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Taking us from the shingle beaches of Suffolk and Norfolk to the Hebrides and beyond, this volume is a true gem that will delight tourists and locals alike. It blends geology, architecture, art and archaeology to tell a fascinating natural and cultural history of flint.
She smelled like jasmine. No, not exactly. She smelled like the earth beneath a jasmine plant on a hot day.   Most of us are poets, she said. It’s just a question of how it comes out.  When a creative writing academic becomes infatuated with his colleague – the poet – it is not long before it begins to threaten his relationship with his partner, Michael. Michael is beautiful. Michael is safe. But the poet is everything he isn’t; she has everything he wants. While he writes about steel and sex, she dreams about the movements of swallows. While he tends to his budding career, she writes from her big, white house in the woods. As he slips between his old life and this new one, his fixation grows into something more powerful. The poet, his Kingfisher, is his sole focus. He is hypnotised. But when simultaneous illnesses threaten to destroy the precarious reality he clings to, he’s forced to que
There she goes brings together seventeen women writers – of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry – in an anthology of travel tales to inspire, encourage and empower women adventuring through the world in different ways and stages of life. There she goes celebrates the stories of women getting on with getting from one place to another – the grit, courage and determination of moving through the world with babies, with periods, with grief and loss, with the menopause, with magic and humour, with bodies that are ill or disabled or seen as foreign and Other.
Teaching nine-year-olds on Zoom. A relationship interrupted by enforced distance. A teenaged son who cannot leave the house. Anna McCormick is already struggling to cope with the unwanted twists 2020 has served up. But when an unstamped envelope arrives overnight, her past begins to cast its own long shadow on the present. With an uncaring government compounding her woes and a hostile threat drawing closer, Anna must dig deep to keep hope alive for herself and those around her.
A silver sea of gossamer rippling over an upland field, the work of tiny money spiders A woodpecker’s maestro drumming performance in a wet winter woodland The diving antics of laser-eyed buzzards The hug of a small forest… Determined to overcome her winter anxiety, Helen Moat sets out into the darkness. Her discoveries begin at home, and then on across the world from the Arctic Circle to Asia. Along the way, she finds beauty in the small things that only winter can offer. Helen’s quest to dispel her seasonal blues has its ups and downs; slowly, though, she learns not only to accept the darkness of winter, but to embrace it. When she travels to Lapland and Japan, their cultural and philosophical attitude to the season is a revelation. While the Earth Holds Its Breath nurtures resilience and determination, finding a joyous positivity that does not ignore the darkness, but finds something to love there.
In the unremarkable French town of Saint-Louis, a mysterious stranger stalks the streets; an elderly woman believes her son is planning to do away with her; a prominent manufacturer drops dead. Between visits to the town’s hostelries, Chief Inspector Georges Gorski ponders the connections, if any, between these events, while all the time grappling with his own domestic and existential demons.
Manfred Baumann is a loner. Socially awkward and ill at ease, he spends his evenings surreptitiously observing Adèle Bedeau, the sullen but alluring waitress at his local bistro. Then one day she vanishes into thin air.
Nerdy and shy, scholarship student Daniel de La Luna arrives at college nervous to meet his golden-haired, athletic roommate, whose Facebook photos depict a boy just like those who made Daniel’s school years hell. Sam Morris is not what he had imagined, though. As the two settle into college life they drink tequila under the stars, go on long runs through snow-covered hills, explore freshman nightlife, and inch closer until they find themselves in love. But their blissful first year is over all too soon. Daniel’s summer in his ancestral homeland of Mexico becomes a rollercoaster of revelations, before his life is brutally upended by the unimaginable. ‘How We Named the Stars’ is a tale of love, heartache and learning to honour the dead. Daniel and Sam will leave you forever changed.
In a hidden valley tucked into an unspoiled corner of Northumberland lies a naturalist’s garden, developed from scratch by award-winning gardener and author Susie White, her husband and friends. This is the story of how they created a remarkable oasis, a place as alive as it is beautiful. Susie’s vision and passion unfold as she transforms a patch of untended ground into a wildlife-friendly haven, planted with flowering perennials, trees, herbs, vegetables, and a wildflower meadow. The spaces teem with life: owls and blackbirds, bats and mice, butterflies and bees, all drawn by pollen-rich flowers, ponds, and nesting sites. ‘Second Nature’ takes us through the planning and construction, and describes how she designed the garden to blend harmoniously with her natural environment.
Poet and essayist Kenneth Steven takes us on a series of meditative quests in search of his ‘atoms of delight’ – treasures, both natural and spiritual – through some of Scotland’s most beautiful landscapes. The short pieces in this captivating collection, whose title pays homage to Scottish Renaissance writer Neil Gunn, invite readers to accompany Steven as he seeks out crystal-clear waters, a glimpse of an elusive bird, delicate orchids, plump berries, or pebbles polished by time and tide. Appreciative of the grace of silence and the value of solitude and simplicity, he takes journeys that prompt introspection and provoke memories as we pause, breathe, and discover alongside him the transformative power of nature’s small gifts and wild places.
‘This book is a must read … a uniquely raw and authentic voice.’ Maxine Peake A killer stalks the streets of Leeds. Every man is a suspect. Every woman is at risk. But in a house on Cleopatra Street, women are fighting back. It’s the eve of the 1980s. PC Liz Seeley joins the squad investigating the murders. With a violent boyfriend at home and male chauvinist pigs at work, she is drawn to a feminist collective led by the militant and uncompromising Rowena. There she meets Charmaine – young, Black, artistic, and fighting discrimination on two fronts. As the list of victims grows and police fail to catch the killer, women across the north are too terrified to go out after dark. To the feminists, the Butcher is a symptom of wider misogyny. Their anger finds an outlet in violence and Liz is torn between loyalty to them and her duty as a police officer. Which way will she jump? Ajay Close combines the tension of a police procedural with th
Do you sometimes wake from dreaming with an unease you find difficult to shake? Is there one recurring nightmare that haunts you? We spend around a third of our lives asleep, so it’s understandable that dreams have been intriguing and troubling humans for millennia. Some believe our dreams to be an expression of hidden desires, a cathartic release for our unconscious mind, or even crucial insights or predictions we can’t access while awake. Whatever their functions, our dreams are worth paying attention to. Yet with the demands and diversions of each day, it can be hard to find time to reflect on them. This volume approaches dreaming with a mindful eye, asking us to spend time reflecting on our dreams to help us decipher their secrets and discover what our nighttime unconscious could reveal about our daily lives, needs and desires.
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