Böcker av Tracey Scott-Townsend

1972:At the Great Western Express Music Festival in Bardney, Lincolnshire, 16 year old Annette Woods abandons her sisterly responsibilities in favour of a tryst with Justin, an up-and-coming folk musician.Meanwhile 13 year old Janie has a public meltdown, unwittingly instigating a racially-motivated attack on her new friends by the on-duty constabulary.The injustice inspires Justin there and then to change his career path from music to politics.Fast forward more than forty years.Annette and Janie are called home to Lincolnshire to look after their sick mother. There they unearth childhood resentments but also prove the indelibility of their bond, when Annette makes a reckless choice that turns out to be the best thing for both sisters.For Justin Citizen, too. Now the Leader of the Opposition, his recurring dreams of an island of sanctuary are propelled into action when a provocative news headline prompts him to make a momentous decision of his own. That same headline is the catalyst that finally brings him back together with Annette, the girl at the festival who he has never forgotten.Festival in Time explores how home can turn out to be something different than what we imagined, how family is not always put together traditionally, and how politics can be pursued in ways other than on the Party tour bus.¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿-¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿, ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿, ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿, ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿. ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿!-- J.L. Dixon @johns_bookshelf

All Maya Galen wanted was a happy family, stifling her inner urges to explore the wider world for the sake of being there for her children. But parenting with her husband, Con, wasn't always easy. Their eldest son, Jamie, broke off all contact some years ago and now Joe, the apple of her eye, has done the same after an argument with his parents about his chosen way of life. Maya and Con are left rattling around 'The Cottages' - their enormous home in a Lincolnshire village, wondering what they did wrong.When they are called to Australia to identify the body of a young man, Maya is given her son's journal. After a sleepless night she makes the decision to follow in her youngest son's footsteps and become a vagabond, leaving her husband and daughters to return to the UK without her. From now on she needs to rely on her own physical and emotional strength.Following Joe's hand-drawn maps and journal entries, Maya travels from Australia to Denmark and beyond, meeting many young people like Joe along the way and trying to discover what it means to be alive. As months turn into years she can't bear to go back to the opression of her perfect home. Slowly, she comes to understand that what she is discovering is her most basic human self. Another family crisis, involving one of her twin daughters, eventually forces Maya to return home. As she treads carefully through the wreckage of her marriage, unfinished business is tied up and the family once again becomes complete, but in a different way from before.

In September 2016, Lauren Wilson is travelling by ferry to the Outer Hebrides, about to begin a new job as a children's social worker. She's also struggling to come to terms with the recent drowning of a Sheena, a teenage girl she had deeply cared for.Engrossed in her book, when somebody sits opposite her at a table on the ferry, Lauren refuses to look up, annoyed at having her privacy disturbed. But a hand is pushing a mug of tea across the table, and a livid scar on the back of the hand releases a flood of memories.Lauren studies the hand on the table in front of her, the line of the scar drawing a map of the past in her mind. She was the one who created the scar, not long before her relationship with the love of her life ended almost thirty years ago. Lauren hasn't seen Neil since she walked out of their shared life, unable to forgive either herself or him for a decision he strongly pressured her to make.She's not ready to meet his eyes, not yet. From his scar to his wrist bone, following his arm upwards and across his shoulder to his collarbone, his chin and the lower part of his face; Lauren remembers incidents from their past and tries to work out what caused their life to go so horribly off-track.When she finally meets his eyes and they speak to each other for the first time, Lauren believes she has set her life on a new course. But her gain will result in losses for others. Is this really what she wants to happen?Some people believe in the existence of a parallel universe. Does Lauren have a retrospective choice about the outcome of her terrible recent accident, or is it the bearer of that much older scar who has the power to decide what happens to her life now? The gripping story of Sea Babies is inspired by the vast and raw landscapes of the Outer Hebrides, by the fraught journeys of refugees from one home to the hope of another across the sea, and also by artist Marina Abromovic's 2010 MoMA performance: The Artist is Present, in which she spent sixty seconds staring into the eyes of her former lover.Set mainly in the Outer Hebrides and Edinburgh from the 1980s to the present, Sea Babies is a potent emotional, psychological drama with a poignant twist in the tale. Sea Babies explores the more difficult aspects of relationships, the idea of choices and responsibility, and the refugee in all of us.

"e;Gabe and I are happy this way. We don't need anyone else in our lives."e;Mariana feels like a pawn in other people's games. Her birth mother is ill and opportunities for them to be reconciled are running out.Despite being adopted, Mariana has always felt secure with who she is. But both sides of her birth family are now closing in, and whatever she decides will irrevocably alter many lives; most of all the man and woman who created her.Of His Bones is about predestination and choices. It explores themes of familial love, identity and the powerful hold of the past. Set in the seascapes of East and North Yorkshire, this novel is the sister-book to The Last Time We Saw Marion.