A Fine Line

A story of the extraordinary lives of ordinary people.

Set between Victorian Liverpool and Dundee and the battlefields of the First World War, three families face the perils of life on the economic cliff-edge, where a single misstep can send lives plunging out of control.

Crossing a century of dramatic change, their journey begins in the aftermath of the slave trade, moving through the era of Empire expansion and Industrial Revolution to a time of religious strife and global conflict.

The world they navigate is one fraught with hazard in which exploitation, zealotry and violence lead to rape, prostitution, fraud, and murder.

At its heart, two indomitable women – lifelong friends – choose very different paths as they strive to hold their worlds together, and to survive.

A Little Look at Bottoms

Designer Tom Karen gives us a delightful series of drawings to amuse and inspire young readers. Children love to laugh at bottoms, and with this little book they will go back to their favourites again and again – from giraffes to jellyfish and bumblebees to bears.

A Strange Awakening

This is the story of a young boy growing up and how, although he is not aware of it at the time, he is destined for something beyond his wildest dreams. Since he was young, strange and unusual things have often seemed to happen to him: strangers who appear to know him; dreams and fantasies that merge with reality; and strange coincidences in which the events of his life draw in and interweave with the lives of many around him.

Torn between Australia and England, it seems as though the map of his life has already been laid out for him. But life has so much more in store for him than he ever imagined. Even if it lies beyond his understanding, he has no choice but to go along for the ride.

A Suitcase Full of Boomerangs

A Suitcase Full of Boomerangs is essentially a romp around the Republic of Ireland. Tiny boomerangs are bequeathed to colourful characters encountered throughout the three-week round trip.

Narrated in the first person, the protagonist and two of her sisters manage to have a ball as they traverse the width and breadth of Ireland in a big black jeep filled with suitcases full of boomerangs. This book of travel laughs, mishaps and adventures is a light-hearted, feel-good read, intended to whisk the armchair traveller far away to another time and place – the magic that will always be Ireland.

A Suitcase Full of Koalas

A Suitcase Full of Koalas is a modern, edgy travel book set to test your wits and memory for detail. Gallivanting around London and somewhere distinctly south of the great capital in a sleepy seaside village, the author finds herself handing out tiny furry koalas to the English, to the Polish, to the Italians, in fact to anyone who cares to accept the little fellas as a gift from Australia. In her moochings over a month, she manages to meet a myriad of characters from all walks of life who practically jump off the pavements, à la Mary Poppins and Bert, and into the book.

This is a book about life and living – about the human condition and quest for feathering one’s own nest. As John Donne observed, ‘No man is an island’, but sometimes we yearn to embrace solitude and sit with ourselves and a good book. A Suitcase Full of Koalas will inevitably tickle your fancy and have you laughing on every other page. But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?

A Way to Go

An intense romance developed out of an illicit and highly sensual affair of more than 10 years which survived many hurdles.

Freed from the ties of work and family by retirement and bereavement, the couple embark on a trip of a lifetime around the coasts of Europe, with its idyllic beaches, historic cities, fascinating art galleries and ancient sites.

This is a gripping and highly readable novel full of wit, fun and escapist pleasures, but with disturbing happenings which raise serious issues of love, estrangement and loss.

Almost Down to Earth

In this fable for our times, feisty M’bali Hoyle has returned to the town of her youthful disgrace. 

Will tiny, isolated Quimbleton take her to its heart this time?
Two glamorous visitors drop into her world just as she meets ex-rock star Hayes.
Only M’bali sees the dark threat behind their glitzy facades.

How can she convince Hayes and the starstruck locals, a cast of rural eccentrics, that her intuition is right?

Can she draw them all more or less together when danger strikes?

With a dry wit, the narrator observes the foibles of human nature as the reader is launched into a twisting, turning adventure with the future of life on Earth at its core.

Alucard

Emery is no ordinary teenage girl. She is the result of two gods that weren’t meant to fall in love, who were forbidden to love. She is the daughter of Goddess Indie Jones and the devil himself, Jethro Mist.

Emery’s life is far from ordinary. With people out to kill her, school bullies and living in the underworld, she has enough to worry about without him: her parted soul, her star-crossed lover, Tyler. He consumes her every thought and her body desires him in every way, yet he couldn’t care less.

An Agony of Flame and the Fury and the Mire

A two-part climax to The Last Vigil, An Agony of Flame and The Fury and the Mire, concludes the story of the fall of Constantinople. Here is an intense evocation, both of the gruelling eight-week siege itself and of the chaotic as well as terrifying aftermath.

In part three, Niccolo and Demetrius serve on the great Roman land walls, enduring bombardment and nocturnal hand-to-hand combat. Nestor-Iskander reappears, a deserter now from the Turkish camp. Niccolo is badly wounded, recovering in Theodora’s house in the suburb of Studion. Then comes the night of the final Ottoman assault when, after a valiant defence, treachery leads to massacre (including the death of Demetrius) and Niccolo finds himself among a scatter of survivors. 

Part four centres on Niccolo’s frantic attempts to find a way through a city, now being systematically sacked. Moreover, he must think of others. Demetrius might be dead but Nestor-Iskander has survived and demands refuge. Then there is Theodora locked up with the faithful in Hagia Sophia. Can Niccolo reach her before the marauding enemy? So, he travels deeper and deeper into his adopted city’s heart of darkness. Nestor finds protectors, loses, then regains them. Theodora is found then lost forever. Mehmet appears once more; Cinnamon never reappears. Finally, after the city has been overwhelmed and pacified, Niccolo sets sail westward across the Mediterranean, not home to Venice but to an Atlantic shore where a new age of exploration is about to dawn.  

An Ideal Daughter

Annie Grant loved her family, her violin, and her study. Once, a long time ago, she had also loved Liam.

When Annie opened the door that evening, she expected the supermarket delivery. Instead, it was Liam on the doorstep, begging for help. Annie, still a schoolgirl, was drawn into a situation that threatened not only Liam’s life, but the lives of many others, including her own.

The Covid-19 pandemic was raging as Annie fought to keep Liam, her family and herself out of danger. It would take every bit of her remarkable intellect and her incredible ingenuity to achieve this. All the while, she had another struggle on her hands – to maintain her focus and achieve the ambition that involvement with Liam was threatening to derail.

If it all went wrong a lot of people were going to die and not just from Covid-19.

Andrew and the Midnight Ape

Most children in the world like to play and have fun. Many children have pets that they like to play with, usually a dog, a cat, a hamster, or a guinea pig.

Some lucky children even have a horse or a pony to play with.

But what if you were a nine-year-old boy or an eight-year-old girl, and you had a big, male silverback gorilla to play with? What would you do? Where would you go?

Well, this dream becomes a reality for Andrew Tyler and his sister Gemma.

Their adventure of a lifetime began when they went to stay with their grandparents, as they often did. You see, Andrew’s grandad has a menagerie in his back garden, a large and exotic menagerie.

However, there was a secret enclosure in the garden, which contained a big, hairy surprise for Andrew and Gemma…

…A large male gorilla named Fudge.

So now, at the stroke at midnight, the children secretly go outside and have the times of their lives with their new friend Fudge…

Angel In The Mirror

Since losing her dad at a young age, Annith Padra has always feared losing those closest to her. So when she looks at her new-born half-sister Leanne’s reflection in an old rustic mirror and sees a dark figure looming there, she begins to panic. Annith becomes obsessed in finding a way to remove it, especially when she discovers this dark threat has the ability to destroy Leanne the same way it died — by fire. But this doesn’t appear to be the only threat, as only since this dark figure has appeared has Annith started to learn about her dad’s death nine years ago.