Literary Fiction

23 railway inspired tales that mine a rich seam of creativity from the heart of the Yorkshire Wolds. From pure fiction to basis in fact; from wonderfully evocative and painstaking detail to distant viewpoints, from the 1850’s through to the present day and on into the future, every tale in this remarkable collection will entertain you as it brings alive the natural beauty of the Yorkshire Wolds. “The range is truly fascinating from supernatural and science-fiction to wartime drama and accounts based on real people and events” - Lord Faulkner of Worcester, President of the Heritage Railway Association

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Miranda is a young tutor in an Art college in London. She is dedicated to her work and has a vibrant social life in Camden Town and an exciting new relationship with Mike, a Scottish mountain climber. Her easy relationship with her students is disturbed when she discovers that one of them is stalking her. Then her close friend and colleague, Anni, also begins to quietly insinuate herself into Miranda’s life; taking over her flat, establishing friendly relations with Miranda’s brother and his pregnant girlfriend, and becoming suspiciously close to Mike. As Miranda prepares for an exhibition of her paintings in a Camden gallery, tensions in her life increase and she is faced with issues that need to be resolved. While she becomes ever more involved with her painting and her study of the painter, Munch, she realises that her relationships with the people around her are beginning to unravel and events in both her private life and her career as a tutor take an unexpected turn. She loses faith in the people that she had trusted, and faced with unforeseen problems, she has to confront the challenges in her life and make some crucial decisions.

 

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In this gripping account, Mary Brown charts the gritty reality of life for two very different women who live at society’s margins.

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Miranda should have no cares in Sue Knight’s eco-thriller, Waiting for Gordo. She’s with her dependable husband, Jim, on a paradise island with a group of friends. Their daughter is grown up and has flown the nest. They have no ties and no worries. So why the shades of unease? Is it the rustle of unseen creatures in the low scrub, the strangely watchful Bathroom Cockroach … or is it that Jim’s dive buddy Gordo is delayed on an outlying island waiting for a tropical storm to blow over before their boat can put to sea.

Jim’s usual matter-of-factness keeps a lid on Miranda’s unease, but the small anomalies grow while she looks out over a deceptively calm aquamarine sea towards distant roiling clouds ...

... waiting for Gordo.

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Arcadia is where all is tranquil, balanced and harmonious. Aidan Hamilton is an artist and a teacher. He works in a college of education where he is able happily and effectively to combine both aspects of his vocation. He teaches student teachers, and he paints Arcadia. While he does not push the notion of Arcadia too far, he never ceases to give thanks to the Gods he doesn't believe in, for having been called to such congenial labour. His favourite artist is Nicholas Poussin. Poussin, in Italy in the seventeenth century, painted landscapes which embodied the very essence of Arcadia with its lofty trees, its olive groves, its distant walled city basking in the golden light of the late afternoon sun. At first, you do not see, in a dark shadowed overhang of rock a man being crushed by a serpent. Aidan is also blessed with a family, a wife and two beautiful and adoring daughters. Here lurks the serpent. Cathy, Aidan's wife, cannot love their elder daughter, Bobbie. Slowly and inexorably, she is crushing Bobbie's happiness, and destroying the secure world within which the family has been safe, and Aidan's desperate attempts to mediate are of no avail. And then the talented Louise De Grey arrives at the college.

10% of the proceeds from this book will be donated to the freedom from torture charity

 

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Rory Redman’s exploits might drive his contemporaries to rage and himself to insolvency, but he has never put anyone in real danger – before now. His desperation for money drives him to accept a commission that he knows has crossed a line.

Do the job, collect the fee, and don’t look in the envelope.

All he has to do is keep a lid on his curiosity and his troubles are behind him. But Rory Redman was never one to deny an impulse. There is a heart-stopping inevitability about the way his choices funnel him ever further from safety and ever further from home. The mutual attraction between him and Ariadne Sowerby might be the route to salvation except that both strive to hide their feelings and Rory’s suicidal curiosity focuses on Klarissa Alterleta, the strange woman whose antics escalated his minor troubles into the stratosphere.

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Makeover by Barbara Lorna Hudson is a sharply observed and hard-hitting work of women’s fiction that explores the twists and turns of life and relationships as it follows the fortunes of Lucille, twice divorced and twice the victim of abusive marriage, and Oxford don Walter, still mourning the death of his wife.

In their own very different worlds, they both know that they have to move on and grasp new opportunities, but neither is prepared for the severe lessons they have yet to learn.

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Mark Henderson’s novel, The Engklimastat (“that which prevents or stops crime or law-breaking”) weaves a fast-paced story of drama, treachery and love around the question posed by the title; what would happen to modern society if crime became impossible? The story weaves nail-biting drama into moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity as it follows Henderson’s unlikely protagonists, the hapless Solomon Threep and the dynamic Theresa Greene, who are both used and pursued by the demon Hypostates. As the drama unfolds it becomes only too clear, with the logical inevitability that is Henderson’s trademark, how much modern society relies on crime just to function, let alone to flourish.

Listen to Mark's interview with Talk Radio Europe's Hannah Murray on 'the book programme' here.

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Riding the High Road by Penny Frances is a gripping debut novel about the explosive relationship between Gethin, a teenage drop-out, and his biological father. When Gethin leaves home to search for his father in Scotland, he meets biker-girl Jez and embarks on a high-octane road trip. This adrenaline-fuelled adventure leads them to question their reasons for running away and sheds light on the legacy of their parents. Learn More