow. She has made me reassess and reset.' - DAN SNOW 'Kate Humble's new book is a lesson in moving on from a tragedy and finding our place in the world' - WOMAN & HOME 'A Year of Living Simply is timely, given that the pandemic has forced most of us, in some way to simplify our lives, whether we planned to ...
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and the Rathbones Folio Prize Winner of the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature A Washington Post "Lily Lit" Book Club Selection
This book demonstrates that since the 1970s, British feminist cartoons and comics have played an important part in the Women’s Movement in Britain. A key component of this has been humour. This aspect of feminist history in Britain has not previously been documented. The book questions why and how British feminists have used humour in comics form to present serious political messages. It also interrogates what the implications have been for the development of feminist cartoons and for the popularisation of feminism in Britain. The work responds to recent North American feminist comics scholarship that concentrates on North American autobiographical comics of trauma by women. This book high...
The 2021 edition of firstwriter.com’s bestselling directory for writers returns in a new, larger format, with more than twice as many listings of literary agents, literary agencies, book publishers, and magazines. It now contains over 3,000 listings, including revised and updated listings from the 2020 edition, and over 2,000 brand new entries. Finding the information you need is now quicker and easier than ever before, with new tables and an expanded index, and unique paragraph numbers to help you get to the listings you’re looking for. A variety of new tables help you navigate the listings in different ways, including a new Table of Authors, which lists over 3,000 authors and tells you...