Twelve-ish. Shade in the Murillo gardens, as satisfying as lemonade. In the heat, just for a moment, Miguel stood in front of me. The old Miguel, not the one we've got now. The fuzzy image held its hand out and led me to the old Arab wall.When we were first married, we tried to climb it in the middle of the night. A celebration. 'This wall's been here hundreds of years,' Miguel said. 'If we can conquer that, we can conquer anything.' I believed him.I open my eyes and he's gone.In these slippery stories the truth and the possible weave as unexpected lives, complicated minds and exotic spaces are sketched in with nimble words and quick wit. Ghosts torment from the past; future selves write back; the lost look about, find themselves watched, are lead astray.Keep company with thieves and murdering artists, with the couple who miss the ferry for their make-or-break holiday; the mayonnaise deliveryman who becomes a reluctant golddigger, and the psychoanalyst and his GP wife investigate a local widow's naked appearances in church.Between these pages you can never be sure quite who you'll meet next, but you can be sure that you're in safe hands. An intriguing new collection from a writer you'll want to keep an eye on.
At the age of fifty, towards the end of the First World War, W. H. Davies decided that he must marry. Spurning London society and the literary circles where he had been lionised since the publication of his Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, he set about looking for the right partner on the streets of London.Young Emma is a moving and revealing memoir told with disarming honesty and humour. Davies records his life with three women: from his affair with Bella, the wife of a Sergeant Major, to his year-long liaison with the gentle Louise, to the turbulent brushes with a society woman who fears for her own life at his hands. He finally meets Emma, then pregnant, at a bus-stop on the Edgware Road. This is the story of their love affair.
Winner of the PEN International/New Voices Award 2015Shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award 2015Onstage again, you stare down at your feet, imagining you see the bright, painted curves of a pair of clown's shoes... It helps to pretend you are a clown, hidden inside baggy trousers, your true face invisible behind splashes of red lipstick and pale powder...A dazzling, ambitious debut collection from a young talent, these critically acclaimed stories dip into the shadows and spotlights of life. From the pale waking hours to the darkling places, Clown's Shoes introduces a cast of lost characters trying to find their way, and asking whether everyone really does come salting home in the end?Since the Devil visited the glove maker, she has found herself in the asylum counting out days instead of stitches. At the dog track, hidden amongst the rowdy punters, a woman bets on underdogs, life, and love. Onstage, a desperate mother performs a nightly striptease, whilst, in a small Welsh town, a young Korean immigrant tells her secrets to the sway of the sea.The people who populate the exciting and intriguing world of Clown's Shoes have stories that enthrall the imagination.
All The Places We Lived is a collection of disparate, yet inextricably connected stories that are bound by the common threads that exist amongst young people in and out of love with each other and life in the twenty-first century.
Isabel Williams (Is for short) is something of a challenge, even for her best friend Robert. As a new girl at a 1970s comprehensive she seems vulnerable, but she soon starts putting her teachers in their place with her amazing knowledge of science, bridges and the great Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Robert soon finds himself dodging school to visit antiquated lift shafts and getting lost in the science museum in a bid to keep up with his mercurial fellow pupil, who at times actually appears to believe she is Bunel reincarnated. But then, after a showdown in school - over Brunel - Is goes missing and only Robert sets knows where she could have gone...This new children's novel by Derek Webb aims to engage girls in particular with science and engineering, as well as introducing younger readers to Key Stage 2 science principles, and the history of Brunel, while at the same time offering them a fun and adventurous read.
Shortlisted for the 2017 Dylan Thomas Prize.Lola and Pijin make up stories to test each other, stories of daring and adventure, of bad people and of Gwyn who drives his ice-cream up the hill to their town every week. Gwyn is a dangerous man and Pijin knows it. Lola is not so sure. As they grow up and their friendship grows more complicated, some of their stories fall silent, but some will come true.Pigeon is a journey through the uneasy half-forgotten memories of childhood, a story about wishful-thinking and the power of language.
Beautiful widow Joan D'Silva is at Howrah Station, fleeing Calcutta with her 11-year-old son Errol. Also on the same train is Laxhimi, a notorious hijira prostitute: charismatic, sensual and powerful. They are both running away to Lucknow to escape danger, but soon their lives will become entangled in a web of corruption and blackmail.
Alun Richards casts his baleful eye on the central valleys of twentieth-century South Wales from the 1930s to the 1970s, the personal relationships and social ambitions of the inhabitants of this much-fabled country. Includes the best of his short stories, as funny and savage as they are scathing and compassionate, combined with his entrancing autobiographical memoir Days of Absence.
One of Merthyr's Victorian brickyard girls, Saran watches the world parade past her doorstep on the banks of the stinking and rat-infested Morlais Brook: the fair-day revellers; the chapel-goers and the funeral processions. She never misses a trip to the town's wooden theatres, despite her life ruled by the 5 a.m. hooter, pit strikes, politics and the First World War that takes away so many of her children. Her Glyn will work a treble shift for beer money; her brother Harry is the district's most notorious drinker and fighter until he is 'saved'. The town changes and grows but Saran is still there for Glyn, for Harry, for her children and grandchildren.In his 1935 novel Black Parade, writer, soldier and political activist Jack Jones creates a superbly riotous, clear and unsentimental picture of Merthyr life as his home town reels headlong into the twentieth century.
An artist at heart, Trystan Morgan grows up in his grandmother's valley mining cottage, duty-bound by her deep wish for him to be a preacher. He comes from farming stock and longs to paint the Welsh countryside of his people. But he agrees to study at the city university although his adolescent mind revolts at the social posturing around him. Trystan's journey through the conflicting cultural, social and political values of his country in the mid-twentieth century is bewildering but finally liberating. And through the glittering, crowded, kaleidoscopic images of this bravura novel, the author creates a rich impression of people and place; a Wales which is a landscape of the mind.
Despite talk of bulls, bears and stock-market crashes, the depression meant little to young brothers Alun and Arthur as they carved their initials into the sycamore tree below Hope Mountain. They longed to see the great ships that would bring their father home. Eagerly they follow the progress of their father, famous Welsh tenor Jabez Trevor.
The Hill of Dreams is the story of a young man's quest for beauty through literature, love and, finally, the spiritual alchemy of drugs and dreams. It is widely regarded as Arthur Machen's finest work.
Presents the story of an Anglo Indian community in 1960s Calcutta who are coming to terms with India taking its first few faltering steps towards democracy. This book includes a list of recipes and a glossary of Anglo Indian words. It is suitable for those interested in stories of South Asia, and the cross-over of English and Indian.
John Tripp (1927-1986) was one of the leading literary figures in Wales. Poet, short story writer, and journalist, he was an outspoken and often controversial writer whose passion and vigour often spilled over. This book features a collection of his writings.
Winner of the Media Wales Readers' Prize 2011shortlisted for The Guardian's Not the Booker Prize 2011Four friends. One intensely hot summer that will change their lives forever.When a group of hedonistic teenagers save a woman from drowning they become unlikely local heroes, but their celebrity becomes the focus for first envy, then harassment.Fireball takes us through their last summer together, and one that will come to define their future: a summer of sex, chemical experimentation, shifting loyalties and disillusionment.
In 1976, Niall's family emigrated to Australia, as part of the GBP10 Pom scheme. He lived there for 3 years, moving from Brisbane to Perth in a souped-up station wagon. 30 years later, he returned to retrace his steps; this is a memoir, travelogue, rant, paean, elegy, and perhaps the closest thing to an autoibiography that Niall will ever write.
Tai and the Troll are mates. Tai lives in Tremorfa and the Troll lives at the bottom of Mrs Griffiths' garden. The Troll likes fishing, apples and his old car which only starts when Tai kicks the tyres. The Troll has to visit his Aunt Senni who lives under a bridge in Brecon and he's asked Tai to come with him on a day trip.
Offers the underlying meaning of South Wales' history. This title, with its plural narration, presents a choric commentary on human illusion and knowledge, on power and its attendant deprivation, on dreams and their destruction. It is History as Carnival and a comic vision of humanity that recognises no geographical boundaries.
Presents the story of Michael Caradock, a writer whose life has ended violently on an isolated Welsh island. This book follows his protected Welsh childhood, his crucial first encounters with sex, his literary success in London and his final withdrawal to Wales.
In Love and Other Possibilities, Lewis Davies embarks on a journey that takes us into Sri Lanka, Wales, Spain, India, Morocco and the lives and minds of his characters. His spare prose has an inexplicable magic that metamorphoses the exotic into the familiar and vice versa, creating a sense of mild disorientation and unreality that makes you begin to see the world in a different way.
A Rope of Vines - Journal from a Greek Island is a beautiful and personal account of the time spent by Brenda Chamberlain on the Greek Island of Ydra in the early 1960's. Sea and harbour, mountain and monastery, her neighbours and friends are unforgettably pictured; these were the reality outside herself while within there was a conflict of emotion and warring desires. Joy and woe are woven fine in this record: the delight of a multitude of fresh experiences thronging to the senses, the suffering from which she emerges with new understanding of herself and human existence. Both in the intensity and force of the writing and the eloquent island drawings, A Rope of Vines - Journal from a Greek Island is a distinguished achievement.
A happiness drug is found to be intolerable to society. This book describes the process by which its disseminators are hounded to death.
Presents a compilation of short stories from fourteen of best Basque writers. This title provides an insight into modern Basque society and literature.
Robert Mitchum was a Hollywood bad-boy and one of the greatest screen actors of the twentieth century. But his pre-fame life is cloaked in mystery, the truth hidden within conflicting tales of time spent as a Depression-era hobo, prizefighter, escaped felon - and secret poet. This book provides a personification of Film Noir, Robert Mitchum.
Through his letters home and six short stories, Alun Lewis paints a vibrant picture of life in India as a British serviceman during World War II. Intimate, vivid, observational, and always filled with emotion, this is a rare literary example of one Welshman's experience of empire and war.
Tells the story of Amy Evans' bold play for happiness, and her dangerous success.
Set in a rural mining village in South Wales in the years leading up to the Second World War, this book recreates a magical but alive world that will resonate with our memories, real and imagined, of childhood.
A story of a group of friends as they edge towards adulthood in the sunshine and shadow of Llandudno during the years of the Second World War.
An engaging novel set in Kenya during the 1990s.Kenya in 1996, Griff takes a job teaching at a small struggling school in Nairobi. How does a naive and privileged mzungu fit in? El Nino floods, bulldozed slums, street justice and widespread corruption, it is nearly impossible to work out what the hell is going on...
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