The Hanging Shed


Gordon Ferris - 2010
    Now, the war is over but victory's wine has soured and Brodie's back in Scotland to try and save childhood friend Hugh Donovan from the gallows. Everyone thought Donovan was dead, shot down in the war. Perhaps it would have been kinder if he had been killed. The man who returned was unrecognizable: mutilated, horribly burned. Donovan keeps his own company, only venturing out for heroin to deaden the pain of his wounds. When a local boy is found raped and murdered, there is only one suspect...Donovan claims he's innocent but a mountain of evidence says otherwise. Despite the hideousness of the crime, ex-policeman Brodie feels compelled to try and help his one-time friend. Working with Donovan's advocate Samantha Campbell, Brodie trawls both the mean streets of the Gorbals and the green hills of western Scotland in their search for the truth. What they find is an unholy alliance of church, police and Glasgow's deadliest razor gang, happy to slaughter to protect their dark secrets. As time runs out for the condemned man, and the tally of murdered innocents rises, Brodie reverts to his wartime role as a trained killer. It's them or him.

Mrs Fry's Diary


Mrs. Stephen Fry - 2010
    There was a woman on there who'd been married 16 years without realising her husband was gay. Extraordinary! Which reminds me, it's our 16th anniversary in a few weeks. What a coincidence.Stephen Fry - actor, writer, raconteur and wit. Cerebral and sophisticated, a true Renaissance man.Or is he?Finally, his secret double life - the womanizing, the window-cleaning, the kebabs, the karaoke - is exclusively revealed by Edna, his devoted wife and mother of his five, six or possibly seven children. These diaries take us through a year in the life of an unwitting celebrity wife, and are rumoured to include:- scandalous nocturnal shenanigans- advice on childcare- 101 things to do with a tin of Spam.'A good diary should be like a good husband - a constant companion, a source of inspiration and, ideally, bound in leather.' - Edna Frytwitter.com/MrsStephenFry

The War Poets: A Selection of World War I Poetry (a selection of poems from Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, Siegfried Sassoon, Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg and Wilfred Owen, all with an active Table of Contents)


Rupert Brooke - 2011
    The collection includes:RUPERT BROOKEPEACESAFETYTHE DEADTHE DEADTHE SOLDIEREDWARD THOMASADLESTROPTEARSTHE OWLRAINTHE CHERRY TREESAS THE TEAM'S HEAD-BRASSSIEGFRIED SASSOON"THEY"THE REAR-GUARDI STOOD WITH THE DEADSUICIDE IN TRENCHESTHE GENERALHOW TO DIEGLORY OF WOMENTHEIR FRAILTYDOES IT MATTER?SURVIVORSEVERYONE SANGTO ANY DEAD OFFICERSICK LEAVEIVOR GURNEYTO HIS LOVETHE SILENT ONEISAAC ROSENBERGBREAK OF DAY IN THE TRENCHESLOUSE HUNTINGON RECEIVING NEWS OF THE WARDEAD MAN'S DUMPRETURNING, WE HEAR THE LARKSWILFRED OWENANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTHAPOLOGIA PRO POEMATE MEODULCE ET DECORUM ESTSTRANGE MEETINGFUTILITYDISABLEDMINERSS.I.W.

Deception


Denise Mina - 2002
    That's what Lachlan Harriot thinks as he watches his wife, Susie, led to jail in handcuffs. Yes, Susie, a psychologist, was found covered in blood near the spot where one of her clients appears to have been murdered. But Susie is not a killer, Lachlan thinks. She's my wife. She's our child's mother. Secrets lurk behind closed doors, however, a dark truth made chillingly clear as Lachlan's efforts to prove Susie's innocence uncover an entire secret history -- illicit affairs, false identities, unimaginable deception -- and this brilliantly acclaimed, page-turning novel speeds toward a conclusion as shocking as it is ingenious.

Aoife's Chariot: Mirrored Murder


Katherine Pathak - 2013
    Her brothers have given her the task of deciding what to do with their parents’ farm, which is slowly falling into disrepair. Imogen will not be rushed into passing judgement on the place. When she starts to carry out some research into the history of Kilduggan Farm, she inadvertently sets off a chain of events that ends in tragedy. Suddenly, Imogen and her psychologist husband, Hugh, find themselves faced with a seemingly insoluble puzzle. How can it be possible that an unexplained death in the present day can match, in every detail, an unsolved case from 40 years ago?As the past begins to catch up with Imogen, she realises that she must strive to discover the truth about her family, even if it means that nothing will ever be the same again…This is an intricately plotted novel, cleverly interwoven with subtle clues and the occasional red-herring. It will keep you guessing and the pages turning, right up until its final, shocking conclusion.Aoife's Chariot is the first novel in the Imogen and Hugh Croft Mysteries Series. It is an absorbing family saga, full of mystery and suspense. Husband and wife sleuths Imogen and Hugh Croft are first introduced to readers in this tense genealogical mystery with deathly consequences.

Love Is Strong as Death: Poems chosen by Paul Kelly


Paul Kelly - 2019
    And now he has gathered from around the world the poems he loves – poems that have inspired and challenged him over the years, a number of which he has set to music. This wide-ranging and deeply moving anthology combines the ancient and the modern, the hallowed and the profane, the famous and the little known, to speak to two of literature’s great themes that have proven so powerful in his music: love and death – plus everything in between.Here are poems by Yehuda Amichai, W.H. Auden, Tusiata Avia, Hera Lindsay Bird, William Blake, Bertolt Brecht, Constantine Cavafy, Alison Croggon, Mahmoud Darwish, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Ali Cobby Eckermann, James Fenton, Thomas Hardy, Kevin Hart, Gwen Harwood, Seamus Heaney, Philip Hodgins, Homer, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Langston Hughes, John Keats, Ono No Komachi, Maxine Kumin, Philip Larkin, Li-Young Lee, Norman MacCaig, Paula Meehan, Czeslaw Milosz, Les Murray, Pablo Neruda, Sharon Olds, Ovid, Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Porter, Rumi, Anne Sexton, William Shakespeare, Izumi Shikibu, Warsan Shire, Kenneth Slessor, Wislawa Szymborska, Máire Mhac an tSaoi, Ko Un, Walt Whitman, Judith Wright, W.B. Yeats and many more.

The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter


Malcolm Mackay - 2013
    The telephone rings; a casual conversation, but behind this a job offer. The clues are there if you know to look for them. He is an expert. A loner. Freelance. Another job is another job, but what if this organization wants more?A meeting at a club. An offer. A target: Lewis Winter, a necessary sacrifice that will be only the first step in an all-out war between crime syndicates the likes of which hasn't been seen for decades. It's easy to kill a man. It's hard to kill a man well. People who do it well know this. People who do it badly find out the hard way. The hard way has consequences.

Burning Down George Orwell's House


Andrew Ervin - 2015
      Ray Welter, who was until recently a highflying advertising executive in Chicago, has left the world of newspeak behind. He decamps to the isolated Scottish Isle of Jura in order to spend a few months in the cottage where George Orwell wrote most of his seminal novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ray is miserable, and quite prepared to make his troubles go away with the help of copious quantities of excellent scotch.But a few of the local islanders take a decidedly shallow view of a foreigner coming to visit in order to sort himself out, and Ray quickly finds himself having to deal with not only his own issues but also a community whose eccentricities are at times amusing and at others downright dangerous. Also, the locals believe—or claim to believe—that there’s a werewolf about, and against his better judgment, Ray’s misadventures build to the night of a traditional, boozy werewolf hunt on the Isle of Jura on the summer solstice.

Strange Light


Derrick Brown - 2012
    Strange Light takes us back to the docks, to drama class and prom, an undersea conversation with Jacques Cousteau, and into his famous romantic howls. The epic poem, Strange Light, anchors this collection as one of the most inventive and potent collections of modern American poetry. About.com called his 2009 collection Scandalabra, one of the best books of the year. Everything hilarious and stirring is illuminated. The power of Strange Light is waiting.

Judge Dredd: Year One Omnibus


Michael Carroll - 2014
    Judge Joe Dredd’s first year on the streets as a full-eagle Judge. Bred for justice, trained in law, Dredd’s no helpless rookie, but he’s not the seasoned veteran we know either. Three tales follow the first adventures of the future city’s greatest lawman. With an introduction by the Mighty Tharg! CITY FATHERS The brutal murder of a Justice Department-sanctioned spy uncovers something new and dangerous in the sector’s murky black market. Unless Dredd can stop it, chaos will be unleashed. COLD LIGHT OF DAY A savage killing spree results in the deaths of two highly-regarded Judges, and many consider Dredd to be responsible: a decision he made five years earlier – while he was still a cadet – has come back to haunt him. WEAR IRON “Wear iron, that’s the rule.” Paul Strader is a stick-up man, and a stone cold professional. But when he gets in over his head, he has to risk everything on the word of a corrupt lawman and break every rule he has. Every rule but one...

Magic City


Drew Lerman - 2007
    He's suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder ever since a hurricane hit his house, with him alone in it. He's suffering from indecision in his relationships with girls. He's suffering because he's got a new friend, Charlie Bickle, who seems to like to see him suffer. It's all a part of life, Charlie says. Henry wants to believe it's true. He wants to think that life can be kept at arm's distance. He wants to be convinced that life is bullshit. His curse is that he knows better. And that curse will also be his salvation.

Game free sampler


Anders de la Motte - 2013
    As their lives spiral out of control, HP faces a challenge he never expected. Can he outwit The Game before it’s too late?

An Anthology of Madness


Max Andrew Dubinsky - 2013
    Featuring brand new stories and some old favorites, many of these tell-all, gritty tales were originally published on the blog Make It MAD between 2010 and 2012, and have been rereleased in their originality for this special print and digital anthology.

Artful


Ali Smith - 2012
    Anne’s College, Oxford. Her lectures took the shape of this set of discursive stories. Refusing to be tied down to either fiction or the essay form, Artful is narrated by a character who is haunted—literally—by a former lover, the writer of a series of lectures about art and literature.A hypnotic dialogue unfolds, a duet between and a meditation on art and storytelling, a book about love, grief, memory, and revitalization. Smith’s heady powers as a fiction writer harmonize with her keen perceptions as a reader and critic to form a living thing that reminds us that life and art are never separate.Artful is a book about the things art can do, the things art is full of, and the quicksilver nature of all artfulness. It glances off artists and writers from Michelangelo through Dickens, then all the way past postmodernity, exploring every form, from ancient cave painting to 1960s cinema musicals. This kaleidoscope opens up new, inventive, elastic insights—on the relation of aesthetic form to the human mind, the ways we build our minds from stories, the bridges art builds between us. Artful is a celebration of literature’s worth in and to the world and a meaningful contribution to that worth in itself. There has never been a book quite like it.

A Place Called Freedom


Ken Follett - 1995
    Sentenced to a life of misery in the brutal coal mines, twenty-one-year-old Mack McAsh hungers for escape. His only ally: the beautiful, highborn Lizzie Hallim, who is trapped in her own kind of hell. Though separated by politics and position, these two restless young people are bound by their passionate search for a place called freedom.   From the teeming streets of London to the infernal hold of a slave ship to a sprawling Virginia plantation, Ken Follett’s turbulent, unforgettable novel of liberty and revolution brings together a vivid cast of heroes and villains, lovers and rebels, hypocrites and hell-raisers—all propelled by destiny toward an epic struggle that will change their lives forever.