Meet Oliver Tate, 15. Convinced that his father is depressed (” Depression comes in bouts. Like boxing. Dad is in the blue corner”) & his mother is having an affair with her capoeira teacher, ”a hippy-looking twonk”, he embarks on a hilariously misguided campaign to bring the family back together. Meanwhile, he is also trying to lose his virginity
- before he turns sixteeen
- to his pyromaniac girlfriend Jordana. Will Oliver succeed in either aim? Submerge yourself in Submarine & find out...

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In a room with no windows on the eastern coast of Africa, an Englishman, James More, is held captive by jihadist fighters. Thousands of miles away on the Greenland Sea, Danielle Flinders prepares to dive in a submersive to the ocean floor. In their confines they are drawn back to the Christmas of the previous year, where a chance encounter on a beach in France led to an intense & enduring romance... ...

As the 2022 French Presidential election looms, two candidates emerge as favourites: Marine Le Pen of the Front National, & the charismatic Muhammed Ben Abbes of the growing Muslim Fraternity. Forming a controversial alliance with the political left to block the Front National`s alarming ascendency, Ben Abbes sweeps to power, & overnight the country is transformed. This proves to be the death knell of French secularism, as Islamic law comes into force: women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged &, for our narrator Francois
- misanthropic, middle-aged & alienated
- life is set on a new course. Submission is a devastating satire, comic & melancholy by turns, & a profound meditation on faith & meaning in Western society.

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Londoners & visitors alike are fascinated by the life of the capital beneath their feet. Lost Rivers, pipes of many kinds, sewers, crypts & catacombs, tunnels used or abandoned, ring mains, railways, secret bunkers & pneumatic tubes are all there in a sometimes complex arrangement. This book tells the reader what can be found & seen right up to date, including the considerable engineering achievements of the past & present; the Roman amphitheatre under Guildhall; the first tunnel beneath the Thames, the world`s first underground railway, & the first proper sewerage system installed in any city. ...

Peel back the layers under a London street & you`ll discover a haunting, dreamlike world of h&-laid brick sewers, forgotten tube stations, World War II evacuation shelters, secret government bunkers, & tunnel boring machines laying new sewer, communication & transport grids. Bradley L. Garrett has worked with explorers of subterranean London to collect an astonishing array of images documenting forbidden infiltrations into the secret bowels of the city. This book takes readers through progressively deeper levels of London`s historical & contemporary architecture below the streets. Beautifully designed to allow for detailed viewing & featuring bespoke illustrations by artist Stephen Walter, Subterranean London reveals the locations few dare to go, & even fewer succeed in accessing. ...

Subterraneans is another frenetically typed (in three days) ride into the world of Jack Kerouac, for although classed as fiction The Subterraneans is, like all of his work, closely related to his own life while encapsulating his great vision of America. Leo Percepied, aspiring writer & self-styled free-wheeling bum, gravitates to the subterraneans, impoverished intellectuals who haunt the bars of San Francisco. One of them is Mardou Fox, part Negro, part Cherokee, beautiful & a little crazy, whose dark eyes full of suffering & sweetness find recognition in Leo. But, afraid of his growing involvement, Leo sets out to destroy their love through betrayal & drunkenness. ...

A selection of the finest stories by this female Chekhov Teffi`s genius with the short form made her a literary star in pre-revolutionary Russia, beloved by Tsar Nicholas II & Vladimir Lenin alike. These stories, taken from the whole of her career, show the full range of her gifts. Extremely funny
- a wry, scathing observer of society
- she is also capable, as capable even as Chekhov, of miraculous subtlety & depth of character. There are stories here from her own life (as a child, going to meet Tolstoy to plead for the life of War & Peace`s Prince Bolkonsky, or, much later, her strange, charged meetings with the already-legendary Rasputin). There are stories of emigre society, its members held together by mutual repulsion. There are stories of people misunderstanding each other or misrepresenting themselves. & throughout there is a sly, sardonic wit & a deep, compelling intelligence. Teffi was a phenomenally popular writer in pre-revolutionary Russia
- a favourite of Tsar Nicholas II & Vladimir Lenin alike. She was born in 1872 into a prominent St Petersburg family & emigrated from Bolshevik Russia in 1919. She eventually settled in Paris, where she became an important figure in the emigre literary scene, & where she lived until her death in 1952. A master of the short form, in her lifetime Teffi published countless stories, plays & feuilletons. After her death, she was gradually forgotten, but the collapse of the Soviet Union brought about her rediscovery by Russian readers. Now, nearly a century after her emigration, she once again enjoys critical acclaim & a wide readership in her motherl&. ` Made me fall in love...[ Teffi] can write in more registers than you might think, & is capable of being heartbreaking as well as very funny. I wish she were still alive, & I could have met her. But then I realised she would have seen right through me. I can`t recommend her strongly enough` Nicholas Lezard, Guardian, Book of the Week


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Such a Long Journey was Rohinton Mistry’s first novel, shortlisted for the *1991 Booker Prize*, & eventually winning the *1992 Commonwealth Writers Prize*. Set in Bombay against the backdrop of war in the Indian subcontinent & the birth of Bangladesh, “ Such a Long Journey” tells the story of the peculiar way in which the conflict impinges on the lives of Gustad Noble, an ordinary man, & his very ordinary family. So effective is the book’s narrative in depicting one of the darker moments in Indian history, that at the time of its publication the Vice Chancellor of the University of Mumbai banned the book from it’s curriculum burned copies of the book publicly on the streets of Mumbai. Decide for yourself just how powerful this fantastic book really is, & go on a literary journey into the heart of the Indian subcontinent. ...

Such a Long Journey is set in Bombay against the backdrop of war in the Indian subcontinent & the birth of Bangladesh, telling the story of the peculiar way in which the conflict impinges on the lives of Gustad Noble, an ordinary man, & his family. Such a Long Journey is a brilliant first novel by one of the most remarkable writers to have emerged from the Indian literary tradition in many years. It was shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize, & won the 1992 Commonwealth Writers Prize. ...

Her father died instantly, her mother in the hospital. She has learned to say this flatly & without emotion, the way she says her name (Marina), her doll`s name (also Marina) & her age (seven). Her parents were killed in a car crash & now she lives in the orphanage with the other little girls. But Marina is not like the other little girls. In the curious, hyperreal, feverishly serious world of childhood, Marina & the girls play games of desire & warfare. The daily rituals of playtime, lunchtime & bedtime are charged with a horror; horror is licked by the dark flames of love. When Marina introduces the girls to Marina the Doll, she sets in motion a chain of events from which there can be no release. With shades of Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Jackson, Guillermo Del Toro & Mariana Enriquez, Such Small Hands is a beautifully controlled tour-de-force, a bedtime story to keep readers awake. ...