- Tom and Mot are best friends. On their birthday, Tom gives Mot a feather – but could it be a feather from the most spectacular bird in the world? Mot gives Tom a marble – or is it the smallest planet in the universe?Tom would like to give a whale, a dolphin, a sea monster, an elephant, while Mot would give rivers, mountains, forests and even the sun!But after a joyful day playing together, what is the best present of all? This beautiful story of imagination and friendship is perfect for sharing.
- Peggy and her dog Beau are inseparable: the only thing that can ever come between them is war. Peggy is evacuated to the safety of the coast, but Beau is left behind in the city. He becomes the most extraordinary and unlikely of war heroes, searching the streets after the bombs fall for survivors. Then disaster strikes when Peggy's parents are killed, leaving her and Beau alone, hundreds of miles apart. But Beau has a plan to reunite them...
- Winner of the British Book Award 2022 for Children's Fiction Book of the Year.Winner of the Books Are My Bag Readers Award for Children’s FictionThe Times Children's Book of the Year Litfest Big Read 20251941. War is raging. And Joseph has been sent to live in the city, where bombers rule the skies. There, he will live with Mrs F, a gruff woman with no fondness for children. Her only loves are the rundown zoo she owns and its mighty silverback gorilla, Adonis.
- September 1939. The world is on the brink of war. As his dad marches off to fight, Noah makes him a promise, to keep their beloved family dog safe. When the government advises people to have their pets put down in readiness for the chaos of war, Noah and his two best friends go on the run to save his dog and as many animals as they can...
- FINALIST FOR THE US NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 2023 FOR NONFICTIONAziz Shehadeh was many things: lawyer, activist, and political detainee, he was also the father of bestselling author and activist Raja. In this new and searingly personal memoir, Raja Shehadeh unpicks the snags and complexities of their relationship.This is not only the story of the battle against the various oppressors of the Palestinians, but a moving portrait of a particular father and son relationship.
- A TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024When the state of Israel was formed in 1948, it precipitated the Nakba or 'disaster': the displacement of the Palestine nation, creating fracture-lines which continue to erupt in violent and tragic ways today.In graceful, devastatingly observed prose, this is a fresh perspective in a time of great need.
- In Going Home, Orwell Prize winning author Raja Shehadeh travels Ramallah and records the changing face of the city. Walking along the streets he grew up in, he tells the stories of the people, the relationships, the houses, and the businesses that were and now are cornerstones of the city and his community.This is perhaps Raja Shehadeh's most painfully visceral book.
- Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2008Over two decades of turmoil and change in the Middle East, steered via the history-soaked landscape of Palestine.When Raja Shehadeh first started hill walking in Palestine, in the late 1970s, he was not aware that he was travelling through a vanishing landscape. These hills would have seemed familiar to Christ, until the day concrete was poured over the flora and irreversible changes were brought about by those who claim a superior love of the land.
- Forgotten is a search for hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine - now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories - and what they might tell us about the land and the people who live on our small slip of earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.In elegiac, elegant prose, Shehadeh and Johnson grapple not only with questions of Israeli resistance to acknowledging the Nakba - the 1948 catastrophe for Palestinians - but also with the complicated history of Palestinian commemoration today.
24pp
With their idiomatic and conversational voice, Rebecca Bilkau's poems on mortality and grief look the inevitable in the eye and manage a celebration of life even as it accommodates death. Her language is lively and engaging as she considers loss, retrieval, survival and simple speculation with compassion, wit and a grounded wisdom.
'In this sharply-focused sequence of vignettes, Death is omnipresent, in all its guises, from respectful guest to startling intruder. Consequently, this is a collection that reaches out its hand to loss, sadness, anger, and acceptance. Ultimately, though, what it eloquently reminds us, is that the Dance of Death is also the Dance of Life' Oz HardwickStill Life is one of three pamphlets selected for publication from the 2024 Litfest/Wayleave Pamphlet Competition, judged by Ian Duhig and Jane Routh.Buy all three Litfest/Wayleave publications for just £18 in this three book bundle!- The life, death and afterlife of one of the true icons of extinction, the Great Auk.The great auk was a flightless, goose-sized bird superbly adapted for life at sea. Fat, flush with feathers and easy to capture, the birds were in trouble whenever sailors visited their once-remote breeding colonies. Places like Funk Island, off north-east Newfoundland, became scenes of unimaginable slaughter, with birds killed in their millions. By 1800 the auks of Funk Island were gone. A scramble by private collectors for specimens of the final few birds then began, a bloody, unthinking destruction of one of the world's most extraordinary species.
- Welcome to Curdle Creek. We're dying to make you feel at home.Osira, a forty-five-year-old widow, is an obedient follower of the strict conventions of Curdle Creek, an all-Black town in rural America governed by a tradition of ominous rituals designed to keep the residents safe.Curdle Creek has one particularly strict policy: one in, one out. And one day, it is Osira's turn.'Tautly written, utterly gripping, Yvonne Battle-Felton's novel invites the reader into a world of mystery and mythology' Carolyn Ferrell
- Shortlisted for the The Jhalak Prize 2020Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist 2019The last place Spring wants to be is in the rundown, coloured section of a hospital surrounded by the groans of sick people and the ghost of her dead sister. But as her son Edward lays dying, she has no other choice. There're whispers that Edward drove a streetcar into a shop window. Some people think it was an accident, others claim that it was his fault, the police are certain that he was part of a darker agenda. Is he guilty? Can they find the truth?
- Presenting the best poems from the nationwide Places of Poetry project, selected from over 7,500 entriesPoetry lives in the veins of Britain, its farms and moors, its motorways and waterways, highlands and beaches.This anthology brings together time-honoured classics with some of the best new writing collected across the nation, from great monuments to forgotten byways.
Litfest strives to encourage the enjoyment of and participation in reading, writing, illustrating and the discussion of ideas by placing them at the heart of Lancashire’s culture.
Image credits: Johnny Bean and Ginny Koppenhol Photography
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