literary fiction Archives - Page 4 of 6

Posted on August 24, 2016 by Simon appleby

Seren summer sale | 50% off books

The Seren summer sale is here for this week only, so curl up in a comfy armchair and have a browse on our website for some book bargains.

We have something for everyone – everything from poetry to novels, short stories, art, history and biography. And with so much choice, we thought you might like a helping hand choosing what to read next. Take a look below for our summer sale suggestions.

Best for… reading on the beach:
Foreign Bodies by Candy Neubert
~~£7.99~~ £3.99
Deep down she had always known that the world was like this. It was incredible to think of all those people in their offices in London still living their grey lives, while here in the Philippines… this. Life bursting out everywhere.
Fresh from the UK, Emma thinks she has fallen in love with a place, a person, and pursues the man of her dreams with a colonial zeal. But for all her poetic sensibilities, she seems unaware of the destruction she is capable of leaving in her wake.

Best for… getting lost in, on a long afternoon:
The Roots of Rock by Peter Finch
~~£9.99~~ £4.99
‘This is a vivid and engaging read that breathes new life into some great old music.’ – The Welsh Agenda
Peter Finch follows the trail of twentieth century popular music from a 1950s valve radio playing in a suburban Cardiff terrace to the reality of the music among the bars of Ireland, the skyscrapers of New York, the plains of Tennessee, the flatlands of Mississippi and the mountains of North Carolina. From Etta James to Bert Jansch, Taylor Swift to Ray Charles, Finch’s world of music is as broad as the last six decades allows.

Best for… poring over on a rainy day:
A Boat Called Annalise by Lynne Hjelmgaard
~~£9.99~~ £4.99
‘Hjelmgaard brings the specialist knowledge of an experienced sailor to her understanding of the varied rhythms demanded by her poetry. Reading her, I begin to appreciate what a sea-journey feels like.’ – London Grip
A Boat Called Annalise is wonderfully evocative of life on a sailboat; the book recalls a journey this much-travelled author took on a sailboat to the Caribbean and back to Europe with her husband. Hjelmgaard’s poems are beautifully poised, full of clear-eyed and frequently humorous observations.

Best for… livening up long journeys:
Advantages of the Older Man by Gwyneth Lewis
~~£7.99~~ £3.99
‘A little gem of a novella with hidden depths. This light-hearted story of a young woman suffering from an unrequited passion explores life, love, death and the fine art of poetry.’ – Pamreader
A light-hearted story exploring the strange case of a Swansea woman who is apparently possessed by the spirit of Dylan Thomas. Naturally all is not as it seems. The woman, who works in the Dylan Thomas Centre, meets a rather different Dylan from the one she knows by repute, one who doesn’t really fit in with the ghosts of other poets in heaven and is desperate to train himself to join the fitter shades of the long distance runners instead. Her own life, which has been lonely and sad, is completely transformed by the encounter.

Best for… broadening your mind:
The Dragon and the Crescent by Grahame Davies
~~£12.99~~ £6.49
‘This is a fully annotated work of scholarship as well as an always readable, sometimes exciting book that opens out a previously neglected aspect of Welsh – and British – culture over more than 400 pages’ – Western Mail
In the early twenty-first century, the relationship between the West and Islam has, due to recent political events, become the subject of intense study, curiosity and tension. But to understand contemporary anxieties, we need to trace their historical roots. The Dragon and the Crescent does this for one small European nation, revealing for the first time, the full and surprising story of the Welsh relationship with Islam.

Best for… curling up with on a dark night:
Masque by Bethany Pope
~~£9.99~~ £4.99
‘A novel richly layered with both gothic appeal and intellectual depth. In Masque Pope has initiated an important dialogue about the value of art to the human soul, and the psychological masks we wear as we pick our way through life.’ –Wales Arts Review
A richly gothic retelling of Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera . A promising young singer is torn between two loves. One, her patron, is a rich vicomte, who offers her a life of luxury and light. The other, the mysterious Phantom of the Opera, is a dark enigma who offers to help her further her art. One is a man, the other a monster. But truth and life are twisted things. A life of empty privilege can be ugly and monsters can be kind. And art exerts its own demands.
This is not the story you think you know.

We hope you enjoy browsing our summer sale. The half price offer ends at midnight on bank holiday Monday, 29th July, so hurry and fill your library for less before it ends.

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Posted on August 9, 2016 by Simon appleby

Titles to treat yourself to this National Book Lovers’ Day

titles to treat yourself with national book lovers’ day 2016

Book buying can be a bit of an addiction, but now we all have the perfect excuse to go out and treat ourselves to a new title – it’s National Book Lovers’ Day.

Here are our editors’ top ten picks. If you haven’t read them yet, then what are you waiting for?

1. Masque, Bethany W. Pope
A richly gothic retelling of Gaston Leroux’s phantom of the opera story by debut novelist Bethany W. Pope. Centre stage is promising young singer Christine, who, despite being devoted to her art, attracts the attention of both the Phantom (Erik), and rich Parisian theatre owner Raoul.
The intensely ambitious Christine finds herself caught between the twin evils of the Phantom’s murderous pursuit of artistic perfection and Raoul’s ‘romantic’ vision of her as a bourgeois wife. Her own desire to follow her operatic career becomes her guiding light, but none of the three leading characters can control the directions in which their passions lead them, while the beautiful masked skull of the opera house itself looms large over their respective fates. The resulting mix of love, rage, art and murderous intent, is explosive.
Love, lust, adventure, romance, and the monstrous nature of unfulfilled creativity await you here.
Everyone wears a mask. Look beneath it, if you dare.

2. Crowd Sensations, Judy Brown
Crowd Sensations is a worthy follow-up to Brown’s Forward Prize-nominated debut, Loudness. Brown is a poet of dazzling contrasts, of thoughtful paradox, intimate confidences and precise evocations. Her titles and first lines both draw you right into a poem and then quite often surprise you with a narrative that you hadn’t quite expected. ‘The Things She Burned Last Year’ references a past both remote and near, like multiple reflections seen in a mirror. Brown is a poet of profoundly unsettling domesticity as in ‘The Dehumidifier’, which unravels the metaphysics of damp and ‘This is Not a Garden’, which is a cool summation of a failed marriage. We frequently imagine an uncomfortable intimacy: ‘Poem in Which I am Not Short-sighted’, or are given a scary anecdote like: ‘The Post Box in the Wall’. There are serious poems that lure you with humorous titles: ‘Poem in the Voice of a Dead Cockroach’.

3. Sugar Hall, Tiffany Murray
Easter 1955. As Lilia Sugar scrapes the ice from the inside of the windows and the rust from the locks in Sugar Hall, she knows there are pasts she cannot erase. On the very edge of the English/Welsh border, the red gardens of Sugar Hall hold a secret, and as Britain prepares for its last hanging, Lilia and her children must confront a history that has been buried but not forgotten.
Based on the stories of the slave boy that surround Littledean Hall in the Forest of Dean, this is a superbly chilling ghost story from Tiffany Murray.

4. Ritual 1969, Jo Mazelis
What are little girls made of? What will they become? Will they run away to the circus or become dressmakers, teachers or servants? From the playground to adulthood the path is beset with misunderstandings, missed dates and hidden traps for the unwary.
This darkly gothic collection of stories explores the unsettling borderland between reality and the supernatural. Ranging from early twentieth-century France to 1960s South Wales and contemporary Europe, Jo Mazelis’ singular vision and poetic language creates characters caught up in events and feelings they do not fully understand or control, giving the book its uncanny focus. Not all is as it seems in a world where first impressions may only conceal disguises and false trails – and there’s no going back.

5. Dark Mermaids, Anne Lauppe-Dunbar
It is the Olympic summer so what better time to read Anne Lauppe-Dunbar’s gripping thriller, Dark Mermaids, which tells a shocking yet enduringly familiar story of the horrors of a political system that doped its youngsters to sporting superhero status, and then left them to fend for themselves.
Dark Mermaids follows West Berlin police officer Sophia as she is called to investigate the murder of her childhood friend Käthe. The search for Käthe’s killer draws Sophia back into her abusive past as a child swimming star in the former GDR, and as the web of half-remembered horrors starts to unravel, those close to Sophia begin to take notice. There are some who still have much to hide, and they will go to great lengths to stop their secrets from surfacing.
Dark Mermaids was shortlisted for the Cross Sports Book Awards, 2016.

6. Star-Shot, Mary-Ann Constantine
Part fable, part mystery, Star-Shot is a stylish debut novel set in and around Cardiff’s National Museum in a time that is almost, but not quite, our own. As their paths cross in a circumscribed world of benches, parks and galleries, a handful of characters reveal their stories of obsession, loss and recovery, creating a fragile network of relationships which will help to resist the inexorable channels of silence eating into the city.
A brittle young woman sits on a bench in Gorsedd park, conscious of the powerful building behind her; a tall man carries a box full of a strange organic substance up the entrance steps; a young father explains the formation of stars to his tiny son. As university researchers try to map and understand the destructive silence snaking around them, it becomes clear that the linked lives of these and other marginal characters offer ways of countering its effects. Poignant and humorous,Star-Shot is an exploration of how objects and images can focus our grief and desire; it is also a meditation on the regenerative power of garden ponds, and the cosmic significance of frogs..

7. The Dogs That Chase Bicycle Wheels, Ilse Pedler
Beautifully evocative of life on a sailboat, Lynne Hjelmgaard’s poems trace a journey this much-travelled author took on a sailboat to the Caribbean and back to Europe with her husband.
The couple’s relationship is poised on tensions, beautifully observed, as masculine/ feminine, the need to assert and/or withdraw in the face of the turbulent seascape. The paradise-like destination is reached and later we learn that life goes on, there is illness and loss, and in the final section, the tone becomes movingly elegiac.
Hjelmgaard’s poems are beautifully poised, full of clear-eyed and frequently humorous observations. Her work is full of sentiment without being sentimental. We hope you enjoy your trip on A Boat Called Annalise.

8. Murder at the Star:Who Killed Thomas Thomas?, Steve Adams
The murder of God-fearing, bible-quoting, partially deaf Thomas Thomas at the branch of Star Stores he managed in Garnant, South Wales has remained an unsolved mystery since it happened in 1921. His body was found on the morning of Sunday February 13th, his head smashed, his throat cut and with a stab wound to the stomach, any of which could have killed him. Over £126 was missing from the store safe, yet there were oddities about the attack which suggested this was more than a robbery that went tragically wrong: Thomas had been gagged with cheese, and there was no tear in his trousers, shirt and waistcoat above the stab wound. What circumstances could explain these things?
Garnant was in shock, and Scotland Yard arrived in the form of DI George Nicholls. A number of suspects were identified but none seemed to have the telling combination of motive and opportunity. Despite the expertise of Nicholls the case was eventually abandoned and the killer’s secret died with him.
Until now. In classic cold case fashion journalist Steve Adams’s extensive researches have finally identified the killer, who is revealed at the end of the book, after a thorough reconstruction of the murder and the subsequent investigation.

9. The Way the Crocodile Taught Me, Katrina Naomi
Katrina Naomi’s new poetry collection, The Way the Crocodile Taught Me, is a heartfelt and tragi-comic portrayal of a fraught childhood and adolescence. Central to the book are two sequences: one about an awful stepfather, and the other about a kindly but also comically old-fashioned grandmother. A mother appears, distant, glamorous as a film star. An absent father is also a dream: “After my father left, I grew/ a battery of hearts,/ felt each of them beat,/ like doves in a casket/”. These family poems are both heartbreaking and often hilarious, sometimes both at once as in ‘Portrait of my Stepfather as a Xmas Tree’.

10. The World, The Lizard and Me, Gil Courtemanche
A novel of testament to the children caught up in the civil wars of Central Africa, The World, the Lizard and Me follows criminal investigator Claude Tremblay as he pursues a warlord charged with creating child soldiers in the Congo.
Defeated in court by a legal technicality, Claude abandons his usual professional detachment and decides to act alone. He finds himself in the growing chaos of the mining town of Bunia, searching for more evidence and eventually encountering Kabanga. Pitched from distant observation into the grim reality of an African power struggle, he is confronted by a form of justice different from any he has experienced before. He also encounters at first hand the results of the inhumanity of the lives of child soldiers, and is forced to reconsider the nature of love and the notion of normality.

If you prefer to read digitally, then why not check out Seren eBooks? See our full eBook list on Kobo or search by title on Amazon.

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Posted on July 30, 2016 by Simon appleby

Short Story of the Month | ‘The Dig’ by Graham Mort

short story of the month the dig graham mort

Our new Short Story of the Month is ‘The Dig’ by Graham Mort, from his newest collection, Terroir, in which past and present intertwine as amateur archeologists dig for answers in an area whose violent, territorial history they know nothing of.

About Terroir:
From England to Europe, Africa to South America, these stories from prize-winning short story writer Graham Mort explore relationships: father and child; man and wife; man and his environment.
All these stories are sensitively told and beautifully written, bringing fresh perspectives to our place in the world around us.
Graham Mort has won the Edgehill and Bridport and Short Fiction short story prizes.

The Dig

This is an extract. Read the full short story for free on our website.

A Thistlethwaite, red-haired like all her clan. Longshanked, full-breasted, tall. Freckled, grey-eyed, jug-eared, a crooked smile creasing into dimples. Climber of rockfaces for hawk’s eggs. Horse breeder, dog hater. Broadshouldered, a fighter who’ll take on her brothers and anyone else. Fey, man-shy, loyal. Fierce to the lie, quick to offence. Footsore now, limping from a bruised knee where the gelding took her into a dry stone boundary.
Homeward bound, the moor’s peat squelching underfoot, the heather springy, bog cotton in the hollows. Hungry and used to it.

The Land Rover lurches on the bridleway, loaded with wire ladders and lamps, yellow waterproofs, digging gear. The man’s helmet lies beside him on the front seat. His hair is spiky grey, his hands badly scarred from a fire. The flesh has grown back in purple patches. He’s got a blue thumbnail where a hammer missed. He wears a diver’s watch with a black plastic wristband. Sun shows up the scratches on the spattered windscreen, tyres jog over stones and ruts and into mud puddles. The exhaust stinks in low gear. He’s arranged to meet the others at the dig. This one’s been on the go for months and you never knew who’d turn up.

She’s a long hour from home after trading her grey horse in the next dale. There are coins in her purse but she’s packed it tight with grass to stop them chinking. She rode the gelding bareback to the Sykes place, now she has the walk home. It was a good sale. The bridle and harness are
tight under her jerkin. She’s taken a short cut over a flank of moorland, crossing a corner of Abel Rintner’s land, past his new peat cuttings where turves are piled. She’s black to the ankles and there’s a foul gas from the moss. She could have played it safe and detoured by the valley head,
then down past the inn where there were other folk. There’d be drunken, groping bastards too. Fenmen and Dutchlanders draining the land for the monks, gabbling, fetching up phlegm and laughter. She can’t bear that. No need if the light holds. Her feet catch in rushes. She can hear the calling of fat lambs. Soon they’d be cutting their throats for Eric’s wedding.

There’s a dirty Peugeot estate parked where the bridleways meet. Dark blue with a roof rack. Two other cavers are already climbing into their gear. A woman in her late thirties with pulled-back hair and acute blue eyes; a fifty-year-old man, bow-legged, short and bearded. He’s coiling a climbing rope clarted in dried clay and she’s fastening her overalls over rubber boots. Their greeting is a stubbing of cigarette butts, a faint smile, nods to the stile, the causeway they’ve laid across the marsh that leads to the dig. Another path goes up over the limestone edge, past the killing pit – a swallow-hole with almost sheer sides, twenty yards across and twelve deep. They’d help excavate that for an archaeological dig, uncovering broken animal bones and Mesolithic flints. Hand axes, arrow tips, flensing blades. The ancient people had hunted with dogs, driving red deer, elk, auroch, and wild boar over the edge then stoning them to death. They’d been proud of that dig, the way it made sense of things, of the past. The man with the
scarred hands slams the Land Rover door and takes two yellow plastic trugs from the back. They pick up their lamps, two folding spades, a short-handled pick. The bearded man carries the rolled-up ladder and the woman with blue eyes lifts a coil of rope.

Jogging across the moor to strike the track, Hannah’s breath is harsh now. She’s anxious to get to the commons below. Sun is dropping over the sea about thirty miles west. The air is cooling, smoke coiling from the farmstead she’s too close to. A flight of geese follows the river to the estuary in
a double vee. She stumbles, pauses, rights herself, touching a hand to her sore knee. There’s the sudden hiss and flicker of plumage. A streaking bird is attacking her. Then the arrow strikes into her forearm, almost parallel to the bone, the point driving right through. She sucks her breath, freckles starring her suddenly white face. She glares round quickly and keeps moving. She should have covered her hair. That was stupid. The mistake will cost her. She’s wearing an amber amulet that hangs from a leather thong. It tosses as she runs. The arrow stings, evilly. She needs to get out of view, jags to the left, drops into a gulley and lies listening for dogs. Nothing. She follows the gulley down, stumbling, nursing her arm, trying to let blood drip onto her and not bare rocks where they can track her. There’s a little water in the beck bottom, not much.

They walk up the lane in single file, trudging a little after their day of work. Each to their own: wrought iron making, timberwork, the work of the body. There’s a gate on the left leading to the wooden causeway laid over the moor. The timber smells of creosote. The man with the beard grimaces, but the woman half smiles, bends her head a little closer as she swings the gate back onto its catch, savouring a memory. They move across the peat bog, feeling the planks sink a little under their weight. There are black pools on either side. Petroleum from the peat has stained them with iridescent patterns. A stand of bog cotton stirs in a slight breeze coming off the Irish sea. The man in the lead flexes his fingers and switches hands on the trug. The woman’s eyes are paler here, bluer, as if cut from underwater stones. She’s thinking of a bright room, how she loves the touch and smell of babies though she’s had none of her own. Their pure skin, their tiny hands reaching to their awed mothers’ faces.

Voices, thick and faint, not far off. A hundred yards. Maybe more. Men’s bass tones. She pauses, hunched over. Dark blood is oozing where the arrow tip has gone through.

…

Continue reading ‘The Dig’ for free here.

Graham Mort’s short story collection Terroir is available to buy from the Seren website: £9.99.

Claim 20% off when you become a Book Club Member.

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Simon appleby

Book Giveaway: win a copy of Masque by Bethany W. Pope

Enter now for the chance to win a copy of Bethany W. Pope’s gloriously gothic novel, Masque.

To enter, simply sign up to the Seren newsletter before 1st August:
https://www.serenbooks.com/newsletter/signup

About Masque:
Masque is a richly gothic and psychological retelling of Gaston Leroux’s classic, The Phantom of the Opera. Centre-stage is promising young singer Christine who, despite being devoted to her art, attracts the attention of both the Phantom (Erik), and rich Parisian theatre owner Raoul. The intensely ambitious Christine finds herself caught between the twin evils of the Phantom’s murderous pursuit of artistic perfection and Raoul’s ‘romantic’ vision of her as a bourgeois wife. Control slips away as the three characters are led onwards by the intensity of their passions, and the beautiful masked skull of the opera house itself looms large over their respective fates. The resulting mix of love, rage, art and murderous intent, is explosive.

The winner of this giveaway will be chosen at random from all our email newsletter subscribers on 1st August 2016, so if you haven’t already, hurry and sign up for our newsletter before the end of the month if you want it to be you!

Posted on June 11, 2016 by Simon appleby

Gloriously gothic book launch: Bethany W. Pope in Cardiff

Gloriously gothic book launch Bethany W Pope Cardiff

Join us for a night of gothic romance as Bethany W. Pope reads from Masque, her rich and psychological re-telling of Gaston Leroux’s classic, The Phantom of the Opera.

The event is at the new Octavo’s Book Cafe & Wine Bar in Cardif Bay, Wednesday 22 June, 5:00-7:00pm, and is free for all to attend.
Bring your friends, have a glass of something decadent, and listen to the story unfold.

Bethany W. Pope launch Cardiff

Tell us you’ll be there! Click ‘going’ on the Facebook event page or RSVP by email to: [email protected]

About Masque:
Masque is a richly gothic retelling of Gaston Leroux’s phantom of the opera story by debut novelist Bethany W Pope. Centre stage is promising young singer Christine, who, despite being devoted to her art, attracts the attention of both the Phantom (Erik), and rich Parisian theatre owner Raoul.

The intensely ambitious Christine finds herself caught between the twin evils of the Phantom’s murderous pursuit of artistic perfection and Raoul’s ‘romantic’ vision of her as a bourgeois wife. Her own desire to follow her operatic career becomes her guiding light, but none of the three leading characters can control the directions in which their passions lead them, while the beautiful masked skull of the opera house itself looms large over their respective fates. The resulting mix of love, rage, art and murderous intent, is explosive.

Love, lust, adventure, romance, and the monstrous nature of unfulfilled creativity await you here.

Everyone wears a mask. Look beneath it, if you dare.

Posted on June 2, 2016 by Simon appleby

Books for your Summer Break

The warm weather has arrived so here at Seren we’ve been thinking about books for your summer break. Which titles do we recommend stuffing into your suitcase? Read on to find out our top picks.

1. Swimming on Dry Land, Helen Blackhurst
Set in the blistering Australian outback, Blackhurst’s writing is so vivid that even if (like us) you’re experiencing mild Welsh weather, you might start to feel the prickling heat she conjures.
Swimming on Dry Land tells the story of the Harvey family, who move to the fictional mining town of Akarula in outback Australia in search of paradise, and instead find deceit, mystery and superstition. Georgie, the youngest, is missing – and she’s not the first to vanish into the landscape. As the family searches for their lost daughter, their dream-like vision of life in Akarula collapses around them. And as the history of the landscape unfolds, new possibilities and answers to the mysterious disappearances slowly suggest themselves.

2. The Road to Zagora, Richard Collins
After he is diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, Richard Collins decides to see as much of the world as possible while he still can. India, Nepal, Turkey, Morocco, Peru, Equador and even our very own Wales – Collins travels to them all, taking each day as it comes, accompanied by his partner Flic, as well as ‘Mr Parkinson’. Leaving the tourist trails, they visit places of extremes: the Himalayas, rainforests, deserts. The difficulties of rough terrain, altitude, extremes of climate for a person with Collins’ condition are an ongoing strand of his narrative; but although the hardships aren’t ignored, any sentiment or self-pity is denied through Collins’s resolute and independent-mindedness.
The Road to Zagora is dramatic, honest, and at times humerous too. Collins has written a memorable journey around the world, and the self.

3. The Man at the Corner Table, Rosie Shepperd
In these poems the voice is one of urban sophistication; it has a merciless charm that teases and tempts us with sensual evocations of food and place.
Tastes, scents, colours and textures surprise and entice, and there is a winning insistence on detail offered with an irony that blends into satire.
Comedy, grief and loss combine like the distinct yet complimentary flavours in a dish – these poems are exquisite meals, to be devoured amidst surprising intimacies.

4. Foreign Bodies, Candy Neubert
Fresh from the UK and on an idyllic holiday in the Phillippines, Emma thinks she has fallen in love with a place, a person, and pursues the man of her dreams with a colonial zeal. But for all her poetic sensibilities, she seems unaware of the destruction she is capable of leaving in her wake.
A beautifully written first novel, Foreign Bodies explores the spaces between people, and the nature of encounters in romantic idylls on the other side of the world.

6. The Roots of Rock, Peter Finch
From 1950s Cardiff suburbia to modern-day America and beyond, Peter Finch follows the trail of twentieth century popular music. The Roots of Rock: from Cardiff to Mississippi and Back mixes musical autobiography with an exploration of the physical places from which this music comes.
Finch gives us sharp-eyed accounts of gigs from Champion Jack Dupree to the Garth Mountain Boys, muses on the importance of the Dansette record player, ponders why Elvis never came to Wales (except multiply in Porthcawl’s legendary Elvis Festival), visits musical shrines and theme parks, and even recalls his own attempt to start a band. You’ll find all kinds of music here – everyone from Ray Charles to Taylor Swift – and each chapter is accompanied by a multi-track playlist, making this the perfect book for anyone who loves music, history, and culture.

7. A Boat Called Annalise, Lynne Hjelmgaard
Beautifully evocative of life on a sailboat, Lynne Hjelmgaard’s poems trace a journey this much-travelled author took on a sailboat to the Caribbean and back to Europe with her husband.
The couple’s relationship is poised on tensions, beautifully observed, as masculine/ feminine, the need to assert and/or withdraw in the face of the turbulent seascape. The paradise-like destination is reached and later we learn that life goes on, there is illness and loss, and in the final section, the tone becomes movingly elegiac.
Hjelmgaard’s poems are beautifully poised, full of clear-eyed and frequently humorous observations. Her work is full of sentiment without being sentimental. We hope you enjoy your trip on A Boat Called Annalise.

We hope you like our summer selections. And if you’re struggling to fit all the books that have caught your eye into your suitcase, why not explore our range of eBooks? Whether you have a Kindle, a Kobo or any other e-reader, we have a whole host of books you can download instantly. See below for the latest digital additions to our list…

Losing Israel, Jasmine Donahaye
Amazon: £10.00
Kobo: £7.19
In Losing Israel the search for her family’s past and the part her forebears played in the newly created Israel reveals unsettling knowledge about kibbutzim and land clearances in northern Israel. Challenged by this new and unwonted information, Donahaye’s notion of history and her understanding of Israel, of her grandparents and of her identity is completely transformed.

The Art of Falling, Kim Moore
Amazon: £9.48
Kobo: £7.19
“The poems of The Art of Falling are fearless. There are more good poems filling Kim Moore’s first collection than many poets will produce in a lifetime.” – Alison Brackenbury
In this startling debut, Kim Moore writes with a compelling directness and power about her life and the lives of others.

The World, the Lizard and Me, Gil Courtemanche
Amazon: £9.48
Kobo: £7.19
A novel of testament to the children caught up in the civil wars of Central Africa, The World, the Lizard and Me follows criminal invetigator Claude Tremblay as he pursues a warlord charged with creating child soldiers in the Congo.

Want to see more Seren eBooks? See our full eBook list on Kobo or search by title on Amazon.

Posted on May 17, 2016 by Simon appleby

Win a signed and numbered copy of Ritual, 1969

win a copy of ritual, 1969 by jo mazelis

Enter our giveaway to win a signed and numbered copy of Ritual, 1969, the haunting new collection of short stories by Jo Mazelis!

To enter, simply sign up to the Seren newsletter before 1st June:
https://www.serenbooks.com/newsletter/signup

Ritual, 1969 is a darkly gothic collection of stories by Jerwood Prize-winner Jo Mazelis that explores the unsettling borderland between reality and the supernatural. Ranging from early twentieth-century France to 1960s South Wales and contemporary Europe, Jo Mazelis’ singular vision and poetic language creates characters caught up in events and feelings they do not fully understand or control, giving the book its uncanny focus. Not all is as it seems in a world where first impressions may only conceal disguises and false trails – and there’s no going back.

The winner will be chosen at random from all our email newsletter subscribers on 1st June 2016, so if you haven’t already, hurry and sign up for our newsletter before the end of the month if you want it to be you!

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Simon appleby

Dark Mermaids Shortlisted for Cross Sports Book Awards

dark mermaids anne lauppe-dunbar cross sports book awards

The Cross Sports Book Awards today announced their shortlists, and Anne Lauppe-Dunbar’s powerful debut novel Dark Mermaids is on the shortlist for the New Writer of the Year category.

The Cross Sports Book Awards is a major annual promotion for Sports Writing & Publishing; the awards exist to highlight the most outstanding sports books of the previous calendar year.

Dark Mermaids is a shocking story of the horrors of a political system that doped its youngsters to sporting superhero status, and then left them to fend for themselves. Shortlisted for the Impress and Cinnamon First Novel Prize, this East German noir thriller is set in 1990, a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Unhappy West Berlin police officer Sophia is called on to investigate the murder of her childhood friend Kathe; after her beaten body is discovered in Sophia’s local park. Sophia is forced to return to the hometown she fled as a teenager with her enigmatic father Petrus, and Mia – a frightened child who turned up on her doorstep. She must investigate Kathe’s murder and care for a mother she believed abandoned her.

As she reluctantly delves into the sordid Stasi secrets of those she grew up with, Sophie uncovers a web of horrors about her own abusive past as a child-swimming star in the former GDR. But her hunt for the truth has not gone unnoticed by those close to her, people who still have too much to hide.

You can see the full New Writer of the Year shortlist, as well as the other category shortlists, on the Cross Sports Book Awards website.

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Simon appleby

Spring into a New Series: discover New Stories from the Mabinogion

The sun has started to shine, flowers are blooming, so why not ‘spring’ into a new series?

If you haven’t yet discovered our New Stories from the Mabinogion series, then now is the perfect time. Until 14 April, the first book in the series, White Ravens by Owen Sheers, is only 99p in the Kobo Spring into a New Series sale.

The eleven stories in the Mabinogion come from two medieval Welsh manuscripts, with roots dating back many centuries earlier. They bring us Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and their own view of the Island of Britain. There is enchantment and shapeshifting, conflict, peacemaking, love and betrayal. In this series commissioned by Seren, the old tales are at the heart of the new. Each author reinvents a story in their own way: creating fresh, contemporary tales that speak to us as much of our own world as of events long gone. Based on ‘Branwen, Daughter of Llyr’, White Ravens is a haunting novella from an acclaimed writer.

“a gripping contemporary story… brilliantly absorbs the magical elements of the original” The Guardian

So what are you waiting for? If you have an e-book reader then don’t hesitate – go to the Kobo store and purchase your eBook copy for only 99p. And if you would prefer a paperback, you can find all eleven stories on our website.

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Simon appleby

Enter our poetry books giveaway to win two new collections

We are celebrating the launch of two fantastic new books, Crowd Sensations by Judy Brown and Masculine Happiness by David Foster-Morgan, by giving you the chance to win a copy of each! All you have to do is sign up to our newsletter here before 1st May 2016 and you’ll be entered into the prize draw.

Read below to find out more about the book launch as well as the books themselves…

Join Judy Brown and David Foster-Morgan at The Yorkshire Grey for a dual poetry book launch, celebrating the release of both Judy’s Crowd Sensations and David’s Masculine Happiness. Both poets will be reading from their new collections, and there will be opportunities to ask questions and request signed copies of the books. The event will take place between 19:00 and 21:00 on Tuesday 19th April, 2016 at The Yorkshire Grey in London. You can find more details on our website.

Crowd Sensations, Judy Brown
Poet Judy Brown’s new collection is a worthy follow-up to her Forward Prize-nominated debut, Loudness. Brown is a poet of dazzling contrasts, of thoughtful paradox, intimate confidences and precise evocations.
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Masculine Happiness, David Foster-Morgan
The provocative debut poetry collection this Cardiff-based poet. Born and based in Wales, Foster-Morgan has long been a presence in the poetry world, having had poems published widely in magazines and with appearances at workshops, festivals, and events.
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One lucky winner will be chosen at random from all our subscribers on 1st May 2016, so if you would like a copy of each of these lovely poetry collections in your bookcase then hurry and sign up for our newsletter before the end of the month.

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