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An inventive short form collection from award winning author with illustrations by Lynn Roberts.
Storm Warning is the latest collection from award-winning writer Vanessa Gebbie, described as ‘prodigiously gifted’ by novelist Maggie Gee. It explores the echoes of human conflict in a series of powerful stories inspired by life with the author’s own father, who fought and was decorated in WWII, but suffered the after-effects for the rest of his life. Conflict is often explored from the child’s perspective and ranges from conventional warfare to historical religious persecution. War veterans are haunted by events that echo louder and louder, and eventually break them. A prisoner sees the violent execution of a friend and mentor, a boy hides from a necklacing, a young student escapes the fighting in Iraq in the hope of continuing his education in the West and a woman tells what she knows of her parents’ torture.The people in these stories are not those who go down in history, but ordinary troops, the powerless, caught up involuntarily. All are tested, sometimes to breaking point, in this extraordinary collection as Gebbie explores the surreality of conflict and the after-effects of atrocity.
Memorandum is a haunting collection of poems that summons voices from the shadows of the First World War. Vanessa Gebbie transforms prosaic records of ordinary soldiers, and the physical landscape of battles, war graves and memorials, into poignant reflections on the small and greater losses to families and the world. Vanessa Gebbie is a writer of prose and poetry. Author of seven books, including a novel, short fictions and poetry, her work has been supported by an Arts Council England Grant for the Arts, a Hawthornden Fellowship and residencies at both Gladstone's Library and Anam Cara Writers' and Artists' Retreat. She teaches widely. www.vanessagebbie.com "From the idea of a shell revert...
"How Green Was My Valley" is Richard Llewellyn's bestselling -- and timeless -- classic and the basis of a beloved film. As Huw Morgan is about to leave home forever, he reminisces about the golden days of his youth when South Wales still prospered, when coal dust had not yet blackened the valley. Drawn simply and lovingly, with a crisp Welsh humor, Llewellyn's characters fight, love, laugh and cry, creating an indelible portrait of a people.
‘My name is Laddy Merridew. I’m a cry-baby. I’m sorry.’ ‘And my name is Ianto Jenkins. I am a coward. And that’s worse.’ The boy Laddy Merridew, sent to live with his grandmother, stumbles off the bus into a small Welsh mining community, where he begins an unlikely friendship with Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, the town beggar-storyteller. Ianto is watchman over the legacy of the collapse many years ago of Kindly Light Pit, a disaster whose echoes reverberate down the generations and blight the lives of many in the town. Through Ianto’s stories Laddy Merridew is drawn into both the town’s history and the conundrums of the present. Why has woodwork teacher Icarus Evans striven...
How do you fall in love with the right man when you're not the right woman?
First heard on BBC Radio 4. Water is commodified. The Water Train that serves the city increasingly at risk of sabotage. As news breaks that construction of a gigantic Ice Dock will displace more people than first thought, protestors take to the streets and the lives of several individuals begin to interlock. A nurse on the brink of an affair. A boy who follows a stray dog out of the city. A woman who lies dying. And her husband, a marksman: a man forged by his past and fearful of the future, who weighs in his hands the possibility of death against the possibility of life. From one of the most celebrated writers of his generation, Stillicide is a moving story of love and loss and the will to survive, and a powerful glimpse of the tangible future.
This book is made up of twenty-three stories, each from a different author from across the globe. All belong to one world, united in their diversity and ethnicity. And together they have one aim: to involve and move the reader. The range of authors takes in such literary greats as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Jhumpa Lahiri, and emerging authors such as Elaine Chiew, Petina Gappah, and Henrietta Rose-Innes. The members of the collective are: Elaine Chiew (Malaysia) Molara Wood (Nigeria) Jhumpa Lahiri (United States) Martin A Ramos (Puerto Rico) Lauri Kubutsile (Botswana) Chika Unigwe (Nigeria) Ravi Mangla (United States) Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria) Skye Brannon (United States) Jude Dib...
A girl meets with danger on the beach when she is lured away by a strange boy; a bereaved wife enlists the help of a mysterious woman to perform rituals that will bring her dead husband back to life; a boy’s anger at his absent father leads him towards an act of destruction in the basement of his school.These are just some of the characters and events which are given life in A. J. Ashworth’s Scott Prize-winning collection Somewhere Else, or Even Here. The stories, described as ‘dark’ and ‘delicious’ by the writer Maggie Gee, explore themes of loss and loneliness, desire and hope – with characters left to navigate the shifting landscapes of their lives.A. J. Ashworth captures, with honesty, the collisions that can happen between human beings, whether it’s a couple facing up to life after the death of a child, or lovers broken apart by infidelities either real or imagined. She explores those moments of realisation, those turning points, which will continue to resonate throughout the lives of her characters – those people who, even in small ways, will be forever changed, forever cut loose from their earlier selves.
A celebration of the Bronte Sisters by some of Britain's best writers RED ROOM: NEW SHORT STORIES INSPIRED BY THE BRONTES continues Unthank Books' commitment to celebrating the short story. The collection includes twelve new stories by some of Britain's most accomplished writers, many of whom have won prizes such as the Macmillan/PEN Prize, the BBC National Short Story Award, the Frank O'Connor International Story Award and the V. S. Pritchett Prize. The collection features a demon sheep, strange curates, acts of rebellion and acts of violence. There is love made and love ruined, parents lost and children found. A girl's controlling step-father gets more than he bargained for while out on a ...