Steelsbridge Angels

Steelsbridge Angels is a gritty, compassionate and community-led story of Gary Minton and his burning ambition to play football as a goalkeeper for his hometown club. This leads him to the ultimate glory in the summer of 1966!

Gary strives hard to become a success! Out of poverty, he influences family and friends and all who he encounters in his life.

This is a comical, tragic, uplifting and inspirational novel all about Gary Minton and his Steelsbridge Angels.

Steeple City

Steeple City is set in Cork City, Ireland and is a humorous story of how selfishness and loneliness can consume a family whose mother dies giving birth. We get to see life through the eyes of the main character Fin, a funny, lying, stealing fourteen-year-old bastard who despises his older gay brother and womanising father. The only rock in his life is his granny “The Mad Mullah”. The more hardship Fin inflicts or is inflicted upon him the more relatable he becomes. His toxic humour helps him and the reader navigate a year in his life. Fin’s immediate and extended family experience a year of love, laughter and death where an array of characters enter Steeple City with their own unique self-destructive story.

Stepping Stones

Stepping Stones, as its title suggests, leads the reader on a haphazard and unpredictable route across a landscape of different topics and themes and emotions through its 60 poems. A quarter of these, which emerged from the first lockdown in 2020, reflect the impact of that time – a personal response exploring a personal emotional turmoil but which will have a generic, universal resonance. The poems appear in alphabetical order, each one a stepping stone to the next, not taking any logical direction or following any defined route – except to take you to the final poem, which leaves the pathway of those stepping stones open to follow another journey, perhaps, or to retrace those steps and ponder ... The title poem, which appears towards the end of the collection, provides something of an explanation for that order as well as offering a wider perspective. This is an inspirational and assured collection of poems which can be followed via those ‘stepping stones’ in a single read or trodden at random, letting pages open where they will, and offering whichever one of the stepping stones appears. It is a book of poems to be picked up again and again, for comfort, for escape, for finding something familiar in an unfamiliar world.

Stigmata of Auschwitz

The Stigmata of Auschwitz is the brief story of the life and love of Rebekah and Gabriel.

The two main characters of the story are a young Jewish couple whose lives bringing up their young child are cut short and sacrificed to an evil Nazi ideology.

The story takes place between March 1938 to September 1941, in the time of the Shoah (the Holocaust).

Gabriel is from Budapest in Hungary, where he is sent on a mission to Munkács in Western Ukraine. There he meets Rebekah. They fall in love, marry and settle in Munkács, where the population is 42% Jewish.

In Munkács Gabriel and Rebekah build up a successful business and public life: he becomes a councillor representing the Jewish community, while she is a member of the Union of Jewish Women. To complete their enviable lifestyle, they have a much-loved baby son.

But their dream is destroyed by the antisemitism unleashed at the outbreak of the Second World War; their life together is ruined by the ruling fascist elite. Consequently, they have departed to Auschwitz, where they are murdered.

However, their two-year-old son is rescued and raised by their neighbour.

Stigmata of Auschwitz Part 2

The Stigmata of Auschwitz is the brief story of the life and love of Rebekah and Gabriel.

The two main characters of the story are a young Jewish couple whose lives bringing up their young child are cut short and sacrificed to an evil Nazi ideology.

The story takes place between March 1938 to September 1941, in the time of the Shoah (the Holocaust).

Gabriel is from Budapest in Hungary, where he is sent on a mission to Munkács in Western Ukraine. There he meets Rebekah. They fall in love, marry, and settle in Munkács, where the population is 42% Jewish.

In Munkács, Gabriel and Rebekah build up a successful business and public life: he becomes a councillor representing the Jewish community, while she is a member of the Union of Jewish Women. To complete their enviable lifestyle, they have a much-loved baby son.

But their dream is destroyed by the antisemitism unleashed at the outbreak of the Second World War; their life together is ruined by the ruling fascist elite. Consequently, they departed to Auschwitz, where they are murdered.

However, their two-year-old son is rescued and raised by their neighbour.

Stones of Destiny

One man’s greed can change the course of history forever…

FIFTH CENTURY BC, ATHENS
Humble sculptor, Nikodimos, toils away in his workshop to create a sumptuous marble masterpiece of Athena Parthenos destined for the Parthenon.

NINETEENTH CENTURY AD, ATHENS
Lord Quimby, blinded by greed, plunders the ancient Parthenon of its dearest treasures, watched by his helpless nephew.

PRESENT DAY
Young Cambridge student, Max Perceval, discovers a dark secret about his late ancestor and realises all is not what it seems in the Museum of Classical Antiquities.

Stories and Anecdotes

This is a collection of stories, anecdotes, and reminiscences written, collected, and compiled over a long professional life.

They amuse or provoke serious thought, aiming to make the reader laugh for a few moments and think for much longer.

Most are in short essay form, some with a discursive introductory beginning leading to a serious or amusing ending, the real thrust of the story.

Most are based on personal experience. The stories about bees are factual and based on a life-long hobby of beekeeping.

The last thoughtfully written section from a lifetime as a doctor is entirely serious, educational, and thought-provoking.

Stories For All The Children Of All The Worlds

Fris thinks he may one day fry in his own matter. A gigantic eye with a pupil 700 miles in diameter stares out into space. Smokey, a friendly feline, and Russ the terrier are very good pals who meet with adventure and a jolly man in green and his dear deer team. There are more Universes than there are grains of sand - so it goes without saying that - "We Are Not The Only Ones." In The Six, there is a leader's Yellow Jersey but they are wearing magic boots, not cycling shoes. If you could see into the future, do you really think that you could change it? Acer knew the answer.

Stories of Fairies and Gnomes, Sprites and Dragons

The Ancients believed that Elementals—fairies, sprites, gnomes, and dragons—lived among us. In time, these beings became the stuff of fantasies and legends. But what if, what if they are still alive and living among us? And can only be seen by the young or the young at heart. Or what if we only hope they are still alive? But we only tell stories about them.

Sometimes the Elemental interacts with people, preferably children-people or children-like adults; sometimes they interact among themselves; and sometimes, we only hope they are still alive.

Here are four short stories that try to answer those questions: one each of fairies, gnomes, sprites, and dragons. If you enjoy short stories, if you enjoy fantasy, you just might enjoy this book.

Strange and Surreal Stories

This book is intended to amuse and interest you. You’ll meet many characters from history and see how they might have behaved in situations you’re sure to know about. There are also murderers and victims – some real and some fictitious; there’s ‘Who Dunnits’ and barbaric actions by ordinary people; there are unreal situations faced by very real characters.

There are 20 different stories for you to choose and all as fascinating as each other. Was Benedict Arnold a traitor or a hero? Did William Shakespeare really desert his wife for a better life in London? How did Abraham Lincoln earn the name ‘Honest Abe? Was Rabbie Burns as enamoured of the lassies as he was said to be? (I think you’ll find he was.)

The above are just a few examples to grip your interest – but there’s much, much more to keep you glued until the end of each story. As for the answers to the above questions, perhaps you’ll have a better idea after you’ve read this book.

Stretto

Before she can be drowned as a witch, Elizabeth Robinson is swept away by the tide and the devil wind of Boston, Lincolnshire. She issues a curse on those responsible and declares that it will only end ‘when the birdman falls from the sky and into the mire’. Then, and only then will the evil in her descendants that is ever present will be finally defeated ‘and love will again prosper’.

The story traces the fate of the Robinson and Williston families through their time during the English Civil War and their uniting together in Boston, Massachusetts, two hundred years later. There is action aboard the Lusitania and Southern Ireland followed by a return to England and then the battlefields of France in WWI. The climax of the story occurs back in the USA after two heroes, Stephen Robinson and Bobby Williston, return at the end of hostilities only to be involved in a trial followed by an aerial combat.

String of Pearls

This engagement of poems leads to the marriage to voices and thoughts, with vows in self-expressions.
Each one is written to capture, bind, intoxicate each individual to a world solely tailored to them.
It entreats you to feel without fear, to be transfixed by all life’s array of encounters. To resign tenderly to them and conspire with the heart, to love and appreciate outrageously without reservations.
Lastly, faint not in the pale shade of mishaps or glory but steadfastly and strategically hold purpose; because in these given moments, you will define who you are: YOU!!