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The Outcast by Sadie Jones

ISBN10: 0701181753  ISBN13: 9780701181758  
Publisher: Vintage Chatto & Windus

Judges: "The repressive society of ordinary people is elegantly portrayed in an assured novel of great note."

'In the tradition of Atonement and Remains of the Day...The Outcast is a passionate and deeply suspenseful novel about what happens to those who break the rules, and what happens to those who keep them.' Margot Livesey

Reviews
Sadie Jones is an important new voice. She writes in beautiful prose of terrible events, demonstrating how love denied brings brutal consequences. She conjures the repressive social climate of the 1950s with awful accuracy, and explores the hearts and minds of young people with forensic skill. A great stylist and fine storyteller. --Joan Bakewell

Sunday Times
`elegantly written debut novel brings to life both her alienated, damaged protagonist and the small minded community that condemns him' Waterstone's Books Quarterly
`Jones's first fictional outing demonstrates a flair for storytelling...portrayal of 1950s middle-class village life and Soho nightlife...entirely convincing'
Aesthetica Magazine
'As menacing as it is beautiful, The Outcast is a definite must read this Spring'. The List 'an impressively assured arrival' www.thebookbag.co.uk
`...difficult to believe that this is a debut novel. It's assured...Jones is certainly one to watch for the future'. Glamour `Sadie Jones proves she's no novice when it comes to poignant prose... suspense coupled with the beautifully drawn characterisation...' Good Hosuekeeping 'Book of the Month' `A sensational novel... From page one, you are pulled along through the light and shade of other people's lives.'

Waterstone's Books Quarterly
`a flair for storytelling'

TLS
`The writing in Sadie Jones's first novel is impressive from the start, both succinct and fluent.'

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Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

ISBN10: 1847371264  ISBN13: 9781847371263  
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
Judges: "This gripping, unputdownable thriller is an exciting new addition to the genre."

Tom Rob Smith’s beleaguered hero is a protagonist who we know will (at some point) have to rebel against the totalitarian state he works for. But it is the suspense of waiting for this moment as much as the exigencies of the thriller plot that makes this such a compelling novel. --Barry Forshaw

Lee Child
"An amazing debut - rich, different, fully-formed, mature ... and thrilling."

Raymond Khoury, bestselling author of THE LAST TEMPLAR and SANCTUARY
"CHILD 44 telegraphs the talent and class of its writer from its opening pages, transporting you back to the darkest days of post-war Soviet Russia with assured efficiency and ruthlessly drawing you into its richly atmospheric and engrossing tale."

Scott Turow
"CHILD 44 is a remarkable debut novel - inventive, edgy and relentlessly gripping from the first page to the last."

Robert Towne
"Child 44 contrasts the bleakness of Stalinist Russia with a love story that unexpectedly and ironically blooms only because the lovers are nearly crushed by a relentless totalitarian regime hell bent on their destruction. As the two attempt to solve a series of brutal child murders the government is determined not to acknowledge, they must avoid being killed themselves in a simultaneous flight and pursuit across the wintry Russian landscape. Achingly suspenseful, full of feeling and of the twists and turns that one expects from Le Carre at his best, it's a tale that grabs you by the throat and simply never lets you go."

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Inside the Whale by Jennie Rooney

Judges: "This perfectly-formed debut novel is gentle, perceptive and moving." 

Stephanie Sandford, recently widowed, must tell her family the truth - but the past is indistinct and it's complicated. First, there was her mum, who developed an anxious streak after marrying the wrong Reg. Then there was the young man from the dairy who taught Stevie to swim and broke her heart. War came, and four years spent chopping root vegetables in the canteen of the Sun Pat peanut factory on the Old Kent Road, followed by wet London nights, with the Doodle Bugs slipping through the sky like huge silvery fish. It's not until Stevie's under an umbrella with Jonathan that Stevie finally starts to sense safety.Meanwhile, Michael Royston's memories are squashed into a shoebox (along with Queen Matilda's Dicken Medal for bravery) ready for his move into hospital. Years ago, he trained military carrier pigeons for the Royal Corps of Signals in Cairo yet his own homecoming has taken a lifetime. Michael has never been good at putting things into words; he's more comfortable with the click of Morse code. But Anna, a young healthcare assistant, has the patience - and rare tenderness - to eke out his story. And so he begins. Stories have the power to change things, and this one will alter Stevie's past and transform Anna's future...

About the Author
Jennie Rooney was born in Liverpool in 1980. She read History at the University of Cambridge and taught English in France before moving to London to work as a lawyer. Inside the Whale is her first novel.

New Statesman, Christopher Hawtree
'a work of a singularly outlandish and compassionate imagination....has one shouting its praises to anybody who is within earshot'

Sunday Express, Viv Groskop
`This is an elegant, funny and moving first novel... a wonderful, memorable musing on life, fate and love'

Saturday Guardian, Catherine Taylor
`a deeply affecting story ... vividly recreating Blitz-torn London and the Africa of the same period.'

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Costa Children's Award

Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray-

Judges: "A life-affirming journey by three teenage boys told with sensitivity, compassion and, above all, humour.

"'It's not really kidnapping, is it? He'd have to be alive for it to be proper kidnapping.' Kenny, Sim and Blake are about to embark on a remarkable journey of friendship. Stealing the urn containing the ashes of their best friend Ross, they set out from Cleethorpes on the east coast to travel the 261 miles to the tiny hamlet of Ross in Dumfries and Galloway. After a depressing and dispriting funeral they feel taking Ross to Ross will be a fitting memorial for a 15 year-old boy who changed all their lives through his friendship. Little do they realise just how much Ross can still affect life for them even though he's now dead. This is Keith Gray's first new novel in three years and is a wonderful rites-of-passage story combing elements from "Stand By Me", "An Inspector Calls" and "Grand Theft Parsons".

ISBN: 9780099456575
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Random House Children's Books

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The Carbon Diaries by Saci Lloyd

It’s January 1st, 2015, and the UK is the first nation to introduce carbon dioxide rationing, in a drastic bid to combat climate change. As her family spirals out of control, Laura Brown chronicles the first year of rationing with scathing abandon. Will her mother become one with her inner wolf? Will her sister give up her weekends in Ibiza? Does her father love the pig more than her? Can her band the dirty angels make it big? And will Ravi Datta ever notice her?

In these dark days, Laura deals with the issues that really matter: love, floods and pigs.

The Carbon Diaries 2015 is one girl’s drastic bid to stay sane in a world unravelling at the seams.

About the Author
Saci Lloyd has worked as a script editor for Camouflage Films, where she was involved in several projects including a $20m Columbia Tri-Star co-production, Amy Foster. She is now head of Media at Newham Sixth Form College.

Review
'Much more than a clanging gong signalling the end of days, this is a charming tale full of laughs and angst, with a message both accessible and relevant to today's teenagers.' -- Bookseller's Choice, Publishing News 20080704 'It's edgy, it's appealing and it's contemporary and it makes for utterly compelling and frightening reading.' -- Lovereadingforkids.co.uk 20080704

'Much more than a clanging gong signalling the end of days, this is a charming tale full of laughs and angst, with a message both accessible and relevant to today's teenagers.' (Bookseller's Choice, Publishing News )

'It’s edgy, it’s appealing and it’s contemporary and it makes for utterly compelling and frightening reading.'(Lovereadingforkids.co.uk )

Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine

Judges: "A poignant story of a family coming to terms with a terrible loss."

When the good-looking boy with the American accent presses the dropped negative into Rowan's hand, she's sure it's all a big mistake.  But next moment, he's gone, lost in the crowd of bustling shoppers. These days, Rowan pretty much looks after her little sister single-handedly - which doesn't leave much time for friends or fun.  So when she finds out that Bee from school saw the whole thing, it piques her curiosity.  Who was the boy? Why was he so insistent that the negative belonged to Rowan? And what will the negative reveal...?

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Just Henry by Michelle Magorian

Judges: "A gripping and masterful tale of the power of cinema, photography and friendship in one boy's life."

From the award-winning author of "Goodnight Mister Tom" comes "Just Henry": a gripping mystery-thriller and an insightful snapshot of time, set in post-war Britain. It's 1949 and life is bleak for Henry. He misses his father who died a war hero, and he escapes from his annoying stepfather and stepsister whenever he can and goes to the cinema - his passion.One day in the cinema queue he meets Mrs Beaumont who also loves films, and lends Henry a camera for his school project. Henry is disgusted that he's been put in a group with Jeffries, the son of a man who went AWOL, and Pip, who was born illegitimate; but he's about to learn that tolerance and friendship are more important than social stigmas.Henry will need his new friends when he processes the film and makes an alarming discovery.Like a bomb waiting to explode, Henry's world is about to unravel.

About the Author
Michelle Magorian was born in 1947 in Southsea, Portsmouth, of a Welsh mother and Irish father with an Armenian surname! Michelle spent her toddler years in Singapore and aged 7-9 in Australia. Michelle trained for the theatre at The Rose Bruford College of speech and drama in Kent from 1968 to 1969. It was while there that she started writing regularly. From 1969-1970 she was a mime student in Paris. Since then Michelle has worked in theatre, television and films and has an established reputation as a comedienne, performing in plays and musicals. Michelle also toured with her one woman mime show in Italy and England. Michelle's first novel Goodnight Mister Tom was published in the UK in 1981 and won numerous awards including the Guardian Children's Fiction Award. Michelle's other books include A Little Love Song, A Spoonful of Jam and Cuckoo in the Nest. In July 2006 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Portsmouth University.

Review
"'The author has a wonderful gift for hanging a richly woven tapestry around an essentially simple frame.' Times Education Supplement."

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Costa Biography Award

Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill

Judges: "A graceful, clear-sighted and brave memoir entirely lacking in self-pity - this is a wise and wry take on exactly what it's like to grow old."

Diana Athill will be ninety in December, 2007. "Somewhere Towards the End" tells the story of what it means to be old: how the pleasure of sex ebbs, how the joy of gardening grows, how much there is to remember, to forget, to regret, to forgive - and how one faces the inevitable fact of death. Athill has lost none of her skill or candour as a writer, her love of the intimate detail. Her book is filled with stories, events and people, and the kind of honest, intelligent reflection that has been a hallmark of her writing throughout her long career. 'We rarely did anything together except make ourselves a pleasant little supper and go to bed, because we had very little in common apart from liking sex,' she writes of her last affair, when she was in her late sixties. 'We also shared painful feet, which was almost as important as liking sex, because when you start feeling your age it is comforting to be with someone in the same condition.'Diana's previous books are: "Instead of a Letter", "After a Funeral", and "Stet", her much praised memoir of her life as a book editor (many said the best in London) with Andre Deutsch. She describes her books as 'documentaries' and her early work prefigured the modern taste for memoir. As she writes in "Somewhere Towards the End", 'I believed, and still believe, that there is no point describing experience unless one tries to get it as near to what it really was as you can make it, but that belief does come into conflict with a central teaching of my upbringing: do not think yourself important.'

About the Author
Diana Athill was born in 1917. She is the author of Instead of a Letter, After A Funeral, Don't Look at Me Like That, Make Believe, Stet and Yesterday Morning, all published by Granta Books. She lives in London.

Metro, Claire Allfree
"A convivial memoirist, full of clarity and wit, original thought and understated insight"


Spectator, Anne Chiholm
"Her eye is unflinching, her prose as clear and graceful as ever; her honesty is inspiring"

Observer, Lara Feigel
"...a delight to read"

Independent, Clare Colvin
"[An] honest, clear-sighted book"


Oldie
'A splendid read, upbeat, often amusing, ironic and always superbly intelligent on any and every subject'

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Bloomsbury Ballerina by Judith Mackrell

Judges: "The vividly-described, extraordinary life of the lively and eccentric ballerina who was drawn by Picasso, loathed by the Bloomsbury set and adored by her husband, John Maynard Keynes."

Born in 1891 in St Petersburg, Lydia Lopokova lived a long and remarkable life. Just five feet tall and a natural comedian, her vivacious personality and the sheer force of her charm propelled her to the top of Diaghilev's Ballet Russes. Through a combination of luck, determination and talent, Lydia became a star in Paris, a vaudeville favourite in America, the toast of Britain and then, most unexpectedly, she married the world-renowned economist, and formerly homosexual, John Maynard Keynes. Lydia's story is an extraordinary one, linking ballet and the Bloomsbury group, war, revolution and the economic policies of the super-powers. She was the Russian ballerina who flitted intriguingly through the lives of so many remarkable individuals, including Nijinsky, Picasso, Stravinsky and Virginia Woolf. Above all, she was an immensely captivating, eccentric and irreverent personality: a bolter, a true bohemian and, eventually, an utterly devoted wife. Judith Mackrell brings Lopokova gloriously to life, and claims Lydia's place as a major character - not only in the history of ballet, but also in the history of the Twentieth Century.

About the Author
Judith Mackrell is a writer and Dance critic for the Guardian. She was the ghostwriter for Darcey Bussell's 'Life in Dance'. She lives in London with her husband and two sons.

Duncan Fallowell, Daily Telegraph
"the English took Lydia Lopokova to their hearts and so Judith Mackrell is right that she merits a biography."

Frances Wilson, The Sunday Times
"Mackrell shows us exactly what made Lopokova one the last century's 'true originals.'"

Kathryn Hughes, The Guardian
Judith Mackrell.. is brilliant at making the reader see why Lopokova matters"

Veronica Horwell, The New Statesman
"How shrewd and kind of Mackrell to extricate Lopokova from so many decades as the snubbed alien in Bloomsbury footnotes."

Rupert Christiansen, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
"Mackrell's unfailingly vivacious and scholarly biography pays splendid tribute"

Clement Crisp, Financial Times
"she was, as Mackrell concludes, one of the 20th century's 'true originals' and this narrative tells us exactly why"

Michael Arditti, DAILY MAIL
"Mackrell's enthralling biography restores Lydia Lopokova to her rightful position centre-stage."

Henrietta Garnett, LITERARY REVIEW
"Bloomsbury Ballerina is a compelling account of the extraordinary life and times of an unforgettable woman. Mackrell is to be congratulated."

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Chagall by Jackie Wullschlager

Judges: "Quietly witty, engrossing and tragicomic - this insight into parallel culture in Britain today is the poignant story of an exceptional family that everyone should read."

When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is.” Picasso said this in the 1950s, when he and Chagall were eminent neighbours living in splendour on the Cote d'Azur. But behind Chagall's role as a pioneer of modern art lay struggle, heartbreak, bitterness, lost love, exile, and the miracle of survival. Born the son of a Russian Jewish herring merchant, Chagall fled the repressive czarist empire in 1911 to develop his genius in Paris, living alongside Modigliani and Leger in La Ruche, the artist's colony where you either died or came out famous.

Through war and revolution in Bolshevik Russia, Weimar Berlin, occupied France and 1940s New York, he gave form to his dreams, longings and memories in paintings which are among the most humane and joyful of the 20th century. Wullschlager has had exclusive access to hundreds of hitherto unseen and unpublished letters from the Chagall family collection in Paris, which are quoted here for the first time, lending Chagall's own unique voice to this account.

Drawing also on numerous interviews with the artist's family, friends, dealers, collectors, and illustrated with two hundred paintings, drawings and photographs, many also previously unseen, this elegantly written biography gives for the first time a full and true account of Chagall the man and the artist - and of a life as intense, theatrical and haunting as his paintings.

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If You Don't Know Me By Now: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton by Sathnam Sanghera

Judges: "Not just the artist's life and his work but a chronicle of the shattering events of the 20th century.  Great scholarship, enlightening observations about the paintings and an engaging style - we couldn't put it down."

Stop laughing so much. You"ll only cry twice as much latermy mother says. Mum is never more anxious than at a celebration, hovering around us with red chillies to frighten away evil spirits. I hate that I've inherited this attitude: sometimes I can feel the end of good things before I've even had a chance to enjoy them. But finally I understand why my mother was so fond of the phrase: that's how life was for her. For years, for every one shot of happy, there would be two shots of sad.

When Sathnam Sanghera was twenty-four years old he made a discovery a bout his family that would both darken, and illuminate his life. It would set him on a journey into his family's past: from his father's harsh life in rural Punjab, to the terrifying early years of his parents' marriage in England; from his mother's extraordinary resilience as she brought up her young family in a foreign land, without any knowledge of its language, to the author's happy memories of his own childhood – his obsessions with George Michael and a desire to have the perfect top knot. And, most affectingly of all, this discovery would finally force Sanghera's own secret life into the glaring light: his longing for romantic love which he had, for fear of family rejection, kept utterly hidden from his beloved mother.

From Hindu hairdressers to the Wolverhampton tourist office, from terrifying violence to boundless family loyalty, If You Don't Know Me by Now is a heart-rending account of one family's unimaginable suffering and also its great capacity for love. In a voice that is by turns tender and wonderfully funny, Sathnam Sanghera tells a story of the seemingly unbridgeable, and often harrowing, gulf between classes, cultures and generations and also provides a moving testament to the surprising power of unconditional love.


About the Author
Sathnam Sanghera was born in 1976. He is an award-winning journalist who, until recently, was chief feature writer at The Financial Times. He now works for The Times and lives in London. This is his first book

The Times
Gripping and entertaining, horrifying and tender. So delightful, insightful and charming

Maggie O'Farrell
I absolutely loved it. Heartbreaking and wonderful. He writes beautifully


Book Description
By turns hilarious, shocking and incredibly moving, for fans of the best British memoirs: Toast by Nigel Slater, Untold Stories by Alan Bennett, and the film East is East

Sunday Times
`Particularly moving ... funny and revealing ... you want to punch the air and cry at the same time'


Marie Claire
'This funny, heartfelt memoir reveals the distressing history of Sanghera's family while celebrating the love that kept them together'

Evening Standard
'Lucid, unsparing and compelling'

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Costa Novel Award

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

Nearing her one-hundredth birthday, Roseanne McNulty faces an uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental hospital where she's spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr Grene, and their relationship intensifies and complicates. Told through their respective journals, the story that emerges is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. Refracted through the haze of memory and retelling, Roseanne's story becomes an alternative, secret history of Ireland's changing character and the story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope.

About the Author
Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. His plays include Our Lady of Sligo and The Pride of Parnell Street, and his novels, Annie Dunne and most recently, A Long Long Way. He has won numerous awards, among them the London Critics Circle Award, and now lives in Wicklow with his family.

Daily Telegraph
'Exceptionally finely written ... [It] assembles a disquieting portrait of a woman destroyed by politics and misogyny.'

Evening Herald
'One of the first great novels of this century.'

The Times
'It's a story to treasure, and Roseanne is a teller to remember.'


Joseph O'Connor, Guardian
'Magnificent and heart-rending.'


Joseph O'Connor, Guardian
'[A] magnificent and heart-rending novel ... Roseanne and Dr Grene, though hardly ever described, are incarnated with such commitment and narrative astuteness that you feel you are standing in the rain of their lives.'

Sunday Telegraph
'Barry was shortlisted for the 2005 Booker with A Long Long Way and, if there is any justice, can expect an equally strong showing this year.'

Dermot Bolger, Mail on Sunday (Ireland)
'This is a superb book about memory and conflicting versions of the past.'

Matthew Sweeney, Financial Times
'The Secret Scripture is not at all like its illustrious predecessor but is equally powerful and memorable. It confirms that Sebastian Barry is at the forefront of contemporary Irish fiction.'

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The Other Hand by Chris Cleave

Judges: "A richly original novel full of shocks and wonders."

We don't want to tell you too much about this book. It is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this:

It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific.

The story starts there, but the book doesn't.

And it's what happens afterwards that is most important.

Once you have read it, you'll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

About the Author
Chris Cleave's debut novel INCENDIARY was an international bestseller published in 20 countries. It won the 2006 Somerset Maugham Award, was shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, won the United States Book-of-the-Month Club's First Fiction award 2005, won the Prix Special du Jury at the French Prix des Lecteurs 2007, and will be released in early 2008 as a major motion picture.
 
Inspired by his early childhood in West Africa, THE OTHER HAND is Chris Cleave's second novel. He is married with two children, and lives in London. He keeps a website at www.chriscleave.com. (20080809)

'You stay in thrall to the bittersweet end.' (Scotland on Sunday 20051101)

'By turns funny, sad and shocking' (Sainsburys Magazine 20050720)

'Warm, witty and beautifully written.' (Sunday Tribune 20050901)

'In a novel that tackles serious and uncomfortable subject matter, Cleave's writing makes one laugh and despair in equal measure. (4 stars)' (Time Out )

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A Partisan's Daughter by Louis de Bernieres

Judges: "An elegant love story about the lies we tell ourselves and why we have to."

The new novel from the acclaimed author of "Birds Without Wings" and Captain Corelli's "Mandolin" is a love story at once raw and sweetly funny, wry and heartbreakingly sad. Chris is bored, lonely, trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage. In his forties, he's a stranger to the 1970s youth culture of London, a stranger to himself on the night he invites a hooker into his car. Roza is Yugoslavian, recently moved to London, the daughter of one of Tito's partisans. She's in her twenties, but has already lived a life filled with danger, misadventure, romance, and tragedy. And though she's not a hooker, when she's propositioned by Chris, she gets into his car anyway.Over the next few months Roza tells Chris the stories of her past. She's a fast-talking Scheherazade, saving her own life by telling it to Chris. And he takes in her tales as if they were oxygen in an otherwise airless world. But is Roza telling the truth? Does Chris hear the stories through the filter of his own need? Does it even matter?

The deeply moving novel of their unlikely love - narrated in the moment and through recollection, each of their voices deftly realized - is also a brilliantly subtle commentary on storytelling: its seductions and powers, and its ultimately unavoidable dangers.

The Guardian
`It's a wise and moving novel, perfectly accomplished.'

Tatler
'The author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin gives us and bittersweet love story set in Seventies London'

Daily Telegraph
'De Bernieres is a skilful writer, poetic but unforced'

The Times
'De Bernière's mellifluent, clear prose slips through the reader's mind with efficient ease'


Financial Times
`Louis de Bernieres ... strips down the language in this novel to its essential plot'

The Spectator
`by the end I was impressed, moved and touched'

Trauma by Patrick McGrath

Judges: "A riveting story about what makes us who we are by a truly accomplished novelist."

Charlie Weir is a man who tackles other people's demons for a living. He has seen every kind of trauma during his years as a psychiatrist in New York City, and yet hasn't found a way to resolve the conflicts within his own family - his bitter rivalry with his brother Walt, a successful painter, his estrangement from his shiftless father and his stifling relationship with his dying mother. And he has never overcome the terrible blunder, seven years before, that lost him his wife and daughter, leaving him prone to corrosive loneliness and restless anger.When Walt introduces Charlie to Nora Chiara, he is drawn as much to her air of suffering as he is to her striking beauty. They fall for each other quickly, hungrily, but their bliss is short-lived. Her vulnerability, once so irresistible, begins to sour their life together, and Charlie realises that she is now patient first, lover second. And as he probes at the source of her distress, a half-memory from deep in his own unconscious mind begins to arouse a horrifying suspicion.

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Costa Poetry Award

For All We Know by Ciaran Carson

Judges: "The voices in this film noir poem - confident, seductive and hypnotic - draw the reader into a tragic, complex and dream-like love story."

Shortly after a man and a woman meet for the first time in a second-hand clothes shop in Belfast, a bomb goes off. It is some time in the 1970s. They become lovers. For All We Know is their story, told in the recent past: a meditation on love, place, memory, loss and language, how people know each other, misunderstand each other, or translate each other, not to mention the events and circumstances which are beyond their control.

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The Broken Word by Adam Foulds

Judges: "This heart-stopping story about the Mau Mau uprising brings hidden conflicts of conscience, race and class to the surface in a brutally compelling narrative."

The Broken Word is a delicate and powerful poetic sequence that charts a young man's progress through a dark period in British colonial history - the Mau Mau uprisings in Kenya. With language and imagery that feels utterly contemporary, and subject matter - tribal violence and subsequent retribution - that seems almost Homeric, Foulds gives the narrative all the febrile energy of classical drama, re-charged and re-imagined.

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Sunday at the Skin Launderette by Kathryn Simmonds

Judges: "This first collection is witty, humane, confident, full of everyday details but with a capacity to surprise and delight."

Quietly persuasive and formally adept, the poems in Kathryn Simmonds' first collection engage with both the quotidian and the transcendental.  Often set in urban or suburban contexts, her protagonists struggle with mundane tasks such as cooking, commuting or office work, all the obstacles of modernity, and then, by some shift of attention, or by some narrowing of focus, they chance upon the surreal or the spiritual. This is poetry of subtle contexts and allusions, as much concerned with the vulnerability of the body as for the fate of the soul and the idea of ?keeping faith' in God and life.

Alibris-uk |Blackwell Books UK |Borders UK | qbd books au | seek books au | fishpond nz |amazon usa|barnes & noble usa | powells books usa | amazon.ca | chapters.indigo.ca | kalahari.net sa|

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Salvation Jane by Greta Stoddart

Judges: "Honest, observant poems from a collection which is both wonderfully unsettling and deeply life-affirming."

At the heart of many of the poems in Salvation Jane lies an apprehension of things being lost or destroyed - whether a child or an illusion, faith or the very earth we live on.  The world changes, too, when someone enters it.  Greta Stoddart's poems of motherhood are intense double-edged celebrations; as grief has its consolations, so joy is rarely entire.

Alibris-uk |Blackwell Books UK |Borders UK | qbd books au | seek books au | fishpond nz |amazon usa|barnes & noble usa | powells books usa | amazon.ca | chapters.indigo.ca | kalahari.net sa|

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