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Set in the 70's in a small village in India, Letters in the Sand is an engaging story of one girl's quiet rebellion against her strict, dysfunctional family and their non-negotiable plans to marry her at fifteen to any suitable boy. At birth, her future is sealed as a submissive daughter and wife and her father refuses to educate her. "e;I was no better than a cow, brushed and groomed, neck and ankles festooned with bells, flowers around its horns to be put on display for someone to choose."e;In this layered narrative, the political and the personal are interwoven when Kiri's beloved brother, Rajiv, runs away from home to join the extremists fighting for fair pay and justice for agricultural workers and is caught up in the escalating violence.We follow Kiri as she persuades her strict father to let her attend school, starting years older than her class mates, and as she forms an enduring bond with her teacher. Arush is the man who educates her well beyond classroom texts, stands beside her, supports her and finally asks for her hand in marriage.Kiri yearns to escape a life of subjugation but can she find the courage to follow a lonely, challenging path to freedom?

This second anthology of women's poetry by UK, US and international poets follows the resounding success of Tabula Rasa, Linen Press, 2023. Here areprofound, surprising and moving poems that explore the theme of relationshipsbetween women and others in their lives who have touched them briefly, orforever. New voices join acclaimed writers.

The Fine Art of Grieving Jane Edberg 'Grief is a courtship with death best done with a vivid imagination.' - Jane Edberg Jane Edberg's creative muse vanished when a switch flipped from child alive to child dead. How was she supposed to process her loss? This lyrical, original, beautifully written story is about how, after the tragic death of her adored nineteen-year-old son, she rediscovers the power of art to create an unconventional pathway through grief. This is not your typical grief memoir. It is an introspective and thought-provoking story which explores the profound power of creativity to transform trauma and anguish into resilience and healing. Her journey is illuminated with breathtaking, fine art photographs of reimagined loss.

Poetry of experience WORDS WOVEN FROM HALF ACENTURY'S SONGS OF WONDER, LOVE, HEARTACHE, HEARTBREAK, CHANGE, AGING, ILLNESS, AND THE ENDLESS QUEST>Heart worn on a sleevespun from intertwining reelsof vibrant, silken thread, >Mind wired with taut, unforgiving strandscutting deep with>Turn the pages, if you will, and travel with me acrossa story-telling tapestry, draping once naïve wallswith a life's rich experience.

Maria and Manny, torn from their families in the conflict with Khartoum, return to South Sudan but Manny is unable to trace his mother and sisters. When his closest friend is taken by the security forces he seeks comfort in destructive ways.Maria needs all her energy and determination to help her husband rescue his friend and find out what happened to his family.

When you are alone, adrift and displaced, how do you find yourself?Set on a small Scottish island, The Water All Around Us is a poignant novel about loneliness, roots and belonging. Recently arrived, crofters' child, Fenn, is troubled by being different and not fitting in. Incomer and marathon swimmer, Jess, is running away from personal tragedy. A young whale, separated from his pod, swims in the wrong direction and embarks on an arduous, heart-breaking journey. All three are at home in the water, but when their lives connect in the sea that fringes the white-sand beaches, their paths converge and collide with disastrous consequences.Under the surface of this thought-provoking novel are messages, carried quietly and bravely by the whale, about the damage we are doing to our oceans.

In 1875, Simone Gastrell is conveniently committed to Long Meadows Asylum by her adulterous husband. Distraught but not defeated, she meets the silent women whose lives within the institution are ordered and defined by men. Alice Semple, a herbalist and wise-woman, does not speak, but gives testimony in her notebook. Phoebe Baines, a fragile, damaged young woman, lives within the soundless universe of her interior monologue. In a powerless world, relieved only by precious hours spent in the Airing Courts and gardens, the three women come together in unvoiced friendship. When life behind the asylum walls grows even more dangerous and brutal, they find their voices and use them to fight for survival.In their story, readers will hear the echoes of today, of the women locked away in our institutions, often brutalised, still silenced and living invisible lives.

In 1937 Larry Lambert has a vision of a magnificent pub built on frozen fields 'like a grassy sea'. It is an echo of a single, failed, gay encounter in a fishing boat, and in its construction he invests his energy and his thwarted dreams. He calls it The Dolphin.And so unfolds a moving exploration of the constraining expectations of society on three generations of one family. For Larry, there is the cruel impossibility of being gay in 1930s Britain and his ensuing loveless marriage with the embittered Rosemary. For his daughter, Joanie, there is the crushing weight of duty and respectability during the post-war years. Only granddaughter Lottie pulls free and finds the freedom her grandfather and mother were denied. Larry's decision to build The Dolphin sparks events that play out over decades, tearing one generation apart while bringing another back together.

My Blue Peninsula is a confession that fills seven notebooks, with a final notebook left mostly empty. In them, Dora Giraud tries to explain to her adult daughters why she remains in Istanbul after escaping death at the hands of extremists, and why she risks her life to campaign for the truth about the Greek, Armenian, and Assyrian genocides, ferociously denied for a century by the Turkish state. Dora's desperate need to understand her family history is the thread that binds this story's conflicting fragments. As the direct descendant of the genocides' victims and perpetrators, she carries a tangled legacy of loss and betrayal, lies and ill-gotten gains. With this confession, she hopes to set her daughters free. But can she?My Blue Peninsula is Maureen Freely's fourth novel set in Istanbul, the city of her childhood. In each, a character from the sidelines of the preceding novel takes centre stage to probe a mystery left pending. We first met Dora Giraud in Sailing Through Byzantium as the observant daughter of a famously bohemian household who could not, then, speak the truth.

The story follows an imaginative young boy called Gboyega, who learns the value of having supportive parents as he seeks to make his one big dream a reality. This book is designed to encourage young readers to be resilient no matter the challenges or tasks they may face. In addition, it emphasises the importance of diversity through the representation of characters. This book also includes an activity at the end of the story that can be completed with the assistance of an adult. Join Gboyega on his journey as he looks to make something out of this world...

The Stitchin begins with a fateful bike ride that entangles the life of seventeen-year-old Samuel Yates with the eponymous secret organisation that controls powerful global institutions. As unwilling initiates into this elite cult, Sam and his brother Mitch are presented with a series of dubious feats to death-defying challenges. The brothers have no choice but to fulfil these tasks or face a brutal death. As they fall deeper and deeper into this criminal nexus, they are forced to confront the deepest ethical dilemmas and their own complicated personal history. Caught up in this dangerous web is Sarah Silver, a hardened detective trying to escape her own dark past. A seemingly inconsequential case of a missing traveller girl entangles Sarah's life with the lives of the Yates brothers and thrusts her into the dark heart of the powerful survivalist organisation. As the challenges escalate Sam needs to decide how far he is willing to go and Sarah must solve her case before they both get stitched up...

Jess Richards's beloved father died suddenly at the age of sixty-seven in Scotland. Three months later, she travelled to Aotearoa New Zealand, to a new relationship. This is the story of her grief and her love, of a place lost and a place found, of a memory-packed past and a poised present. Birds and Ghosts was written during the Covid-19 pandemic when international travel was impossible. In this achingly empty space, away from her family and her father's grave, Jess reconstructs her early life and ponders the self who is lonely, different, and invisible. A late diagnosis of Autism adds a conventional label to a uniquely personal portrait. This intimate story edges the boundaries of fiction and nonfiction, poetry and prose, confident in its experimental style. It is memoir in a pure, unconstrained form, brave and beautiful, moving and utterly compelling. From the author of Snake Ropes, Cooking

This new collection of stories from Avril Joy bring together her finest published and unpublished work. From the Costa winning Millie and Bird to the recent A Morning Tide, listed for the Fish Short Memoir Prize, she weaves narratives of hope in the face of loss, transformation and redemption, and the enduring power of love. Combining a poet's gift for language with a keen naturalist's eye, she journeys across landscapes from Venice to the East Anglian Fens, from Cape Cod to the shore temples of Mahabalipuram. The novella, this One Wild Place, set on a northern hill farm during the pandemic, echoes the mood of the other stories. Moving and poignant it is told with an unerring compassion. Avril Joy explores first love, families, marriage, childhood, mothering, social class, escape, gardens, birds, seas, tides and stray dogs. These stories are about the wild places we call home.

In a distinguished career lasting nearly sixty years, Ann Oakley has produced trail-blazing publications that span the fiction - non-fiction divide including The Men's Room, made into a BBC TV series with Bill Nighy.This novel is timely, set in the perplexing present of the constraints of the Covid pandemic. Locked down, Alice Henry is determined to decide what to do in her final years - an ongoing muddle of medical, domestic and romantic interruptions. When she stumbles on the unsolved case of social researcher, Maud Davies, found decapitated on a London railway line, she finds a new purpose. The blackly funny narrative weaves together the stories of the two women as Alice becomes obsessed with Maud's fate and determines to solve the mystery of her untimely death.

This new collection of poetry reflects the lives, hopes and fears of women hidden behind walls and bars, lives which few of us can even imagine. Avril has waited until she is absolutely confident that she can capture the complexity of those voices which she does here with extraordinary authenticity, poignancy, and humour. The style is breathtakingly original.