Bøker utgitt av Old Street Publishing

1979. PUNK IS IN DECLINE. ESPECIALLY THIS PUNK. On the platform at Holyhead I approach a uniformed man with a whistle. 'Is this the 6:55 to Auschwitz?' I ask. 'Enough of your cheek, lad.''Arbeit Macht Frei!''What?''It's Gaelic for thank you.'March, 1979. Sid Vicious is dead, Margaret Thatcher is very much alive, and Barry has just arrived in London. Twenty years old, Irish and angry, he cons his way into a job at Sellafield, home of Britain's military-grade plutonium. It's the start of a hilarious and hallucinatory coming-of-age tale that ranges from sordid coal-bunker squats to the tea room at the Ritz, via the Parisian Left Bank and the blooming poppy fields of Ireland. Here is a portrait of an artist on acid, amphetamines and PCP, who finds himself working at the heart of Britain's nuclear industry. It pulses with stories and stories within stories, eye-watering, sexy, terrifying and poignant. A wild, hellish descent that is also a rush for the stars, A Ton of Malice is the demented love-child of Irvine Welsh, Hunter S. Thompson and Matt Groening. And, if it matters, it's almost all true.

Set in the remote, beautiful region of the American Midwest that gives the novel its title, The Driftless Area tells the story of Pierre Hunter, a young bartender with unfailing optimism, a fondness for coin tricks, and an uncanny capacity for finding trouble.When he falls in love with the mysterious and isolated Stella Rosmarin, Pierre becomes the central player in a revenge drama he must unravel and bring to its shocking conclusion. Along the way he will liberate $77,000 from a murderous thief, summon the resources that have eluded him all his life, and come to question the very meaning of chance and mortality.

Charlie Conti has just come into his inheritance. Young, rich and alone in the world, he decides to leave the echoing luxury of his Manhattan home and head for Los Angeles. He throws wild parties and everyone comes, but he remains on the outside, an isolated figure. Then he meets Ray Celador. Ray has the eyes of a visionary and the rough, gnarled hands of a lumberjack. He deals in drugs, women and philosophy, and before long he's indispensable to Charlie: father-figure, teacher, friend. But who, in the end, is Ray Celador? And who when he finds himself stripped of his home, his money and his identity is Charlie Conti? A thriller with a literary twist, this is the story of Charlie's betrayal, of the theft of his identity and of his attempt to recover what is his. His extraordinary meetings along the way and the magic of America's vast landscapes are captured by a voice that is innocent, wry and thoughtful.

In Hunts in Dreams - a follow-up to his acclaimed debut The End of Vandalism - Tom Drury returns to the Midwest to spend a life-changing autumn weekend in the company of a family whose members all want something without knowing how to get it: for Charles (a.k.a. 'Tiny'), it's an heirloom shotgun; for his wife, Joan, the imaginative life she once knew; for their young son, Micah, a sense of the limits of his world - in search of which he prowls the empty town at night; and for Joan's daughter, Lyris, a stable base from which to begin to grow up.

Welcome to Grouse County, somewhere in the Midwest, where the towns are small but the people, their dreams and their eccentricities come in all sizes. When Sheriff Dan Norman arrests local troublemaker Tiny Darling for vandalising an anti-vandalism dance, he does not expect much in the way of fallout. But unseen wheels have been set in motion, and lives will be changed: Dan finds love, Tiny loses his wife Louise, and all three travel an epic journey of the heart. The End of Vandalism is full of small miracles of observation, compassion and humour, held together by the 'electric deadpan' of Drury's celebrated style. For readers willing to tune in, the experience will be a revelation.

TOWER BLOCKS. FLYOVERS. STREETS IN THE SKY. ONCE, THIS WAS THE FUTURE.'Never has a trip from Croydon and back again been so fascinating. John Grindrod's witty and informative tour of Britain is a total treat'CATHERINE CROFT, Director, Twentieth Century SocietyWas Britain's postwar rebuilding the height of midcentury chic or the concrete embodiment of Crap Towns? John Grindrod decided to find out how blitzed, slum-ridden and crumbling 'austerity Britain' became, in a few short years, a space-age world of concrete, steel and glass.On his journey he visits the sleepy Norfolk birthplace of Brutalism, the once-Blitzed city centre of Plymouth, the futuristic New Town of Cumbernauld, Sheffield's innovative streets in the sky, the foundations of the BT tower, and the brave 1950s experiments in the Gorbals. Along the way he meets New Town pioneers, tower block builders, Barbican architects, old retainers of Coventry Cathedral, proud prefab dwellers and sixties town planners: people who lived through a time of phenomenal change and excitement.What he finds is a story of dazzling optimism, ingenuity and helipads -- so many helipads -- tempered by protests, deadly collapses and scandals that shook the government.Acclaimed by critics from all sides of the political spectrum, Concretopia is an witty and revealing history of an aspect of Britain often ignored, insulted and misunderstood. It will change the way you look at Arndale Centres, tower blocks and concrete forever.

Rich, successful and married -- with a beautiful mistress on the side -- top Glasgow lawyer Michael Gibson is to all appearances an enviable man. On the inside, his life is falling apart. Philippa, his lover, is demanding a divorce, but his wife refuses to cooperate. Meanwhile, an event from his shady past threatens to resurface and wipe out everything he's achieved. Worst of all, the city's most notorious psychopath, Jack McFarlane a man whom Gibson has good reason to fear is about to be released from prison. When Gibson s wife goes missing, DCI Charlie Anderson has to establish if he's dealing with a case of abduction, suicide or murder. As events unfold against the uneasy streets of modern Glasgow, Anderson finds his renowned analytical skills seriously challenged.

FIENDISHLY CLEVER AND GRIPPING HISTORICAL THRILLER SET IN THE LAST DAYS OF WW2 1945. The Red Army tears through Europe towards Berlin, exacting vengeance on a biblical scale, while the British and the Americans close in from the west. Victory over Hitler seems certain. But deep inside the Kremlin, Stalin worries about a new enemy. When the war is over, how will the Soviet Union protect itself against the overweening American behemoth? Meanwhile, ever more desperate, Hitler paces up and down his study in the Berchtesgaden. He knows he needs a miracle to avoid unthinkable and humiliating defeat. For both, the atom bomb is the answer. And both are willing to sacrifice their best spies to get it.

In Pacific, Tom Drury revisits the community of Grouse County, the setting of his landmark debut, The End of Vandalism. When fourteen-year-old Micah Darling travels to Los Angeles to reunite with the mother who abandoned him seven years ago, he finds himself out of his league in a land of magical freedom. Back in the Midwest, an ethereal young woman comes to Stone City on a mission that will unsettle the lives of everyone she meets - including Micah's half-sister, Lyris, and his father, Tiny, a petty thief. An investigation into the stranger's identity uncovers a darkly disturbed life, as parallel narratives of the comic and tragic, the mysterious and quotidian, unfold in both the country and the city.

People who take to the Wagner Experience encounter something wonderful, like gazing into a silver mirror which dissolves into a miraculous, self-contained world, glinting with life-changing possibilities. There are others who sense its appeal but find it difficult, and the first aim of this study is to provide an Open Sesame for anyone wanting it.' From the author's introduction In this bicentenary celebration of Wagner and his music, Paul Dawson-Bowling introduces, deepens and enriches the Wagner Experience for the newcomer and the seasoned Wagnerian alike. Expounding in colourful style the stories, the sources and the lessons of Wagner's great dramas, he offers unusual insights into the man, his works and their meaning, while grappling with the music's almost occult power. Before taking us through the ten great dramas themselves, he discusses Wagner's formative experiences, his aspirations and his mentality; also his first wife Minna and her immense but unrecognised impact. This sets up lenses through which the reader may more accurately view not only Wagner the man and his less appealing aspects, but, more importantly, his stage works, since, as Dawson-Bowling insists, the best encounter with Wagner's dramas is the direct one. Uniquely drawing on a lifetime's experience in General Medical Practice, the author brings a wisdom, humanity and psychological understanding to his study of the life and work of Wagner, with especial reference to the thought of Carl Jung. Above all, this book draws out the vital lessons which Wagner's extraordinary, didactic dramas can offer us. It reveals their lessons as life-enhancing: capable of transforming our society, our lives and ourselves. There is no other book about Wagner quite like it.

THE HEART-STOPPING FINAL INSTALMENT OF THE BESTSELLING STATION SERIES Europe, 1948. The continent is once again divided: into the Soviet-controlled East, and the US-dominated West. John Russell and his old comrade-in-espionage Shchepkin need to find a way out of the dangerous, morally murky world they have both inhabited for far too long. But they can't just walk away: if they want to escape with their lives, they must uncover a secret so damaging that they can buy their safety with silence. In this dazzling conclusion to the series, Downing ratchets up the suspense with a superb plot involving psychopathic mass murderers, a snuff movie that leads to the highest ranks of Soviet power, and Russell and his girlfriend Effi's last-ditch attempt to gain freedom.