Böcker utgivna av Stairwell Books

Serpent Child  is the autobiography of Patricia Riley. It describes the life of a child of seperated parents in post war Britain at a time when children were still ‘seen but not heard’ and when even for married parents children were preferably seen somewhere else.Many children were hurried off to boarding schools, even at a very tender age; and, if they were noticed at all, children could become pawns in harmful, even dangerous parental war games. In an enlightening, at times humorous, and important book, Pat describes a past that is not always past.‘Children were once viewed as property for the most powerful parent usually the father. Much of the history of family law is the history of the emancipation of children.‘High Court judge Mrs Justice Parker once remarked how children were too frequently weaponised by their parents, and were ‘child soldiers in the separation war’. It has taken family courts and family justice professionals decades to deal with this chronic weaponising and to help children move into a demilitarised zone within or outside of their family.‘This is an important book about an issue that is rarely covered in such depth, and I wish it every success.’  Anthony Douglas CBE, Chief Executive of Cafcass, January 2019.Patricia Riley is the author of Looking for Githa, the biography of the ground-breaking playwright Githa Sowerby

A trilogy of poetic voices, encapsulating rage, angst, fearlessness and insistence on being heard. Each poet is poised on the edge of prominence, and brings her own vision of the world: how their elders have handed it on, and how they wish to see it remade. Becca shines light on the modern through a classical lens, focusing on 'dark goddesses' such as Inanna. She rages at senseless death-by-cop; but knows better than to "shout". Laura lobs sestinas at weapons of destruction: the silencing of women, reforming them into one's ideal, where controlling anything is better than controlling nothing. Izzy also writes about classical creatures: Anglo-Saxon monsters, Norse gods, or enraged statuary brought to life. She reminds us to be our true, unapologetic, murderous or sexy selves, in an earthy, steel-tipped set by a member of Generation "Snowflake".

Helena Hailstanes is sick of the secluded life her father, Sam, forces her to live on the shores of Loch Duie. She runs away and encounters Megan, who as a muddled and meddling young Sea Witch cursed Helena and Sam, creatures of an ancient race of shape-shifting otters, to remain in human form.

This intriguing detective story introduces DI Ambrose in the first of a series of tales of murder most foul. Foul Play happens in a fog bound theatre with a cast of eccentric actors to keep the reader engaged until the very last page. We also meet popular team members DS Waters and WPC Meadows for the first time This novel is the first cooperation by mother daughter duo Pauline Kirk and Jo Summers writing as PJ Quinn.Set in a partially bombed out theatre in the sleepy town of Chalk Heath where the leading lady is attacked on stage during a rehearsal. This is postwar austerity Britain, James Dean, Danny Kaye and Brian Rix are all the rage, yet in Chalk Heath, culture is represented by the Players. Ambrose and his team set about finding the killer.This was a time when forensic science was in its infancy and crime scene processing was primarily good observation with a bit of fingerprint analysis and blood typing thrown in to taste. For the crime novelist this period allows for good character development and greater freedom to explore the relationships between all the principals. Foul Play is an exemplary tale of high drama in a dramatic setting while Ambrose, who remembers the theatre in is prewar glory, and coping with his own wayward son, attempts to reconcile his younger self, his son;  the damaged theatre and acting troupe with the essential business of solving the crime.

Most of the world's major cities are inundated; a tsunami has wiped out houses, shops and schools along the Hartlepool shoreline. And now the authorities are walling in the flood zone…Seventeen-year-old Zoe, knocked unconscious during the sudden flood, cannot recall her name and can only summon flashes of her immediate past. Zoe meets Alma, who has a mysterious link to global entrepreneur  & opportunist Volk Volkov, himself a refugee: of his own past, and of a Soviet prison camp. But will Alma and Volk's drama trap Zoe in The Zone?The ancient past and possible future collide with Creationists, environmentalists, former prisoners, flood tourists and feral castaways in Eliza Mood's rollicking survival story set in the near future. O Man of Clay is a finely imagined and complex dystopian novel about an England of the future overwhelmed by environmental catastrophe. Like the best novels set in the future, this one is really about our miserable, dismal, toxic present and its message is salutary, prescient and terrifying.  The writing is also very, very good.Carlo Gébler, novelist