Five Leaves is a small publisher based in Nottingham, publishing 15 or so books a year. Our roots are radical and literary. These days our main areas of interest are fiction and poetry, social history, Jewish secular culture, with side orders of Romani, young adult, Catalan and crime fiction titles. You can find our latest and forthcoming books below, backlist section by section, and order books through a secure site run by Inpress. Our books are also available from bookshops and internet sites including The Book Depository and Amazon.
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Welcome To Five Leaves Publications
Five Leaves News
Five Leaves – together with The Bookcase in Lowdham – jointly organises Lowdham Book Festival in Nottinghamshire. Most of the authors are not from Five Leaves of course – but some are. As this update goes to press we are busy putting the programme together. Here’s a taster; Roy Strong, Jonathan Meades, Julian Owen and (Five Leaves writer) Gillian Darley on things to do with architecture; Posy Simmonds and Martin Rowson doing some things with illustration; literary type DJ Taylor (on the regional novel); novelists Matt Haig, Eve Makis, Karen Maitland, Five Leaves’ authors Clare Littleford and Nicola Monaghan; Five Leaves’ poets Andy Croft and Adrian Buckner; in memoriam for Philip Callow, Arnold Rattenbury and Vernon Scannell; local history from Michael Payne and ex-Evening Post editor Barrie Williams; George Alagiah on multiculturalism; our Ken Worpole on Dockers and Detectives; music from the Lark Rise Band, Kiki Dee, Show of Hands; David McKie on the buses and Ben Macintyre on spying; Louise Scull on childlessness and Catharine Aronld on Bedlam; archive material from The London Magazine and Bromley House Library; Joe Boyd on rock music; a big book fair; a children’s programme organised by Elizabeth Baguley. Lots more to come.
Email info@fiveleaves.co.uk if you would like a printed programme in May, or keep an eye on www.lowdhambookfestival.co.uk
Lowdham Book Festival runs from June 20-28th. The final line up subject to confirmation.
Congratulations to Anna Woodford whose Five Leaves’ Trailer is the Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice for spring 2008. You can find a long interview with Anna and a feature on the pamphlet in the (Newcastle) Journal: www.journallive.co.uk/culture-newcastle/arts-
news/2008/01/02/poetic-tribute-to-victims-of-nazis-61634-20309625/
A word on some of our plans for the next few months…. Over the summer we are beefing up our young adult section, and publishing some books for younger readers. Nick’s Blues by John Harvey came to us from an unlikely route as it was first published in French, even though John is a well-known writer in the UK. Mostly he writes for adults (including one Crime Express book for us) but here he writes something of a cross-over book aimed at a younger audience, which will also be enjoyed by his large adult fan base.
Spokes is book of short stories for young adults about the Romani world, written by Janna Eliot. We think this is the first book of its kind.
We are pleased to publish A Beautiful Place for a Murder by double-Carnegie Award winner Berlie Doherty. This book had its origins in a short story we first published in In the Frame. In addition to these new books we are re-issuing two books by East Midlands writers with local settings, The Naming of William Rutherford (set in Eyam – the plague village in Derbyshire) by Linda Kempton and The Secret World of Polly Flint (set in Rufford Park in Nottinghamshire) by the late Helen Cresswell.
While announcing new titles we can reveal that our Crime Express imprint has signed up a raft of crime writers for books over the next year – Ray Banks, Lawrence Block (from the USA), Allan Guthrie… more to be announced next time.
We will also be launching a full length crime series, under Five Leaves crime. The first books are by Carl Tighe, from Derby and Manchester, and Russel McLean from Dundee. Carl has written several books before, but not crime, but this will be Russel's first book.
We are also editing a book by first time writer Rod Madocks, an enormous book set in the world of secure hospitals. Rod spent ten years writing the novel, which landed on our desk at 160,000 words. It is now down to 114,000 words and looking good. Five Leaves is very excited by this book - No Way to Say Goodbye - and you'll be hearing more of it later. Stephan Collishaw has joined our list, or, rather, will with his next novel.
Finally, listeners to Ian McMillan's The Verb on Radio 3 will have heard our Andy Croft describing his novel in Pushkin sonnets, Ghost Writer. If you email Five Leaves we'll tell you what a Pushkin sonnet is, but the short answer is that a novel in exact Pushkin sonnets is unwritable, unpublishable, and unsalable. But great fun and you can find it in our poetry section.
Readings and Events
“1968 and all that” day long celebration, including Michael Eaude (“Barcelona”) on Barcelona’s 1968, held in 1976, the Nicolas Walter Memorial Lecture and Zoe Fairbairns runs a short story writing workshop on 1968.
Free. Info: www.1968andallthat.net
Michael Eaude on the literature, art and history of Barcelona at The Place in Nottingham. £3 including refreshments. *postponed*
Info: info@fiveleaves.co.uk
If Salt Has Memory: Jewish exiled writers reading at Meretz UK, 37a Broadhurst Gardens, London NW6.
Launch of Secret Judaism and the Spanish Inquisition at The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Maida Vale, with Michael Alpert.
Info: info@fiveleaves.co.uk
Jacqueline Karp will be talking about her book Reporting from Palestine at the Paris Branch of the NUJ.
Info: info@fiveleaves.co.uk
Storyteller Robin Williamson at Woodborough Hall, Woodborough, nr Lowdham. A Lowdham Book Festival extra event.
www.lowdhambookfestival.co.uk
Nicola Monaghan and Rod Duncan at a “Crime Express” night at Alfreton Library, Derbyshire
Small charge on the door. Info: info@fiveleaves.co.uk
Call in at Edale Country Day (Derbyshire) and meet Linda Kempton and Berlie Doherty launching their new Five Leaves’ titles – The Naming of William Rutherford and A Beautiful Place for Murder.
Info: www.edalecountryday.org.uk
Opening night of Cloud Nine Theatre Company’s RIOT! (script published by Five Leaves in June 2008) at Customs House Theatre, South Shields.
Info & tickets: www.customshousetheatre.co.uk
Five Leaves’ editor Ross Bradshaw talks about publishing at Belper Library, Derbyshire.
Small charge on the door. Info: info@fiveleaves.co.uk
Lebn un verk fun Avrom-Nokhem Shtentsl - Hommage à Avrom-Nokhem Shtentsl. A seminar on AN Stencl introduced by Khayhe-Brurye Wiegand - translator of our "All My Young Years - Yiiddish poetry from Weimar Germany". Bibliothèque Medem, Paris
Info: www.yiddishweb.com
Lowdham Book Festival in Nottinghamshire, jointly organised by Five Leaves and The Bookcase. www.lowdhambookfestival.co.uk
“The Other America” – Smokestack radical American poets on tour, performing with Will Kaufman singing from and talking about Woody Guthrie (a Five Leaves’ literature promotion in association with Smokestack Books).
The Place, Melrose Street, Nottingham
Small charge on the door, bring your own bottle.
Info: info@fiveleaves.co.uk
Peter Mortimer reprises "Off the Wall" at Humshaugh Village Hall, Northumberland.
Info and directions: info@fiveleaves.co.uk
Peter Mortimer’s RIOT plays at Unity Theatre in Liverpool.
Info: www.unitytheatreliverpool.co.uk
Adrian Buckner (supported by June English) reading from “Contains Mild Peril” at Nottingham Poetry Society, New Mechanics Institute, Nottingham.
Info: info@nottinghampoetrysociety.co.uk
Hackney Limmud with Bernard Kops and many others.
The Petchey Academy, Hackney
Info: www.limmud.org
John Harvey reading – including from Nick’s Blues and Trouble in Mind at Reading Festival of Crime Writing – with Mark Billingham.
Victoria Hall, Reading Town Hall. £6/£5
Info: www.readingfestivalofcrimewriting.org.uk
Jewish East End Celebration Society (www.jeecs.org.uk) hosts a tribute to Rudolf Rocker, anarchist, writer, Yiddish newspaper editor and author of Five Leaves' The London Years.
Bouchercon 2008; Baltimore, MD (USA)
Guest of honour: John Harvey
Info: www.charmedtodeath.com
Five Leaves’ poetry evening in Camden United Reformed Church with Penny Feinstein, Naomi Jaffa and Adrian Buckner.
Info: info@fiveleaves.co.uk
Gillian Darley talks about Villages of Vision at Onslow Hall, Guildford
Info: www.artsandcraftsmovementinsurrey.org.uk
Jonathan Wilson will be reading from A Palestine Affair, Hiding Room and An Ambulance is on the Way in an exclusive London reading at Joseph’s Bookstore.
Info: www.josephsbookstore.com
Latest Publications:
Barcelona: the city that reinvented itself - New Editionby ISBN: 1905512031 , 320 pages
£9.99
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Barcelona is one of the most visited destinations from the UK – from stag nighters through to academics.
This paperback original looks at the history of Barcelona and the way it has transformed itself from the Franco era to its claim to be a sustainable city of the twenty-first century.
Michael Eaude discusses everything Barcelona is famous for: Gaudí, festivals, food, the Rambles, the football club, modern and mediaeval architecture, the revival of Catalan. He explores the tensions within the city, linguistic and racial, and between the developers and local communities which have their own ideas on how their city can thrive.
Barcelona is particularly strong on the way the city has been described in literature – from George Orwell and Jean Genet to Manuel Vazquez Montalbán and – most recently – in Shadows of the Wind. It will appeal to anyone who has visited the city, or plans to, who is interested in going beyond the tourist hotspots to find out more about what makes Barcelona so special.
"Partly a jauntily erudite guide to the city, partly a sharply written history, Eaude's book excels at spiking his deft snapshots of squares, bars and sites with flavoursome fragments of Catalan lore and literature. Unlike other Barcelona boosters, Eaude knows how hard the road from Franco to freedom proved, and shows us the marks of that struggle. The city's candid friend, but no hyper merchant, he is the kind of companion who even knows (say) that Placa George Orwell was one of the first spots to have CCTV. So Big Brother is watching you - or was, till anarchists severed the cables." The Independent
" ... a lively and impassioned study of Barcelona today" TLS
From El Pais:
"Eaude threads his narrative between literary quotes, historical details and a critical look at one of the most highly reputed European tourist destinations".
"Eaude shares with other veteran Hispanophiles the wish to use writing to smash the stereotypes that the English still hold about Spain"
Michael Eaude has lived in Barcelona for sixteen years, and is fluent in Catalan and Spanish. He writes for the Spanish and English press, including the Times Literary Supplement. He is on the editorial board of the new English-language daily, Catalonia Today.
Contains Mild Perilby ISBN: 978-1905512430, 72 pages
£7.99
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“It was the kind of day/ that slows down after half past one…”writes (“Suburban Memory”). Contains Mild Peril is the kind of book that turns a slow afternoon into a richly rewarding one.
Buckner’s first full collection is not a book to be belted through, snatched between one commitment and the next, not a book with sharp elbows or a cutting tongue; but a book to be savoured, enjoyed and admired for its gentleness and humour. Its heroes are provincial old codgers, village cricketers, the invisible people who live behind net curtains, the stalwarts who make up the numbers at adult education classes.
If Contains Mild Peril celebrates the determinedly unfashionable, it certainly doesn’t wallow in nostalgia. Full of surprises and wonderful images (the girls on the bus who are sundered and re-united, the yellow hoop stuck in a playground tree) Buckner is in the best tradition of quiet men — when he talks, everyone stops to listen.
“A Buckner poem moves, and moves unexpectedly. He does this not to be pyrotechnic, or modish, but because his subject is mankind…” - U.A. FANTHORPE
has published two pamphlet collections, The Blameless Life (1997) and One Man Queue (2004). Contains Mild Peril is his first full collection. He edits the journal Poetry Nottingham and lectures in Creative Writing at Derby University. He lives in Derbyshire with his wife and two children.
Lindmannby ISBN: 1905512015, 364 pages
£9.99
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In 1942, an unseaworthy ship crammed with refugees bound for Palestine sinks, the result of British and Turkish officialdom. Jacob Lindmann, one of only two survivors, becomes the central character in this haunting novel.
Twenty years on Lindmann lives in a ramshackle boarding house. He remains detached from his surroundings and past until circumstances combine to shatter his personality. The resulting shock touches the other characters in the book, but, most profoundly, the stunned and disturbed reader. Raphael's novel dramatises universal themes of guilt, responsibility and love.
"This is an uncomfortable novel with plenty to say, a violent sting in the tale, and individual vision, and the hectic style of a man whose concerns, passions and humours are almost more than the language can bear." - Sunday Times
"More impressive than any (novel) I have read for a long time"
- The Guardian
"Arresting, disturbing and impressive" - Spectator
"...Lindmann is on a grand scale. It is frank, almost brutal, in its probing into human motives." - Daily Telegraph
“Exciting… powerful… vivid!" - Times Literary Supplement
"A very ambitious novel indeed... his prose fairly crackles with energy" - New Statesman
Frederic Raphael has been publishing novels since 1956. His best known novel is Glittering Prizes. His memoirs include A Spoilt Boy, non-fiction includes Some Talk of Alexander. Raphael was the screenwriter for Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and is a regular contributor to the broadsheet press
Lindmann includes a new introduction by Neal Sokol, a writer for the American Forward.
Secret Judaism & the Spanish Inquisitionby ISBN: 978 1905512294, 260 pages
£14.99
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From the end of the fifteenth century until the 18th century Spanish Jews carried on Jewish practices in the shadow of the Inquisition. Those caught were forced to recant or be burnt at the stake in public “autos de fe”. This book describes the private lives of these secret Jews, drawing on their confessions and trial documents. This paperback edition covers the fate of the Crypto-Jews into modern times in Portugal and Spain, where traces still exist and families still carry out long-hidden Jewish traditions.
"Michael Alpert is to be congratulated on producing a book that is both scholarly and accessible. Not only does he interpret and bring to life the Inquisition files but he reveals with compassion the final years and months... of the Inquisition's victims..." - Sephardi Bulletin
"...a succinct and well-written survey.....detached and objective....wide-ranging and scholarly...it must be stressed that this is an important book covering many topics, rooted in wide-ranging study and direct archival research..." - Jewish Historical Studies
Michael Alpert is Emeritus Professor of the Modern and Contemporary History of Spain at the University of Westminster). His other books include the Penguin Classic ‘Two Spanish Picaresque Novels' and 'A New International History of the Spanish Civil War'. He writes regularly for Spanish popular history magazines on all sorts of historical subjects.
If Salt Has Memoryedited by ISBN: 978-1905512362, 400 pages
£11.99
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If Salt Has Memory comprises essays, memoir and fiction by Jewish writers in exile from many lands – contributors include the former leader of the Tupamaros guerrillas in Uruguay, a French philosopher from Tunisia, political activists from Zimbabwe, Iran, Argentina and writers from Yemen, Bosnia, Cuba, Poland and South Africa.
The anthology is particularly strong on Jewish writers in exile from Iraq – several essays are translated from Arabic – Iran and South America.
Contributors include:
: author of Out of Egypt
: author of Farewell, Baghdad
: writer of the play Death and the Maiden
: author of Children of the Rainbow
: author of Farewell Babylon
: author of Trumpet in the Wadi
: author of the Orange Prize short-listed Ice Road
: winner of the TS Eliot prize for poetry
and other writers published internationally
This book is not directly connected to the Holocaust, but reveals another layer of Jewish exile – political and literary refugees from many lands.
Jennifer Langer is the organiser of Exiled Writers Ink – the main organisation of refugee writers, based in London. She is the daughter of refugee parents and the editor of three previous Five Leaves collections by refugee and exiled writers.
Jews and Sexedited by ISBN: 978-1905512348, 240 pages
£12.99
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"Go forth and multiply" was the fist commandment in the Bible. From King David to (porn star) Ron Jeremy, Jews have taken an interest in sex. But what do we know about the relationship between Jews and sex?
This collection of essays by academics from Britain and other European countries, North and South America, Israel and Australia makes a start in finding out.
Subjects include:
Jews in pornography and the adult film industry
Sexual propaganda
Woody Allen
“The Bride of God”: erotic theology
Homosexuality and Judaism
A century of sex on the Jewish stage
Lesbian Yiddish poetry
The Jewish American Princess
Sex and the British Jewish novel
Jews in prostitution and the white slave trade
Sex and art
… and many more
Nathan Abrams lectures in film at the University of Wales, Bangor.
His previous books include: 'Containing America; cultural production and comsumption in 50s America' (Continuum); 'Commentary Magazine 1945-1959' (Vallentine Mitchell); and 'Studying Film' (Arnold).
Villages of Visionby ISBN: 978-0907123507, 300 pages
£14.99
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Villages of Vision: A Study of Strange Utopias by Darley, Gillian
All over Britain and Ireland there are planned villages: for aesthetic, philanthropic or political reasons, for convenience and for ideals – the best known being Portmeirion, Port Sunlight, New Lanark and Bournville. Gillian Darley covers many hundreds of these strange and pretty arcadias built by aristocrats, industrialists and visionaries.
This revised edition includes a greatly expanded gazetteer, revised bibliography and a new introduction. The gazetteer shows, county by county, where such villages can be seen – not as museums but as evolving, living places.
"The book is no mean achievement. It spans over 250 years of development…The hare-brained, the magnificent, the withered, the bizarre notions of architectural theorists, as well as the successful, are all here in abundance" - Design Magazine
"Gillian Darley has produced an attractive book on an attractive subject…fascinating and lively" - TLS
Gillian Darley is a writer, broadcaster and prize-winning journalist, a former architectural correspondent of the Observer and Director of the Landscape Foundation until 1998. She is the former Chairman of the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings.
She has degrees in History of Art and in Politics and Administration. Her biographies include Sir John Soane and John Evelyn (both shortlisted for the James Tate Memorial Prize) and Octavia Hill. She has written on architecture and landscape, in publications including the Financial Times and the Observer as well as the London Review of Books and the TLS.
Illustrated throughout, preface by the Guardian’s David McKie.
Trailerby ISBN: 978-1905512317, 32 pages
£3.50
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"Dad has always driven slowly
as though he has always been
dragging this trailer
full of loose ends
from his childhood that he can't let go"
Trailer is a series of meditative poems about the poet's family history and the way the past travels with us. The poems - like paintings by Chagall - stir up time and place to dissolving point, honouring the material world but not taking it for what it is. Or isn't. Trailer is a memorial to the poet's grandparents and great grandparents.
"'...how much dark one candle/can leave' writes Anna Woodford at the passing of her grandmother. It's a dark that will accompany, will see her through. There's a level-headed love here that, like life itself, is strong enough to carry the equipages of wit and brilliance in her poetry." - Gillian Allnutt
"I never thought I would use the word 'cool' as a compliment to characterise a young poet's work, least of all when it deals with family material of such deep personal resonance. And yet that is my reaction to Anna Woodford's workings in what has lately become a popular literary territory involving grandparents and immigration. The emotions are strong, and for this very reason, in relation to her material, she stands, whether consciously or intuitively, 'at a slight angle to the universe', as Forster famously wrote of Cavafy. She is tough-minded and tender-hearted." - Anthony Rudolf
Willow Patternby ISBN: 978-1905512287, 36 pages
£4.50
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Penny Feinstein’s poetry is almost English and almost rural. Somewhere just out of view lie other worlds and uneasy histories.
Feinstein’s themes grow out of the quotidian realities of life, emerging like the creamy-capped mushrooms she celebrates. Her dramatis personae are musicians, craftsmen, family and friends, with glimpses into the lives of strangers. Each leaves their mark, makes something unique out of raw, everyday materials.
The poems in the first part of Willow Pattern take us from dinner-table to mountain-top, from simplicity to deeper understanding. In “Getting On”, the sequence that makes up the second part of the book, the poet bears witness to the decline and death of a parent, delineating with honesty and compassion the wrenches of adjustment and the long, slow farewell.
“So, tentatively, I probe the management
of your death. Not hustling or writing you off,
just trying not to be caught in the glare
of pain or fear or guilt or time or love.”
Penny Feinstein taught in inner London schools before retiring to Derbyshire where she began writing. Her poems have appeared in Jewish Renaissance, Staple and Second Light as well as in anthologies published by, among others, Bloodaxe Books. This is her first collection.
Ghost Writerby ISBN: 0907123244, 196 pages
£7.99
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The Ghost Writer is a literary detective-story featuring a cast of assorted ghosts, spies, poets, bad drivers and hopeless lovers. It’s a verse-novel in Pushkin sonnets. And it’s based on Hamlet.
"Andy Croft produces staggeringly flawless verse which is never heartless in perfection." - The North
"The Alexander Pope of the North." - John Hartley-Williams
Dockers and Detectivesby ISBN: 978-1905512379, 120 pages
£8.99
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Long unavailable but in demand, this pioneering study of twentieth-century working class reading and writing in Britain helped revive a number of literary reputations, such as those of Alexander Baron and James Hanley, as well as distinguishing distinct regional literary cultures and narrative styles still existing in Britain.
Dockers and Detectives comprises five long linked chapters on:
● literature and politics
● American influences on popular fiction
● popular literature during WWII
● the novels of working class writers from Liverpool
● the novels of the Jewish East End
Dockers and Detectives was Ken Worpole’s first book, and was widely reviewed and praised on publication.
Ken Worpole is the author of a number of books on architecture, landscape and social history, including Last Landscapes and Here Comes the Sun. He writers regularly for the Guardian, Prospect, Times Higher Education Supplement and other papers.
"For many years, Ken Worpole has been one of the shrewdest and sharpest observers of the English social landscape." - The Independent
An Ambulance is on the Wayby ISBN: 978-1905512355, 194 pages
£7.99
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Sharp, bittersweet tales of middle-aged American men, in hot water with their women, with their sweet or streetwise kids, with their own consciences.
This is about the American husband and father: well meaning but caught out, horny but going to seed, adrift on dreams and fancies and looking for a break. Men in trouble.
"Entertaining… Taut and funny" - The Boston Globe
"Sublime… it might be considered a companion volume to the movie 'Sideways'" - Seattle Weekly
"Tantalising… his writing engages on every page with disarming intelligence and imagination." - Elle
Jonathan Wilson is the author of the biography 'Marc Chagal'l, two novels, 'A Palestine Affair' and 'The Hiding Room', two collections of stories, 'Schoom' and 'An Ambulance is on the Way: Stories of Men in Trouble', and two critical studies of the fiction of Saul Bellow. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Best American Short Stories, among other publications, and he is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
He is a professor of English at Tufts University and lives with his family in Newton, Massachusetts.
The Hiding Roomby ISBN: 978-1905512300, 250 pages
£7.99
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The Hiding Room moves between Cairo and British Mandate Palestine in 1941, and Israel of 1991. In 1941 a reserved English officer falls for a waiflike Viennese Jew trying to flee to Palestine. He betrays her, then tries to save her from the consequences of his action. He too has to flee, at risk both from his fellow British soldiers and the Zionist underground. 50 years on, at the height of the Intifada, the son of this brief partnership comes to Israel and Palestine to trace what happened to his father.
The Hiding Room is a tense historical thriller. Published in the USA by Penguin, this is the first UK paperback publication of The Hiding Room.
"...this story of love, betrayal and redemption is a significant achievement" - Publishers Weekly (USA)
Jonathan Wilson is the author of the biography 'Marc Chagal'l, two novels, 'A Palestine Affair' and 'The Hiding Room', two collections of stories, 'Schoom' and 'An Ambulance is on the Way: Stories of Men in Trouble', and two critical studies of the fiction of Saul Bellow. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Best American Short Stories, among other publications, and he is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
He is a professor of English at Tufts University and lives with his family in Newton, Massachusetts.
The World is a Weddingby ISBN: 978-1905512331, 244 pages
£9.99
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A welcome re-issue of Bernard Kops’ autobiography of his early years in London’s East End through to his emergence as a major writer in Soho in the 1950s through to his drug-induced madness in the 1960s.
"The best East-end autobiography for many years. Kops allows life to flow over him, never losing his sense of sheer delight, in its size, its possibilities and its outragiousness." - The Guardian
"Brutal, grim, factual, but the mind that interprets is unfailingly dramatic, and exalts a most horrible history into a fantastical rhapsody." - New York Times
"A writer of outstanding talent" - Sunday Times
Bernard Kops celebrated his 80th birthday with a new BBC Radio 4 play and the launch of Bernard Kops’ East End last year.
Five Leaves is pleased to re-issue his autobiography, which will be accompanied by a variety of launch events in London and Manchester, and appearances at Jewish Book Week events.
Reporting from Palestineby ISBN: 978-1905512324 , 200 pages
£9.99
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Reporting from Palestine is a unique book.
Barbara Board (1915-1986) was a rare woman foreign correspondent, from the age of 20 she reported from Sudan, Egypt and the Middle East.
Newsgirl in Palestine was published in 1937, and her Newsgirl in Egypt followed a year later – resulting in her being expelled from Egypt. This – her third book – was stopped because of Government war censorship then post-war paper shortages, and has lain forgotten until now.
Reporting from Palestine was written from the front line of the conflict between Jews and Arabs, Zionists and non-Zionists and Jews and the British Mandate Government. Barbara Board was there when the bombs went off, reporting mainly for the Daily Mirror.
Barbara Board interviewed everyone she could find – supporters and opponents of the Jewish underground armies, Arab landlords and peasants, Armenian and Christian minorities, refugees and British servicemen.
Forthcoming Titles:
Riotby ISBN: 1905512492 , 96 pages
£6.99
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“This is an electric light. It switches on and off here. Always put it on before you leave the room empty. You wish to work on the ships?”
RIOT, recalls the events of 2 August 1930, the Yemeni and British seamen’s riots in South Shields, but it speaks to the Britain of today. During the disturbances a police officer was stabbed and more than 20 Yemenis were later deported from the country. The play is relevant to today's ethnic tensions and tells an important story about a little-known piece of social history.
Author, Peter Mortimer says "The play tries to understand what caused this riot. The Arabs got blamed for high levels of unemployment at the time and they were the scapegoats."
"An honest, sympathetic, sometimes self-deprecatingly humorous but illuminating book that is deeply relevant to the troubled times we're currently living through" - Shields Gazette
"It is about the cauldron of prejudice, ignorance, generational divide and politics which brewed up into the ingredients for a riot."
- The Journal
"Touching, thought-provoking and, at times, humorous"
- North Tyneside News Guardian
"An astounding piece of work. A genuinely brilliant piece of theatre."
- Newcastle Evening Chronicle
RIOT plays The Customs House, South Shields in June and Unity Theatre in Liverpool in July.
The Okinawa Dragonby ISBN: 978-1905512393 , 96 pages
£4.99
Due May 2008, click here to pre-order
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Jack deals in cardboard, selling expensive and rare gaming cards to rich collectors. He makes plenty of money, travelling the world. He meets millionaire Henri, the man who has everything. Well, almost everything. Henri wants the elusive Okinawa Dragon, a one-off card given to a Japanese businessman who refuses to sell. A plan is hatched, and Jack is soon on his way to Osaka to complete Henri’s collection. There is only one way to get hold of something somebody doesn’t want to give.
Praise for Nicola Monaghan’s The Killing Jar:
"An exuberant debut that reaches the parts of Britain mainstream fiction usually leaves alone." - The Independent
"Direct and deceptively simple. In spite of the suffering there are surprising touches of humour and tenderness that bloom like flowers on asphalt." - The Times
"...often violent, it isn't gratuitous, and Kerrie-Ann's strident voice sounds authentic; her plight compelling and affecting."
- Independent on Sunday
"Utterly compelling reading about a 'dead stormy'" - coming of age Booklist (starred review)
"startling and potent debut novel. Powerful and complex."
- The Independent
The Quarryby ISBN: 978-1905512423, 96 pages
£4.99
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A frightened phone call from her young daughter sends Jenny Carter into the darkness of Quarry Woods, seventeen years after she swore she’d never return. What she finds there triggers a journey back to a horrific event in her own childhood – an event which now threatens the present.
is the author of two previous crime novels. She is the crime reviewer of the Yorkshire Post.
Spokesby ISBN: 978-190551 478, 160 pages
£5.99
Due June 2008, click here to pre-order
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A scarlet wheel on a blue and green flag, bright against the grey sky. Gisela leaned against the stone balustrade, tired after the journey. She'd forgotten how hectic London was, and wondered how she'd ever managed to cope with the daily commute... But she was glad she'd come. Glad she'd brought Andrej. It was important for her young son to know his roots.
Spokes is made up of stories from across the Traveller world featuring British Gypsies, settled and still travelling; Irish Travellers; East European Roma; and people whose Romani background has remained under wraps in the face of a hostile world. There's an old violinist, a middle-aged mechanic, a young radio presenter, a schoolboy, a retired banker, a tea-lady, and a teacher. Sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic, every story is based on real incidents.
Janna Eliot is a member of the Gypsy Council, the Roma Support Group and plays guitar with the London Gypsy Orchestra.
The Secret World of Polly Flintby ISBN: 978-1905512485, 148 pages
£4.99
Due June 2008, click here to pre-order
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"Have they told you?" His voice was lowered now, he was speaking of secrets to be told.
"Told me? What?"
"Of the lost village..."
As soon as she arrives in Wellow, Polly Flint knows there is magic in the place. And she should know because she is an unusual girl who can see things others can't.
Polly Flint seems to be able to call up a village that had disappeared from the face of the earth - and the people who lived in it, as they slip in and out of time.
Helen Cresswell, who also wrote Lizzie Dripping and the Bagthorpe series, was runner up for the Carnegie award four times. The Secret World of Polly Flint was runner up for the Whitbread award and was televised by Central Television. The book is set in Nottinghamshire, where she lived.
A Beautiful Place for a Murderby ISBN: 978-1905512454, 160 pages
£5.99
Due June 2008, click here to pre-order
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It was the first time my mum had left me on my own. Five days of glorious freedom stretched in front of me. “Enjoy yourself,” I shouted, waving her off. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine!”
I danced back into the house, whooping with delight. And half an hour after she’d gone, I was plunged into the worst experience of my life.
Shaun Parker is a suspect in a murder at a lonely cottage near his house – only Caroline, his girlfriend, believes in his innocence. Can they find the real murderer before the police charge Shaun?
Berlie Doherty is the author of Dear Nobody and Granny Was a Buffer Girl, both of which won the Carnegie Prize. She has written over fifty books. She lives in Derbyshire, the setting for A Beautiful Place for Murder. You can read more about her on www.berliedoherty.com.
Nick's Bluesby ISBN: 978-1905512461, 200 pages
£5.99
Due June 2008, click here to pre-order
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Four days after Nick Harman’s seventh birthday, his father climbed onto a bridge high above four lanes of traffic, paused, then threw himself to his death on the road below. That was a little over nine years ago. Today Nick was sixteen. The clock alongside his bed read 7:59.
Nick lives with his mother on a tough housing estate in north London. On his sixteenth birthday, his mother gives him a box of things left by his father all those years ago. The contents lead Nick to try and discover what led his father from being a successful blues singer to the point where he took his own life.
Against a background of shifting allegiances, involving both the violent gangs on the estate and his first serious involvement with a girl, Nick is forced to come to terms, not only with who his father was but who he is himself.
“A fine novel about growing up by one of the masters of British crime fiction.” - Le Monde
John Harvey has written many books of crime fiction and won the Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger for Sustained Excellence in Crime Writing. You can read more about him on www.mellotone.co.uk.
The Naming of William Rutherfordby ISBN: 978-1905512447, 160 pages
£5.99
Due June 2008, click here to pre-order
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The little cradle creaked on curved rockers, creak, creak on the flagstone floor; a tiny cradle of dark brown wood, with carved acorns on each of the corners of the square wooden hood. Figures in long dresses and white bonnets surrounded it. One of them turned her face to Jack. "Jack, please help us!"
Jack's dream is frightening and confusing. It is so vivid that it seems almost true and he senses that it contains some sort of message for him.
Jack's intuition is correct, and the cradle comes to play an important part in his life, for in mysterious ways it links him with the past - so much so that he begins to live in two worlds; his ordinary, everyday time and one in Eyam, an isolated village in Derbyshire in the year 1665.
As the story unfolds Jack learns his destiny. It seems he is the only one who can help.
The Naming of William Rutherford was short-listed for the Sheffield Children's Book Award and nominated for the Carnegie Medal.
"...a writer who knows how to weave plot, character, and major themes into a haunting, wonderful story. Ten out of ten..."
Weekend Telegraph