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- When Mary’s father the fisherman is killed in a storm, Mary uncovers a terrible war between land and sea. To save her town from being swallowed by the waves, Mary must face the wild water that took her father and go on a journey like no other.
- ISBN 9778-1-7385714-0-622ppNature and environmentInside these pages is a text written by Claire Dean, which will take you on an historical, ecological, cartographical and fantastical journey along the River Lune in Lancashire and Cumbria, England.The text sits alongside photographs and a three metre textile (pictured in miniature in the centrefold) handmade from recycled materials by a team of activist stitchers called The Sewing Café Lancaster.
- Translated from the Spanish by Roy Kesey Published 2020 Paperback 216 pages ISBN 978-1641291309
- Sale!Winner of the Best Translated Book Award in 2011.201ppIn the deep winter snows of a Swedish hamlet, a strange young woman fakes a break-in at the house of an elderly artist in order to persuade her that she needs companionship.'The True Deceiver is a quiet masterpiece...the novel is haunting, complex and mysterious' The Age, Melbourne'The True Deceiver glitters with the kind of sharpness that might just cut you... It is one of Jansson's most deceptively quiet, most astonishing compositions' Ali Smith
- Sale!Blake Morrison’s A Discoverie of Witches is a limited edition green clothbound hardcover book with just one hundred copies produced.First edition, first printing of the standard trade edition.
- Buy all three pamphlets for £18 (or £7 each). These pamphlets were selected for publication from the 2024 Litfest/Wayleave Pamphlet competition judged by Ian Duhig and Jane Routh.Lilith Speaks by Clare ProcterStill Life by Rebecca BilkauSubcutaneous by Maria Isakova-Bennett
24pp
In these confident and accomplished poems, Clare Proctor explores and gives voice to the experiences of women, particularly those constrained by their context, whether historical, or through art, myth or individual circumstance. They move from the particular to the more general in considering ideas around the body, death, motherhood and family.
“This is a compelling pamphlet that delves into the mythic and the personal, weaving together themes of womanhood, power and rebellion. There is a delicious and sly darkness to some of these poems as we meet witches who keep penises as pets, and women who insist on not behaving as expected. Clare Proctor’s poetry has real emotional depth and this pamphlet announces an important addition to the ongoing lyric conversation about the female body and what it means to be a woman.” Kim Moore
Lilith Speaks 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!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!- Translated form the German by Katy Darbishire208pp978-1738536207 The first title in the Granta Magazine Editions series: a work of subtle, perceptive autofiction from one of the most highly regarded writers working in Germany today. In a series of three interconnected stories, Judith Hermann weaves together themes of psychology and friendship, unconventional childhoods, summers on the North German seashore and the act of writing itself. This is a literary narrative reflecting on when life becomes fiction, how dependable memory can be, and how close one's dreams can come to reality. 'Very occasionally a book comes along that feels as if it were written just for me, and this is one of those rare books. All my life's defining concerns, as a writer and a woman, are here, and Hermann conveys and examines them with generosity and honesty and insight. This book stimulated my mind and touched me to the core' Claire-Louise Bennett, author of Pond and Checkout 19
- WINNER OF THE 2023 JAMES CROPPER WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITINGThe Flow is a book about water, and, like water, it meanders, cascades and percolates through many lives, landscapes and stories. From West Country torrents to Levels and Fens, rocky Welsh canyons, the salmon highways of Scotland and the chalk rivers of the Yorkshire Wolds, Amy-Jane follows springs, streams and rivers to explore tributary themes of wildness and wonder, loss and healing, mythology and history, cyclicity and transformation.
- Sale!Edited by Jo Shapcott & Matthew Sweet"Everyone who inhabits our strange times will want to read it!" - The Guardian"An important... original anthology" - Ruth Padel, The IndependentSpecial Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher’s RRP
- Sale!Looking Good is Carole Coates second collection. Her first, The Goodbye Edition was published in 2005 and one of it's poems is featured in The Forward Book of Poetry, 2006. Carol Coates lives in Lancaster.Special Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher’s RRP
- Sale!Described by Anne Stevenson in Poetry Review as " a major contribution to post-war literature"Awards: Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2004"A Brilliantly virtuosic collection of deeply felt poems” - Douglas DunnSpecial Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher's RRP
- Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith160ppAs cryptic and compelling as a fever dream... Bae Suah is one of the most unique and adroit literary voices working today' Sharlene TeoFinishing her last shift at Seoul's only audio theatre for the blind, Kim Ayami heads into the night with her former boss, searching for a missing friend. The following day, she looks after a visiting poet, a man who is not as he seems. Unfolding over a night and a day in the sweltering summer heat, their world's order gives way to chaos, the edges of reality start to fray, and the past intrudes on the present in increasingly disorientating ways.Untold Night and Day is a hallucinatory feat of storytelling from one of the most radical voices in contemporary Korean literature. '[A] highly original novel, full of unsolved mysteries, repeated motifs and startling prose… Remarkably fresh… Exhilarating… Once I finished it, much of it slipped into my unconscious. All that remains is a sense of Bae's boundless yet precise imagination' Luiza Saum, Daily TelegraphA metaphysical detective story, Untold Night and Day...draws on ideas from Korean shamanism...to venture in style and ambition far from the conventions of mystery narratives...Storylines echo one another and are braided into multilayered fictional universe with extraordinary skill… Bae’s novel complicates the boundaries between self and other reality and make-believe, night and day' Sarah Shin, Observer'Bae Suah is one of Korea’s most radical contemporary writers… Untold Night and Day is a hallucinatory novel propelled by the logic of dreams… Bae masterfully layers [her] themes into an almost hidden code beneath the novel’s meditative surface' Jay G Ying, GuardianBae Suah’s disturbing, beautifully controlled novel Untold Night and Day is a book of doubles, shadows and parallel worlds... a slim yet labyrinthine twist on a “choose your own adventure” story that disarms even as it disorients' Catherine Taylor, Financial Times
- Translated from the French by Robin Buss272pp The Plague is Albert Camus's world-renowned fable of fear and courage The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr Rieux, resist the terror.An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, The Plague is in part an allegory of France's suffering under the Nazi occupation, and a story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence.'A matchless fable of fear, courage and cowardice' Independent'Magnificent' The Times
- Across the planet, the futures of young people hang in the balance as they face the harsh realities of the environmental crisis. Isn't it time we made their voices heard?The Children of the Anthropocene, by conservationist and activist Bella Lack, chronicles the lives of the diverse young people on the frontlines of the environmental crisis around the world, amplifying the voices of those living at the heart of the crisis.
- 'Williffe Cunliam' was the pen name of the Burnley blacksmith and poet, William Cunliffe (1833-94). During his brief but productive poetic career Cunliffe published fifty-four poems in his local newspaper, the Burnley Free Press and General Advertiser (which became the Burnley Gazette) between 1863 and 1866. The poems lay in the holdings of Burnley Central Library for 150 years, before they were recovered during research for the AHRC-funded Poetry of the Lancashire Cotton Famine project in 2015. The project, led by the University of Exeter's Professor Simon Rennie, published a few of these poems amongst 398 pieces relating to the Lancashire Cotton Famine on a publicly accessible database, but Cunliffe's wider work is remarkably varied in its topics and styles, with dialect and standard English works providing a unique insight into working-class northern English culture in the 1860s.'Rennie pointed to one poet in particular: the wool sorter Williffe Cunliam, who wrote six of the poems uncovered to date. “I think he was a very good poet – a great poet,” said Rennie. “We don’t have enough of his work to say he was a literary star, but he was fantastic; we’ve found very high-quality work"' Alison Flood, Guardian
- After lockdowns have swept calendars clear, leaf-fall, early sunrise and gales are Jane Routh’s measures of time, as she goes about her tasks in the hill pasture and woodlands where she has the luck to live.With sharp, lyrical description and down-to earth understanding, her poems consider the flora and fauna around her, formative moments and lifespans – as well as the dead who won’t be forgotten. Her elegant and informed writing conveys a sense of belonging in a particular place and the care for its future, carrying a universal resonance.
24pp
In spare and delicately-balanced language Maria Isakova-Bennett's poems about family, loss and the effects of being silenced address her grandfather's enforced migration to England, the secrecy he lived with and its effects on subsequent generations.
“Maria Isakova-Bennett is a truly remarkable poet — she understands how in discovering the past, we discover ourselves. No matter the subject, her poetry is always a celebration of the living world. This breathtaking sequence weaves history, memory and imagination with such skill and precision that the past is given presence.” John Glenday
Subcutaneous 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!- 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.
- 304pp'Unnerving, absorbing . . . Laurie is a miraculous creation . . . Piercingly human and darkly funny' Sunday TimesOne ordinary morning, Laurie's husband disappears, leaving behind his phone and wallet. For weeks she tells no one, carrying on her cleaning job at the university, visiting her tricky, dementia-suffering father and holing up in her high-rise flat with a bottle to hand. When she finally reports him as missing, the police are suspicious. What took her so long?Laurie can't fully explain her behaviour even to herself, or the strange presence she senses in the flat. Only when she looks back on the ensuing wreckage does she begin to understand, and see how she might repair the damage.
- 304pp'Dark, compelling, beautifully written' Andrew Michael HurleyIn this eerie, atmospheric and mysterious tale, a woman returns to the house in Morecambe Bay where she grew up in the 1960s to find it falling apart, undermined by the roots of two huge sycamores. She is unaware that she has awoken the spirits of her parents, Jack and Nettie Clifford, who watch anxiously as their daughter Annette is overwhelmed by the state of the house and realise too late how far they neglected her as a child.As their memories come alive, the story unfolds of a crucial summer when Annette was 8 and Nettie became too ill to run their boarding house. The lodgers have to go - all except the newly arrived butcher's apprentice, because he seems to have miraculous healing powers and is Jack and Nettie's last, desperate hope.'A disturbing, precisely rendered tale of charisma, misplaced faith and transgenerational trauma, with a touch of the supernatural . . . [it] brings to mind the claustrophobic, suburban world of Dennis Potter's great play Brimstone and Treacle' Alex Clark, Spectator"This marvellous novel is both haunted and haunting, as Ashworth expertly blurs the boundaries between the past and the present, the homely and the uncanny, the quick and the dead. Touching on profound questions of myth, mortality and redemption, it is both sinister and beautiful - and ultimately tender' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent
- Sale!304ppAdam has found something incredible in a rubbish dump in London.A mysterious, mythical, magical animal. A Tyger. And the tyger is in danger.
- Sale!320ppPacked with mystery, adventure and laughs, Noah's Gold is the exciting novel from the bestselling, multi-award-winning author of Millions and Cosmic, Frank Cottrell-Boyce. Fully illustrated in black and white throughout by Steven Lenton, this is perfect for readers of 9+.
- Sale!"Sue Gee's stories are remarkable for their precision and economy - this is a lovely collection" - Penelope Lively" A consummate artist" - Shena Mackay"Poignant and haunting, immensely readable” - SaltSpecial Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher’s RRP
- Sale!Swallowing Stones is Carole Coates third collection of poetry. Her first, The Goodbye Edition was published in 2005 and one of it's poems is featured in The Forward Book of Poetry, 2006. Carol Coates lives in Lancaster.Special Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher’s RRP
- Sale!224ppTranslated by Polly Barton, Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph, Aiko Masubuchi, and Helen O’HoranNamed a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Thrillist, The Millions, Frieze, and Metropolis JapanThe first English-language publication of the work of Izumi Suzuki, a legend of Japanese science fiction and a countercultural icon.
- Sale!An anthology of stories edited by Geoff Ryman. Collaborating between leading scientists and literary authors, this unique experiment creates a new strain of science fiction by extending the repertoire of the genre beyond the common places of space travel, time travel, and artificial intelligence. Through the use of diverse, credible, and contemporary research areas - from Planck length to plankton and virtual conversations between Wittgenstein and Turing to future civilizations torn asunder by differences over particle physics - these stories reinstate the furnace of scientific endeavour. Text taken from Fantastic Fiction."'Highly engaging and fascinating... this thought-provoking collection reminded me why I used to like science fiction so much... Eventually, one hopes, science fiction will regain its rightful place - as once again stranger than science.'” - The GuardianSpecial Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher's RRP
- The new novel from the twice Booker Prize-nominated Sarah Hall. An electrifying novel of passion, connection and transformation from "a writer of show-stopping genius" (The Guardian)''In many ways ... Burntcoat feels like a culmination of Hall’s work and, in my opinion, it is her finest yet" - Ruth Gilligan, The Independent"You were the last one here before I closed the door of Burntcoat, before we all shut our doors. In the bedroom above her immense studio at Burntcoat, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness is making her final preparations. The symptoms are well known: her life will draw to an end in the coming days. Downstairs, the studio is a crucible glowing with memories and desire. It was here, when the first lockdown came, that she brought Halit. The lover she barely knew. A presence from another culture. A doorway into a new and feverish world." (Excerpt)"Burntcoat is a book full of wisdom about the crisis of our times" - Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times"Burntcoat hovers somewhere between the literal truth and what, during the worst moments of the pandemic, many of us feared the truth might be" - Claire Allfree, The Times
- Farley’s great poetic gift is his ability to switch between the local and the universal, the present and the historical past, with the most apparently effortless of gear changes; he brings to our immediate attention things previously hidden – whether out of sight, in the periphery of our vision, or right under our noses. The Dark Film is a profound meditation on time, on the untold stories of our history, and on the act of human beholding – as well as Farley’s most richly entertaining and rewarding collection to date.
- Sale!Jennet’s family all believe they are witches. Other folks think they are, too. But 1612 is a dangerous time to be a witch. When her family are imprisoned and put on trial in Lancaster Castle, Jennet’s evidence will help decide their fate…
- Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann272pp'When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself changed into a monstrous cockroach in his bed.'Metamorphosis, Kafka's masterpiece of unease and black humour, is one of the twentieth century's most influential works of fiction, and is accompanied here by two more classic stories.This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he himself thought worthy of publication. It includes 'Meditation', a collection of his earlier studies; 'The Judgement', written in a single night of frenzied creativity; 'The Stoker', the first chapter of a novel set in America and a fascinating occasional piece, and 'The Aeroplanes at Brescia', Kafka's eyewitness account of an air display in 1909. Together, these stories reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought.
- Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLeanWinner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2004n the final moments of the Spanish Civil War, fifty prominent Nationalist prisoners are executed by firing squad. Among them is the writer and fascist Rafael Sanchez Mazas. As the guns fire, he escapes into the forest, and can hear a search party and their dogs hunting him down. The branches move and he finds himself looking into the eyes of a militiaman, and faces death for the second time that day.But the unknown soldier simply turns and walks away. Sanchez Mazas becomes a national hero and the soldier disappears into history. As Cercas sifts the evidence to establish what happened, he realises that the true hero may not be Sanchez Mazas at all, but the soldier who chose not to shoot him. Who was he? Why did he spare him? And might he still be alive?'This is a masterly parable of political violence, of suffering, but also, and decisevely, of the strange logic of compassion and healing . . . should become a classic' George Steiner'With irresistible directness and delicacy, Javier Cercas engages in a quick-witted, tender quest for truth and the possibility of reconciliation in history, in our everyday lives - which happens to be the theme of most great European fiction . . . a marvellous novel' Susan Sontag'He has succeeded, with one perfectly crafted book, in single-handedly redeeming the epic genre' Alberto Manuel
- Winner of the Costa Book Award for Best First Novel (2015)The British Book Awards Book of the Year 2016360ppThe Loney recounts the Easter of 1976 when a group of Catholic pilgrims from London journey to the wilds of Lancashire for a retreat, during which they hope to cure the narrator's mute, mentally disabled brother, Hanny.
- Shortlisted for the Poetry Prize for First Collection from the Seamus Heaney Centre for PoetryMalika Booker's Pepper Seed is map and compass to a world of distinct yet interconnected landscapes. At home in a number of locales (Brooklyn, Brixton, Trinidad, Guyana, and Grenada) Booker trains a brave eye on the unspeakable and the unspoken. By turns bearing witness, to the interior lives of the characters that people her poems, and laying herself bare, conjuring an immediate and complex vision of the miraculous ordinary.
- Sale!Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and the Dublin Literary Award268ppNobody can leave an island. An island is a cosmos in a nutshell, where the stars slumber in the grass beneath the snow. But occasionally someone tries . . .Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw'Easily among the best books I have ever read' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times'A beautifully crafted novel . . . Quite simply a brilliant piece of work' Charlie Connolly, New European'A blunt, brilliant book' Tom Graham, Financial Times
- 304ppWINNER OF 2024 LAKELAND BOOK OF THE YEAR LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING'It raises the standard of nature writing. This is both radical manifesto and activism in book form' Sally Huband, author of Sea Bean'Long before I knew I was sick, I knew I was breakable . . .'After years of unexplained health problems, Polly Atkin's understanding of her body had become fluid and disjointed. When she was finally diagnosed with two chronic conditions in her thirties, she began to piece together her own history: the fractures and dislocations, the exhaustion and medical disregard.A searing blend of memoir, nature writing and pathography, Some of Us Just Fall traces a remarkable journey through illness. From misdiagnoses to wild swimming in the Lake District, Polly examines her genetic inheritance, her place in the natural world and her future in her body.'Polly Atkin, who had long suffered ill health, was diagnosed with two chronic conditions in her thirties. Some of Us Just Fall is her timely, lyrical and insightful exploration of the stories we tell about our bodies and how they influence our lives and sense of belonging. It made me yearn to revisit the Lake District and Grasmere, where Atkin lives, because her descriptions of her daily walks and swims were so beautiful. Perfect for fans of Sinéad Gleeson, Amy Liptrot and Olivia Laing' Jack Clark, The Times
- The Mizzy encapsulates one of poetry’s most capacious and eclectic imaginations. As usual Farley’s new collection is impossible to summarize in terms of theme, as his interests are too various: there’s an air of ‘the innocence of childhood’ being viewed through the corrective lens of worldly middle age, though, and also of mid-life, its creeping self-consciousness and decrepitude, and the distortions of perception that attend it; confusing encounters with tech, modernity and its accelerated rate of change; satirical excursions critiquing the way business and digital communications have debased language.
- Sale!320ppHeart-achingly funny, touching and brilliantly clever, Millions is a fantastic adventure about two boys, one miracle and a million choices.'Pure gold' Scotsman
- ISBN: 9781842993484 Genre: Fiction Publisher: Barrington Stoke
- ISBN: 0954791312Genre: FictionPublisher: Tindal Street Press
- ISBN: 0701162511Genre: PoetryPublisher: Chatto and Windus
- This collection of poems springs from an awareness of how landscape and its history shape the way we live in it. The author's maps and charts release islands and seascapes, fells and fens, ancestors, boatbuilders, fruit growers and the odd saint. Her poems offer a different kind of mapmaking, making a different kind of sense.
- ISBN: 9781902382784Genre: Childrens PoetryPublisher: Smith/ Doorstop Books
- ISBN: 9780571264919Genre: PoetryPublisher: Faber
Combining poems of historical depth, human fascination, and personal sensitivity with a willingness to explore the possibilities of poetic form and technique, this compilation produces diverse formal arrangements from Arabic, English, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, and Welsh poetry. As it aims to assimilate aspects of these traditions with the poet’s own voice, this collection pays homage to the lives and works of Primo Levi, Paul Celan, Keith Douglas, Alun Lewis, and Edward Thomas. Intimate and personal subjects are also gracefully explored, including a traumatic experience of spinal injury and disability. - Sale!Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022240pp'An artfully plotted tale about race, privilege and guilt... careful reading proves richly rewarding' Lucy Poescu, The Observer'A compelling exploration of the fraught reality of race relations in Brazil ... there is much that English-speaking readers stand to gain from the considered, quiet fury of Paulo Scott's novel, not least the expansion of and challenge to modern-day discourses on race.' Laura Garmeson, Times Literary Supplement
