Truth and Debris

In 1968 the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. The Prague Spring, with an opening of minds and actions, was suppressed by an authoritarian regime. In Truth and Debris, a Czech psychologist escapes from suppressed Czechoslovakia and becomes a psychologist in a Canadian school. After years of work in Canada she uses recollections of her work with children, and her own childhood memories, to dig for the few shining truths in the twisted debris of her past. Can we all imagine truths lifted from the debris of the Czech invasion being of value during the current invasion of the Ukraine? Are values, deeply hidden below debris, important for our current, general, concern for a few foundational, shining and shared, truths?

Three Titles

Three Titles will captivate and entertain you. It will also make you feel. 'Written from Heaven' will take you to a country church where you will find Wren trapped within its walls, forced to face all truths about her life before she can be truly free, in every sense of the word. 'Sanctuary' will introduce you to Dr Pascale Miner, a retired psychiatrist, who has moved her life miles away from the familiar, alone. But will she stay in her loneliness very long? 'The Stories Live On' is a must read for the stories to live on. Carolyn has experienced the pain of rejection and has survived the truth.

There Are No Doors

There Are No Doors is about a family’s journey through life; the sacrifices, joys and dreams that carry them through several generations and four countries, and how they face each other and their challenges: with love, anger, humour, and empathy. There are no doors that are closed to the human spirit.

The Yellow Field

Love, lust, passion, and deceit culminate in the ultimate price being paid for revenge.

It is a hot, steamy summer and the Blonde is bored with her marriage to Phillip, a successful designer. When she meets the Hollywood actor, Black Lomax, they are instantly attracted to each other. In an old hotel at the edge of the yellow field, she embarks on an affair, unaware that Black’s past is lurking in the background, intent on exacting revenge. This leads to devastating consequences for everyone involved.

An unhinged heiress, a suicidal sister, and a relationship which has gone sour, all add to the havoc unleashed.

The Willows

An early life of neglect and pain doesn’t deter Jack from being determined to be accepted and then later to realise his endeavours. The journey is fraught with failures, dangers and disappointments. His friendship with the children of an eccentric family who have rented ‘The Willows’, a large but run-down house in the beach resort where Tom is living, proves to be not only a turning point but also the scene of great tragedy. His experience is widened when he goes to university and becomes involved with many different groups of students. Although popular, Tom is unable to form any permanent relationship for some time. He comes to realise what this impediment is but cannot bring himself to tell anyone. Thirty-five years later, when he has retired from work, the tragedy that had happened at The Willows comes to haunt him and he realises he could be a suspect in a murder.

The Widowers

Paul has been a widower for three years and he would be the first to admit that he feels lost in the seaside town that was to be the retirement home for him and his late wife. Only Paul’s faithful dog, Zeno, gives him comfort. Through a chance encounter, Paul meets Geoff, another widower and dog-owner, in the same boat as Paul. As he reflects on his marriage and his experiences, exchanging thoughts with Geoff, Paul begins to form a new perspective on his life, exploring his sense of loss but beginning to glimpse the possibility of a life after the death of a partner. He is not so old. He’s not too old to change. Each sunrise in the bay brings a new day. There are still journeys to be made before the sun sets at last.

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.