20th March, 2013

There is life after Les Misérables…

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 This excellent volume, edited by Damian Walford Davies, draws together 52 poems (4 previously unpublished) by Thomas to his wife, Elsi.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.