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Set against the backdrop of the strikes in the 1980s, 'Missing Words' is a heart-warming journey about self-discovery, the power of family ties, and the strength needed to face whatever life throws your way.

David Aguilera's life is collapsing around him. After the catastrophic loss of the vessel under his command and a perilous trek across the Baltics to safety, he returns home to find himself unable to reconnect with his family. Frustrated by his inability to express what he is feeling, his wife Margalit moves out to stay with friends, taking their children with her.As David anxiously awaits the official inquiry into his conduct, he turns to those who are most important to him - his closest friend and comrade Marce; his Catholic adoptive mother; his Jewish birth mother; and Margalit, herself Sephardi Jewish. Faced with the prospect of losing his family altogether, he must confront his conflicting identities and faiths and decide the man he wants to become.

She's had this feeling before. This feeling of marking time. Of pressing her nose against a window and watching as everyone else lives their best lives. Isla Wintergreen has not seen her grandfather since she was seven, but when she unexpectedly inherits his cottage on the Isle of Skye, she cannot resist the opportunity to escape her purposeless life. As she slowly becomes a part of the island community, she learns more about the family she never really knew - from her estranged father, to her reclusive grandfather, and her intelligent but oppressed great-grandmother. Meanwhile, her mother Cathy reflects on her own past. Mother and daughter both hope to find new freedom - but can family patterns ever really be broken? Told through the lives of four generations of Isla's family, all linked by their connection to water, Dancing in the Shallows masterfully explores family relationships and generational inheritance.

North-east India, 1945. Tensions are rising, but fourteen-year-old Joya doesn't pay much attention to 'political business' - she is more concerned with doing well at school and having fun with her best friends.Yet when her father disappears without a trace, Joya's life falls apart. Forced to drop out of school and support her mother by working in a garment factory, she refuses to accept that her father is gone forever, spending her nights sewing him a suit from scraps of fine material.But as political unrest grows and rumors of corruption spread, Joya questions the true nature of her father's disappearance. And who is the sinister figure known only as the two-tailed snake?

In spare, evocative prose, Allan Radcliffe tells a wistful coming-of-age story and paints a tender portrait of grief in all its complexities. Recently bereaved Jamie is staying at a rural steading in the heart of Scotland with his actor boyfriend Alex. The sudden loss of both of Jamie's parents hangs like a shadow over the trip. In his grief, Jamie finds himself sifting through bittersweet memories, from his working-class upbringing in Edinburgh to his bohemian twenties in London, with a growing awareness of his sexuality threaded through these formative years. In the present, when Alex is called away to an audition, Jamie can no longer avoid the pull of the past: haunted by an inescapable failure to share his full self with his parents, he must confront his unresolved feelings towards them. In spare, evocative prose, Allan Radcliffe tells a wistful coming-of-age story and paints a tender portrait of grief in all its complexities.

Rural Cyprus, 1925. The twelve days of Christmas are beginning - the time when, according to local folklore, creatures known as kalikantzari come up from Hell to wreak havoc. Despo is heavily pregnant and deeply afraid. Meanwhile, her husband Loukas finds himself irresistibly drawn to an Englishman, a newcomer to the island.

In snapshots through time, 'Only About Love' takes a sweeping loop around Frank's life as he navigates courtship, marriage, fatherhood and illness. Told through the perspective of Frank and his family, this story is one of intense honesty about the things we do to those closest to us.

Set in Paris, this atmospheric tale delicately intertwines three connected narratives and timelines, interspersed with observations of the colour blue. A new addition to the Fairlight Moderns.

In this beautifully told drama of the bond between grandson and grandmother, 'Taking Flight' delicately explores the complexities of family bonds - in which love is need, and need becomes manipulation, along with the pain and difficulties of dementia and mental ill health.

Lindon is lured to China with the promise of a lucrative salary. His task: to solve the problem of a `nail house', the home of a stubborn old man who refuses to relocate, even as the bulldozers move in and the skyscrapers grow around him.

Milton Pitt leads an uneventful life, with a dull job and a secret longing for adventure. One morning, after he is hit by a speeding car, he suffers an out-of-body experience and awakens back in his bedroom. Everything is just the same - that is, except for the bloody footprints leading to the chimney...

It's 1970s Canada. The small island community of Bear Lake is awash with rumours of layoffs and wildcat strikes at the mill. But for young Tom, nothing is more important than hanging out with his best friend, Cormic, except perhaps catching a glimpse of Sasha Dovonovitch, the foreman's daughter.

In this hauntingly surreal tale, a couple finds the distance between them mirrored in a strange epidemic sweeping the globe. Little by little, each victim becomes transparent, their heart beating behind a visible rib cage, an intricate network of nerves left hanging in mid-air. Finally, the victims disappear entirely, never to be seen again.

Eight-year-old Pepper sees the world a little differently from most people. During a school field trip, Pepper is kidnapped by a stranger and driven to rural Arkansas. The man claims that Pepper's mother has died and they are to live together from now on - but the boy is absolutely certain his mother is alive, and he's going to find her

Nicholas Anderton is a highly respected neurosurgeon at the top of his field. But behind the successful facade all is not well. Tormented by a toxic marriage and haunted by past mistakes, Anderton has been eating to forget. But when mistakes are made and his old adversary Nash steps in to take advantage, Anderton knows things are coming to a head.

In the aftermath of a devastating earthquake, Sarah travels back to her home town with her young son and is forced to face what she fled from years ago. Set in the wild, beautiful and unreliable landscape of southern New Zealand, Emma Timpany's novella is an evocative story of a woman coming to terms with her past and forging a brighter future.

On an East Coast island, Delilah moves into a cottage. The neighbours gossip as they watch her plant a colourful garden out front. Very unusual, they whisper. Across the driveway lives a man who never goes out. Delilah knows he's watching her too and she likes the look of him, but perhaps life is too complicated already...

Longlisted for The Women's Prize for Fiction 2019 and The Republic of Consciousness Prize 2019. 1970s communist Romania. When Alina's brother-in-law defects to the West, her and her husband's careers come grinding to a halt. Alina turns to her aunt for help - the wife of a communist leader and a secret practitioner of the old folk ways.