A Bare Chronicle of Existence

On the very same day as his brother, Arnold enrolled to serve in WW1. He signed up for the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserves and in April 1915 set sail on HMS India. A few short months later, he found himself floating in the North Sea. This is his story and the story of the men who found themselves interned in Norway for the remainder of the war. It is a story of loneliness and love. Of conflict and of isolation. It is a story from WW1 that is rarely told but one that deserves to be.

A Bear Called Bruno

Bruno is a big, old, kind and handsome bear who has six children and two grandchildren!

They all live in the wilderness amongst hundreds of trees and bushes alongside a fast-flowing river. Life is good until one day when Bruno sees his granddaughter, Coco, looking sad, standing alone on the riverbank.

When she says everything is OK, Bruno goes about his day as usual. But later that afternoon when he passes by the river again, he notices Coco is still there, and has salt marks coming down from her eyes.

He knows something is wrong! It’s not until he visits Coco’s school that he finds out Coco is being bullied. After Bruno speaks with her teachers and with the parents of the naughty bears, school life returns to normal for Coco… and for the bullies.

Join Bruno to learn about why bullying is wrong.

A Bird Called Swoopy

Swoopy is a black and white magpie who lives high up in a gum tree with his Mum and Dad, just near a golf course.

One day when his parents are away finding food, he sees a pretty pink golf ball plop along the green grass below their nest. He flies down, picks it up, and takes it back up into the nest. He hears a man shouting something but doesn’t think anything’s wrong?

When his parents come home, they tell him it is wrong to take things that don’t belong to you, and they push the ball back out of the nest down onto the ground. But the next day, Swoopy sees another ball, and he can’t resist! What happens next?

Join Swoopy to learn why stealing is wrong.

A Bit of Good Luck

A young man slings his duffel bag over his shoulder and begins a journey of a lifetime.

In this true story, young Frank learns more in a day than all his life up to that point but, ironically, he’s left with more questions than answers! Do lobsters whistle? Are sleep and driving mutually exclusive?

Now, over 50 years later, Frank recalls that day, the highs and lows, the stops and starts and the emotional end to his odyssey. With his mission to meet up with his father at the opposite end of Ireland, this funny, yet poignant story paints a landscape that is fading over time and will leave you wondering where life’s true characters have gone. Have they really disappeared? Or are they waiting patiently, thumbs out, waiting to be picked up again?

Readers will never predict the trials and tribulations of Frank McGurk in 1960s and ’70s Ireland – neither did Frank.

Where exactly is no man’s land? Was the smuggling run ‘a washing machine too far’? And what were Frank’s true dealings with the oil sheikhs from the Middle East?

Potholes without the plot holes, A Bit of Good Luck (and other short stories) evoke a bygone era where a journey was an adventure, and the open road was an open mic for every character to stand up and take a bow.

A Bite-Sized Pirate

Have you ever wondered if the pirates in your dreams,

Are really all that big? Really all that mean?

What if there was a secret? A passcode you could roar,

That would shrink these scary scallywags, till they were feared no more!

“Yo ho, climb aboard, me hearties, as we set sail and discover the decades-old secret that will keep you safe from the one-eyed pirates who sail the open seas as you sleep.

For, the passcode be yours to find, the passcode be yours to keep!”

Savvy?

A Blessing And A Curse

These poems invoke waves of emotions, pulling you in before spitting you out – exhausted, and never the same as you were before. They will open old wounds and help to heal new ones. They will force you to confront your own experience and that of those around you. These poems helped repair my soul and regain my spirit through heartbreak, abuse, mental illness, and loss. I hope they can do the same for you.

In a sea of darkness, know that you are not alone, and that it’s okay to not be okay.

A Book of Poems and Stories

Young Tree, for that was his name, had everything he could wish for; plenty of love, warmth and food from the forest he lived in with his older brother and parents.

Yet he wanted more than this; he wanted an adventure.

He found it difficult to concentrate on the lessons his mother gave him every day. He dreamt of exotic islands and endless beaches, with coconuts growing everywhere. Monkeys befriended him to keep him company, with flocks of birds to talk to all day.

One fine day he set forth, pulling up his roots. His steps were light and he was full of hope. Leaves crunched beneath his feet.

Even in his determination to face the challenges ahead of him, and which crossed his young mind; the path became more and more difficult.

Have you ever wished for an adventure of your very own, then this is the story for you.

Read on and see what happens to Young Tree…

A Book of Rather Strange Animals

From the creator of the hugely popular @StrangeAnimals on Twitter comes A Book of Rather Strange Animals – a collection of one hundred remarkable animal specimens from around the world. With fascinating descriptions of nasty feeding habits, bizarre mating rituals and shocking defence mechanisms, you will marvel at both the splendour and gruesomeness of nature.

Meet the lizard that shoots blood from its eyes, the isopod that replaces the tongues of fish, the bug that stacks the corpses of ants on its back and the amphibian that looks like a penis.

Come and discover the world’s most peculiar species!

A Book of Short Stories

Do you like pirates, dragons, curses and mysteries? What about magic, or talking cats? Then welcome to A Book of Short Stories where all this is possible, and more. Read on to find out what happens to the mysterious village of Thorn, or do battle with Princess Fabiola Ulrike; will she succeed in her quest, or will she be doomed forever? And whatever did happen to that talking dragon…?

A Book of Songs and Poetry

Life and death, battles and war. Fathers and sons, mothers we adore. Babies and children, people we love. Those that we have lost who watch from above. Hopes and fears, wisdom and truth, innocence, and carefree youth. Autumn, winter, summer, spring. Nymphs, doe deers, nature and mysterious things. People lost and people found. Those that reach out to help others unsound. Lost paths and opportunities. Restless souls and obsessive entities - All in a book of songs and poetry.

A Bouquet of Fish Bones

The unhappy narcissist is threatened by the loss of beauty. The sophisticate takes reward from the geometry of desires. The eccentric form defective passions. The restless spirit seeks out a series of liberating falls. The daydreamer is charmed by planetary coincidences. The womanizer falls victim to fatal attractions. The loner finds amusement feeding his inflated imagination with scenes of mystery. The awareness of mortality leads them to the expression of passions, and mistakes.

The carousels of all these people’s little panics perpetually rotate, each circle closes for another to open and the tyranny of existence continues to be summed up in the agonizing question: the eternality of the temporary or the temporary eternity?

Against a background of the universe’s vast mirror, to what extent can the instantaneous, the insignificant and the random leave any trace on time’s relentless flow, giving another dimension to eternality?

A Boy Full of Emptiness

"Leo tells the stories of his life as though he is living them all over again; it is an extraordinary gift. Every scene comes to life: every fragrance, every bad smell, every delicious morsel of food or stinging slap becomes real.”

Pete Townshend, The Who

This book is rich with the story of a boy born in the 1940s and coming of age in Lucca, a walled town in Tuscany still retaining the feeling of a medieval community. His narrative immerses the reader into the life of funny and sensuous adventures in an Italy suspended between Fascism, the war and the economic boom of the sixties. The story ends with the author travelling to England in search of riches and fulfilment.