Lucy and the Others

Lucy and the Others is the first collection of poems by Danny Horn.

By turns thoughtful and funny, and sometimes frenzied and despairing, this collection of new poems captures the unique perspective of a generation trapped between frequencies.

Luke Woam - The Missing Link

Luke Woam is out to become a missing person finder. With such awesome skills as being long-term unemployed; award-winning daytime television trivia knowledge; racking breadcake trays (and occasionally injecting jam into doughnuts when needed in an emergency) and generally being good at nothing useful, Luke sets out with his girlfriend in tow, to the metropolis that is London, to work on his first ever case—locating a runaway teenage girl. It’s a case that will take him way out of his comfort zone of his bed, settee, console, television and unhealthy snacks, which (like everything else in his life post-school), have mostly been paid for by the benefit system.

Luke and his partner, Tina, are thrust into a dangerous world far unlike their own back in small-time Bolton. On the plus side, they do possess a cheap, tacky, lucky charm purchased from a gypsy-like night-time street peddler of an old lady; the charm is probably of no real help to be honest, but alas, it is all in the belief, innit? And, both are in their early 20s still, is that a plus or minus, who knows in this lark?

So, do the UK’s newest, fledgling double act crack their maiden case, or does this missing maiden case crack them? One thing is for sure though, it definitely is a case of people, cultures and cities on a cataclysmic, nay, apocalyptic collision…well, they come into contact anyway!

Lulu...Re-member your heart

Have you forgotten who you really are? Where did you bury all your excitement for life, for joy, for simply being yourself, no matter what? The 'baby' of ten children in a small town in 1950s Northern Ireland, Lulu watched, listened and absorbed the dreams and struggles of her family, where life was tough, and they didn't have much, and love was never really spoken but came as hot dinner and clothes to wear. A dominant, powerful daddy and a tired, gentle mammy, with alcohol both their provider and the unwelcome thief of family life. Step inside her memories, through the eyes of that little girl. Let yourself laugh and cry at the innocent spark that is Lulu, and discover the depth of feeling and meaning each little child absorbs from everything and everyone around them, and how this makes us who we are. Lulu entices you into RE-membering the little child inside you, to let your own memories bubble up into the light. Let Lulu lead you back to knowing the divine spark of life that you really are, and allow yourself to play again. You are love, and you are meant to shine. WE all were born to be this. As you polish up your heart, you can be more YOU, and release all the freedom, joy, creation, excitement and thrill of being alive.

Lyrical

Lyrical is a contemporary fiction novel set in the mid to late nineteen eighties.  The setting focuses primarily around the County of Angus on the north east coast of Scotland. Lyrical depicts the ever-revolving changes within the lives of its characters.  As you build their personas, the author tantalises, frustrates and teases the reader as she shapes the characters traits, dislikes and passions within your mind

The author uses two of the main characters, Louise Dixon and Charlie Grey to demonstrate the choices, growth and development (inclusive of maturity) they encounter as they make the transition from young adults to adults. Louise Dixon has grown up in a single parent family with her dad, Daniel. The book relays the struggles, demands and emotional challenges that a single parent family encounters over the years: the mid-1980s social norms inclusive of a nuclear family, two parents with two children to differ from these created predjucies, individuals being judgemental against father. Thankfully, this was beginning to change when marriage rates went down as couples decided to live together and divorce rates went up in the late 1980s.

M.J.K’s One Hundred Talks on Mary Jane Kelly

In the late spring of 2019, I suffered an accident that put me in a deep coma for days. The details of the event are yet to be clearly explained, since I developed a retrograde amnesia, which doesn't let me remember the previous moments and thus fully recall it. However, the raw facts go like this: I woke up in the middle of the night, in the seaside house where I had travelled for the weekend, went outside and fell out of a nearby three storey balcony on the asphalt in the street. When I came out of the coma, I was diagnosed with a gash in the carotid artery on the right side of my neck.

It immediately came to my mind that what provoked Mary Jane Kelly's death, the last victim of the so-called Whitechapel murders in 1888 committed by Jack the "Ripper" (a sobriquet never mentioned across this book) was precisely the same injury as a result of aggression, although many barbaric ones had been perpetrated on her. Of all the canonical Ripper murders, Mary Jane Kelly's is considered the most gruesome, and also puzzling, of them all. During the long weeks I passed in bed following my accident, Mary Jane Kelly invaded my thoughts and gave me company, offering me talks on herself, always in the form of poems and verses. That's the genesis of this book.

Mabel Murphy

It’s 1920s London and the world is in a deep economic depression. Times are very hard and the city is rife with unemployment, poverty and disease. One family in East London
have managed to keep themselves afloat, housed and fed, despite having one parent with a long-term mental health condition, but that is all about to change as their teenage daughter is catapulted into a series of life events which are traumatic, heartbreaking and shocking but which make her become a much stronger and more resilient human being than she ever dreamed possible.
This is a harrowing story of innocence, shame, hostility and vicious cruelty from the very people who should be caring for those in need, but it is tempered with love, hope and the potential to change one’s situation given the right opportunities.
Although fictional, this was a true story for many women of that time and is based on several older women whom the author met and supported whilst an NHS nurse in the large hospital system.

Macbeth and Julius Caesar

Macbeth, with the murder on his mind, has a vision.

“Is this a dagger I can see… see but cannot touch?

The hilt is turned toward my hand, but still… I cannot clutch.

It is a dagger… of the mind to lead me to his room

Although unreal, it’s like the one I draw to seal his doom.”

He draws his dagger.

“I must move soft, that no one hears my footsteps on the stone

In silence then I make my way, my presence never known…”

A bell rings.

“The signal sounds, the time has come for Duncan… it’s a knell

I go… it’s done, I send him now to heaven, or… to hell.”

He enters the room.

End of Scene 1

Mad, Bad Jason

Zane Fellows is shocked on the first day of school when his new teacher, Ms Plumb, has him sit next to the naughtiest boy in school. Jason Riley has a bad reputation and a disregard for the rules. Zane would prefer to sit next to his best mate, but Aaron has suddenly developed a crush on the new girl, Charlie. Dad, a knock-about man whose best mate is a foul-mouthed cocky, thinks it’s a huge joke. How can Zane manage to stay out of trouble himself? And what does he unexpectedly find out about Jason that helps change his attitude towards him?

Main Attraction

Have you ever dreamed of meeting your favourite celebrity, your dream guy. They are just like us norms. They dress the same way, just have better clothes, more money. Imagine getting to know the real person. The fame and celebrity is just their job, it isn’t who they are. Can fate and destiny really bring opposites together to fall in love? Enjoy Sandy’s adventure with fate and destiny. Will she find true love for once, friendship, heartache or will it just be a dream? Will she get everything she has ever wanted?

Makeda’s Ring – Part 1

For Markus the choice was stark:

- Leave Austria, the homeland he both loved and hated.

- Flee from Lizzy, never more than a pale substitute for Laura, the love of his life, shattered to pieces by a bomb.

- Flee a country still overshadowed by the aftermath of Nazism.

- Make for Ethiopia, that land of all mysteries, magical and captivating, sombre and dangerous, luminous and healing. There, as he sets out to fulfil Laura’s dream of finding her uncle’s grave, Markus is forced to face his deepest fears and experience the highs and lows of every emotion, through the fascinating power of a single object.

A ring.

A simple ring, on the finger of an Ethiopian princess, which will lead him on his quest, bring him the answers.

And the words which already haunt his memories. Makeda, Makeda’s Ring.

Making Old Bones

Gramwell Glade is Making Old Bones.

A care home, purpose built around a Georgian folly castle façade in Essex, Gramwell Glade is making a fortune for business developer Akin Akindele who, armed with an MBA foresaw that high end care homes were going to return significant returns on his investment.

It’s Making Old Bones of Pauline Graves’ career since moving from hospitality to head up the staff at Gramwell Glade and putting her misplaced hopes in a liaison with Akindele.

It’s Making Old Bones of the dedicated carers who support its sundowners while supporting their own families on the small fiscal returns their efforts bring on the ‘living wage’.

It’s laying old bones to rest. For many of the residents their time at Gramwell Glade is their first experience of surrender when it comes to real life responsibilities. That onus now falls to their ‘children’ who now have their parents’ Powers of Attorney and who are handing over the funds that would otherwise satisfy a mortgage sufficiently large enough to buy their own castle.

If we know someone who works in the care sector or spends their twilight years in a home, if we visit family or friends who have moved on into residential care, make no bones about it, something like the Gramwell Glade experience could come to us all.

Malory's Grail

The final book in The Malory Trilogy relates how Sir Thomas Malory’s dying wish to see his great work Le Morte D’Arthur safely placed in Winchester Priory is finally fulfilled by his fictional friends. Interwoven with the unfolding story of the manuscript is the historical struggle for the English throne. The dynastic upheavals of the time are inseparable from the journey of Malory’s precious manuscript from prison to print. The action moves between London and Brittany where Henry Richmond is planning his triumphant attack on the usurper, Richard III. Far away in ‘The Other Place’ Sir Tom hears the good news.