If you’ve seen Les Mis and were left wanting more, a new ebook of Le Temps des Cerises could be just what you need.
Le Temps des Cerises is set at the barricades of Paris in the 1870, just a few years after Victor Hugo penned his epic novel. The citizens are still suffering, this time being starved out by the Prussian siege and the Versaillais, and even rats are on the menu.
For 17-year-old Eveline Renan the horrors also brings excitement as she finds herself on the frontline, caught between two lovers: the dreamy poet Laurie, and his heroic friend Alphonse. She has no idea that just a few streets away, disgraced nun Bernadine is selling herself to save the lives of innocents, including hers.

As the Gare du Nord becomes a centre of resistance, Eveline finds revolution on the streets that is reflected in the hearts of the soldiers, nuns, artisans, lovers and renegades of this chaotic city. She and others are forced to find their own ways of living and dying as the fighting finally reaches the young men at the barricades of la semaine sanglante – the bloody week of Paris Commune.
Also available in paperback
Celebrate the R S Thomas centenary with Seren’s R. S. Thomas: Poems to Elsi

Seren are publishing RS Thomas’s Poems to Elsi to celebrate the life and works of one of the world’s finest twentieth century writers. This excellent volume, edited by Damian Walford Davies, draws together 52 poems (4 previously unpublished) by Thomas to his wife, Elsi.
This revelatory collection dramatises the changing dynamics of a complex and vitally creative relationship. Poems on marriage, cohabitation, birthdays, anniversaries, family and bereavement offer a candid portrait of emotional intimacy, desire, the painful process of ageing, and of loss. Elsi is a complex presence here: to the ‘to’ in the title signifies not only ‘addressed to’ but also ‘about’, ‘with an eye on’, ‘to be overheard by’, and even in one case ‘from’.
Pre-order your copy now.
 
 

To celebrate International Women’s Day, we are offering you a prize-winning poetry collection Berg for a fantastic price of £2.99 with FREE post.

In this first collection from Hilary Menos, icebergs floating down the Thames jostle with transvestites in Singapore, aliens wading the Hudson River and the lively crew from the local slaughterhouse. We go shopping with Ingomar the barbarian and watch Bernard Manning gigging at Totnes Civic Hall. Other poems are populated with characters from fiction; we step off the cartoon cliff with the Road Runner, join Iggle Piggle in a subverted Night Garden, and hitch a lift with the micro-crew on their Fantastic Voyage.
Throughout, Menos brings a sophisticated sensibility to her poetry. Her subjects are seen aslant, with ironic as well as tender intentions. She ranges from the intimate and local to the ambitious and far flung, with poems that capture ‘elsewhere’ set in Paris and Havana and New York, and mini ‘ecological’ epics, often in the voice of an invented persona, alongside poems about geese and babies and farming life in rural Devon.

“This is someone who reflects an expert at work but has their own vivid way of seeing and acting.” – Ruth Padel
“…crackles with formal skill, with extraordinary, vibrant language … and with great style …” – Carol Ann Duffy
“She has the rare ability to uncover the wide range of implications of the world we live in, be they emotional, spiritual or literary. Here is a new poet with a full locker of accomplishments. She is sure to make an immediate impact.” – John Stammers
Get your copy for only £2.99 now – click here

Happy World Book Day!

To celebrate World Book Day we are giving away a FREE copy of Glenda Beagan’s short story collection The Great Master of Ecstasy.
Order online between 12pm-1pm and 2pm-3pm on Thursday 7th March 2013 to get your free copy* to get your free copy*
 

The Great Master of Ecstasy is poignant collection of interlinked short stories. In her clear and thoughtful prose Glenda explores memory, inspiration and mental health, peering over the edge of the natural world with sometimes chilling results.  Her characters inhabit a north Wales landscape of hillsides and trees, seaside towns and isolated homes, owls and foxes as she traces out the lives of teenagers, self-made men, and women emerging from the shadow of others, uncovering a strong thread of resilient humanity.
“In the no-man’s-land between sleep and waking, between sanity and mental breakdown, Glenda listens to the sonar of the night and logs the human journey between icebergs of mystery and madness.” – Lloyd Jones
*Post and packaging will apply