The Vicar of Abchurch

At the end of his working life, a vicar in the City of London thinks of himself as a failure: no one now seems to treasure the beliefs and religious practices of his youth; the church hierarchy is seemingly obsessed only with modern marketing and business methods which he doesn’t appreciate; and any love between him and his wife has long since vanished. Lacking any personal ambition, he takes on a rundown church and conducts his ministry there in the only way he knows: with understanding, compassion and Christian forgiveness. But in a few short months, the very building and its circumstances change him and his wife forever.

The Vagrant

Where do you go for answers in the age of information? How do you love in grey areas of echoed ideas? When does understanding become manipulation? Forced into self-reflection, Eilidh explores the idea that no single answer is an entirely palatable truth – not when it comes to friends, philosophies or men.

The Unsteady Wheel

Most of us dream of that life-changing moment: news of a lottery win, a surprise inheritance, becoming famous. Pasquale yearns to reach the city, to leave behind his village and humble origins. A young man, whose thoughts and desires lie beyond his time and place in the world. Someone set apart from the start. A hopeless case, as far as his people are concerned.

And then, suddenly, he acts upon a stroke of good fortune: the opportunity for a new name, a new identity. The life he has always craved. No longer trapped in his own skin and narrow horizons, his journey will take him through diverse landscapes, mental, physical, and emotional, as he clings onto the childhood image of owning a grand villa overlooking the sea.

Life is never simple though and escaping one’s roots is next to impossible, even for the narcissistic and single-minded Pasquale. How will he face life’s big questions: love, death, the significance of parenthood, friendship? Just how secure his place, in the hazy underworld of Fascist Italy?

The Time Thief

“You have Parkinson’s Disease, Mr Preshevski”

The Time Thief is the remarkable story of Marco Preshevski who one day in March 2001 just after his 30th birthday was diagnosed with Adult Early Onset Idiopathic Parkinson’s Disease. In the minutes, hours and days following his diagnosis many questions raced through his mind, but they all came back to one central challenge: would it be possible to finance his way through life, in the face of a relentless, stealth-like adversary such as Parkinson’s Disease?

Marco’s principal aim was to gain and retain enough income from employment to achieve his life goals. Most caring parents would agree that these goals amount to providing for your children, ensuring they have the full life that Marco always wanted his children to experience. Was it possible to retain enough time for him to fulfil these goals, while The Time Thief mercilessly chipped away at the block of precious time that Marco valiantly tried to preserve?

In this moving and inspiring memoir, Marco takes us deep into his innermost thoughts as he battled with Parkinson’s Disease in its unabating covert campaign to steal our most precious of resources.

The Time Thief is the second book from Marco Preshevski, following his successful debut novel, the best-selling Drivin’ Daughters and Parkinson’s which charted Marco’s relationship of twenty years with Parkinson’s Disease. Written with the same degree of wit and hilarious accounts of his real-life employment experiences, The Time Thief is a moving, inspirational novel that is a worthy sequel to Marco’s debut novel. 

The Ties That Bind

How the hell do you persuade your elderly, sick mother that she can’t stay in her own home? She’s confused and belligerent, talking about Hitler and ironing boards! All she really wants is to be left alone to die in her own bed, in peace and without any fuss. But her daughters have other ideas.

Sisters Diana and Vanessa face a rollercoaster of emotions as they battle the practicalities of looking after their mother Edwina as her life draws to a close. As she becomes increasingly frail, Edwina becomes more determined to wear them down by her refusal to accept their help. And now their eldest sibling, a convicted criminal, is back on the scene and that can only spell trouble.

Through laughter, tears and lots of wine, Vanessa and Diana navigate the challenges of dealing with all the emotional and practical paraphernalia of a dying parent. Two middle aged women who appreciate that dark humour is sometimes what you need to get you through the day and that family ties run deep in good times and bad.

The Spaces Between

Catherine has come to feel that we have hardly begun to understand the forces in us and around us, and our connections with them and with each other.

Underlying daily life, other forces exist. Intersecting work-life dramas, vibrant language, sea swimming, and the dunes and gardens of the sea, all held together by a tenuous thread, other means of communication and other presences take their place, alongside which relationships flourish or fail.

The Runaways

Andrew Munroe gets declared bankrupt after his building business in Leeds West Yorkshire suddenly collapses. Andy is diagnosed as suffering from clinical depression. He abandons his wife and daughter hoping to kick-start his life finding work down in London. He feels that he has let his family down badly and assures himself that they would be far better off without him. After hitching a lift that takes him down to the South East Coast, Andy meets up with a kind and caring pair of star-struck elderly lovers, one of whom owns a boarding house in Basildon.

Two other main characters in the book enter the story intermittently. The first is a girl named Gita from Birmingham, who is running away from an arranged marriage. As her story unfolds she too will eventually end up living down on the South East Coast.

The other is Sam, a loveable rogue born and bred in the East End of London. After serving an eight-year prison sentence in one of Her Majesty’s Correctional Facilities for manslaughter, he too shuns his place of birth and makes his way towards the South East Coast.

All three will eventually meet up but not in the circumstances that you may expect or predict.

The Rule of Optimism

In the Autumn of 1991, a group of young social work students meet at university in Cardiff, each filled with positivity and ambition. With a backdrop of widespread sexual abuse in Cleveland, Rochdale and Orkney, public perception of social workers is deeply cynical and the profession is already defined by negative media reporting. But this does not dampen their spirits.

Tara is a headstrong pragmatist, a single mother raised in the South Wales Valleys and of Irish lineage. Proud and fiercely independent, she approaches life without fear, bolstered by a secure and loving relationship with her family. Alison is a beautiful but fragile young woman, a gifted musician who is haunted by her parents’ toxic and destructive relationship. As a means of escape, Alison moves to live with her beloved Aunt Clem in rural West Wales and finds an unexpected purpose to her life. Neither Tara nor Alison have ever enjoyed an enduring female friendship before. But when their paths cross, a special bond is formed. Over the course of twenty-five years, the lives of Tara and Alison become cruelly enmeshed by events beyond their control. Despite their devotion to one another, nothing can prevent the terrible unravelling that is about to take place.

The Poets Society

He jumped from his improvised bed and looked up. The sky parted in two as if it was endeavouring to mirror his life. Neither the sky nor his life was ever a compact piece of peace since he had known about his being. Miaow…miaow…miaow…miaow. Was he awake, or dreaming?

In the heart of the resplendent Balkans, a land forged by relentless wars yet always welcoming those in need, a destitute wanderer finds solace. But this is not a tale that unfolds in ordinary fashion, for the human experience is a tapestry of contrasts. Within the pages of this extraordinary journey, a tapestry interwoven with melancholic humour and bittersweet poignancy, lie the unheard voices of characters yearning to be heard.

As if borne upon the wings of a time-travelling vessel, traversing lands and ages, the enigmatic Atom Butterfly stumbles upon an unassuming soul named Sevda, whose presence unexpectedly illuminates his existence. And so, their story commences – a tale of reminiscence, where childhood revisited unveils the battles fought during times of scarcity, when satisfaction eluded their grasp, and yet resilience prevailed.

The PepperAsh Clinch

A line of revellers, wending their drunken conga from the opening night party at The Fighting Cock, is brought to a sudden halt when their barbecue explodes. Nora Stickleback struggles to manage the pub, control her alcoholic husband, and keep her son away from temptation. Following a promise to look after her friends’ teenage children while they go off on a holiday that ends in tragedy, she suddenly finds herself with two extra youngsters to care for. Henry Stickleback nurses two passions, one for young Rosalie and the other for browsing car boot sales for any item cockerel-related. George dedicates the time he should be grieving to looking after his elder sister and carving out a future career for himself, steadfastly thinking of nothing except the matter in front of him at that time. Meanwhile, Rev’d Quinny is haunted by a childhood memory and a habit he started in order to break an obsession.

The Orcadian File

Stephen “Monty” Montgomery is a lonely city-based defence lawyer; who, despite being skilled in legal debate, is nowhere near to being offered a partnership by his firm when he is faced with compelling evidence of an age-old supernatural struggle between celestial entities and their arcane human disciples, forcing him to rapidly adjust his theological beliefs.

Monty soon finds himself called upon to represent ex-police officer Christopher Forsyth. Forsyth had been involved in investigating an alleged paedophile ring among the Edinburgh establishment which resulted in his commanding officer being gunned down in the street. Monty’s new client has since been railroaded out of the police and finds himself in their custody on a trumped-up murder charge.

Finding themselves opposed by a faceless conspiracy that is politically ambitious and prepared to destroy anything that gets in its way, the defence team will need every gram of their ability to get Forsyth off the hook. What Monty hasn’t reckoned upon, however, is being brought face to face with an immortal enemy – one more diabolical, cunning, and dangerous than any human conspirator.

Martone revives his haunting Kertamen tale with this vividly compelling and politically astute thriller, which is littered with moral complexity and legal intrigue. Told with ceaseless imagination through a rapid and intense narrative, The Orcadian File effortlessly meanders between ancient and contemporary judicial mischief.

The Narrow Gate

“War messes with us; makes us do things we wouldn’t normally contemplate.”

As war encroaches on the idyllic young life of Ali Conroy in the lush and undulating countryside of Northern England, she and her childhood love are swept to opposite ends of the earth – to the unrelenting and bloody battlefields of World War Two and the barren and windblown plains of North East Montana.

Based on a true story from the years surrounding one of our most defining and cataclysmic conflicts, The Narrow Gate tugs at the threads that tie us to our home and our first love.