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      • Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
        September 2006

        Anthills and Stars

        by Kevin Duffy

        It’s 1968 and in Paris the students are rioting but in Broughton, 20 miles East of Manchester the Permissive Society has just arrived, driving a multi-coloured VW camper van and the locals aren’t best pleased. ‘Anthills and Stars is a warm and beautifully observed comedy and very, very funny. Kevin Duffy has Alan Bennett’s fine ear for dialogue.’ Scott Pack, chief fiction buyer at Waterstones and now publisher at Harper Collins.

      • Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
        August 2008

        The Art of Being Dead

        by Stephen Clayton

        Can you become a murderer by doing nothing? It is the late 1960’s, and in a bleak Northern English town, Jonathan, 24, attempts to live his life without love, pain or commitment, unaware that in his desire to avoid action he will be drawn into a world of chaos, degradation and death. ‘A modern gothic novel.’

      • Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
        July 2010

        Gabriel's Angel

        by Mark A Radcliffe

        Gabriel's Angel “is the perfect antidote to the glib platitudes of emotional quick-fix culture: tender, astute and very funny" - Christopher Brookmyre. Gabriel Bell is a grumpy 44-year old web journalist irritated by the accumulating disappointments of life. He and his girlfriend Ellie want to start a family but Gabriel has so few sperm he can name them and knit them flippers. So it’s IVF, which is expensive. If losing his job was bad enough getting run over and waking up to find himself in a therapy group run by Angels just beneath heaven really annoys him. And it doesn’t do much for Ellie either. Gabriel is joined in therapy by Kevin a professional killer, Yvonne, Kevin’s last victim, a rarely sober but successful businesswoman and Julie, an art teacher who was driving the car that put Gabriel in a coma. In a rural therapeutic community set in an eternal September the group struggles with the therapy. If they do well they may be allowed to go back to earth to finish their lives, or pass into heaven. If they don’t, it’s Hell or worse: lots more therapy.

      • Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
        May 2012

        Pig Iron

        by Benjamin Myers

        Pig Iron is the story of a traveller who hasn’t travelled; a young man fighting for his surname and very survival. John-John wants to escape his past. But the legacy of the brutality left by his bare-knuckle boxing father, King of the Gypsies, Mac Wisdom, overshadows his life. As he attempts to trade prejudice, parole officers and local gangs for his ‘green cathedral’-the rural landscape in which he seeks solace- Mac’s rise and bloody downfall threatens to engulf John-John’s present.

      • Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
        December 2012

        King Crow

        by Michael Stewart

        Winner of The Guardian’s Not The Booker 2011. ‘A brilliant novel. One of the best debuts I have read in years.’ David Peace. Paul Cooper is an outsider. When he looks at people he wonders what bird they are. He finds making friends difficult especially when he has to move from school to school, so he obsesses about ornithology until he meets Ashley. Ashley is everything Cooper isn't, he's tough and good looking, with so much street cred he can divvy up some for Paul as well. When they get into trouble with a local gang, they steal a car and head for the Lakes - Ashley because he thinks he may have killed somebody, and Cooper because he wants to see ravens. Their flight is hectic and intense, and they find refuge for a time in Helvellyn, but things are falling apart and soon their road trip makes national headlines ... for all the wrong reasons.

      • Biography: general
        May 2011

        The Hardest Climb

        by Alistair Sutcliffe

        Alistair Sutcliffe is the first man to summit the highest mountain on each of the seven continents at the first attempt. He has been kidnapped, held at gunpoint and witnessed death on Everest but his greatest challenge happened in February 2010 he suffered a massive brain haemorrhage. The doctors told his wife he would be dead in the morning but he survived and his description of his near death experience is truly remarkable.

      • Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
        January 2010

        Falling Through Clouds

        A Novel

        by Anna Chilvers

        Kat, a 22 year old student, returning home to Devon for the summer holidays meets Gavin on the train. They spend the summer together in Cornwall but he has something on his mind. He is plagued with nightmares after having been held hostage in Iraq and she soon finds she is out of her depth, but in too deep to get out unscathed. When he disappears, Kat and her friend follow a trail of clues from the South West to the North West of England trying to find him. Why has he stolen a package belonging to Mr Knight? Who is the woman he has moved in with and is he losing his grip on reality? Falling Through Clouds interweaves mystery, romance and myth, while revealing a dark secret at its heart.

      • Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
        July 2014

        BEASTINGS

        by Benjamin Myers

        A girl and a baby. A priest and a poacher. Asavage pursuit trough the landscape of a changing rural England

      • Science fiction
        November 2012

        Nod

        by Adrian Barnes

        ‘If Edvard Munch’s ‘Scream’ were a book, this would be it.’ The Bookseller. Dawn breaks and no one in the world has slept the night before. Or almost no one. A few people, perhaps one in ten thousand, can still sleep, and they’ve all shared the same mysterious dream. A handful of silent children can still sleep as well, but what they’re dreaming remains a mystery. Global panic ensues. A medical fact: after six days of absolute sleep deprivation, psychosis sets in. After four weeks, the body dies. In the interim, a bizarre new world arises and swallows the old one whole. A world called Nod.

      • Historical fiction
        May 2011

        Thorn

        by Michael Dean

        THORN is a Rabelaisian tour through Amsterdam in the mid-17th Century and very, very funny. In 1656, at the height of The Dutch Golden Age, two giants of European culture meet: philosopher Baruch Spinoza, a Jew of Portuguese descent, and Rembrandt Von Rijn, the greatest Dutch Master, find themselves inextricably linked through a failed mercantile venture and membership of the freethinking ‘Waterlanders’ which, in challenging the Calvinist doctrine of the day, pits them against the authorities in Amsterdam. Rembrandt can’t keep himself out of the auction houses, despite the best efforts of his new friend; while the chief Rabbi has Spinoza followed and spied upon. Spinoza is thrown out of the Synagogue for his heretical writings and Rembrandt bankrupted for his less than flattering paintings of the city fathers.

      • Crime & mystery
        March 2015

        Café Assassin

        by Michael Stewart

        Twent two years in prison and now Nick Smith wants the life of the man whop ut him there.

      • Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
        April 2014

        WOUNDING

        by Heidi James

        Cora has everything a woman is supposed to want-a career, a caring husband, children, and a stylish home. Desperate forrelease and burdened with guiltshe falls inot a pattern of ever increasing violence and sexual degradation till a one night standtips her over the edge and she finds herself in a dominatrix's dungeon.

      • Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
        July 2013

        A Modern family

        by Socrates Adams

        Television's most popular car show presenter lives his life in the shadow of his career and his persona. He has the perfect job. He doesn't have the perfect family. His wife retches in the bathrooms of exclusive restaurants; his daughter's obsession with a friend is consuming her; his son lives a double life selling pornography by day and gaming by night. Te presenter views his family from the outside and watches as they slowly disintegrate in front of him, unable to control anything that is not scripted.

      • Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
        August 2015

        The Secret To Not Drowning

        by Colette Snowden

        How did the girl who once dreamed of being a Charlie’s Angel become such a cowed and submissive woman? Marion’s life appears perfectly fine but she is controlled and bullied by her husband, her only respite a once a week trip to the local swimming pool. A chance meeting with an old school-friend develops into a secret relationship. She could leave her abusive and unfaithful husband. But is it too late?

      • Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
        November 2013

        Stranger Than Kindness

        by Mark A Radcliffe

        It is 1989 and Community Care is about to reboot the industry and psychiatry. In a soon to be closed asylum a bruised nurse, Adam Sands, is feeling less like a purveyor of kindness and more like a concentration camp guard. Many years later Adam has got used to the quiet life when his past finds him.

      • Fallen

        by Mel O'Doherty

        A stark and beautifully written literary novel, focussing on the impact on one family of one of the most shameful chapters in modern Irish history: the Mother and Baby Homes scandal. Michael Connolly lives with his ageing father Martin, and is haunted by memories of his mother Elaine's suicide in 1981, and by her insistence in the years before that "They killed my baby in Bessborough", a notorious Mother and Baby Home in mid-twentieth century Cork. Nobody believed her, but in 2014, Michael realises that she was telling the truth.

      • Fiction
        November 2015

        Black Neon

        by Tony O'Neill

        Lupita and Gensis have just wasted a drug dealer, stolen his stash and hit the open road with a suitcase full of dirty money. Little did they know that their road trip will set them on a collision course with a side of America darker and weirder than any of them would have known

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