Julia Darling

Crocodile Soup

John Seymour

Chaz Brenchley

Sean O'Brien

Chrissie Glazebrook

Margaret Wilkinson

Kevin Cadwallender

Linda France

The Book of Newcastle

Gert Hardcastle is thirty-something and unlucky in love. But now she thinks she s found the one in enigmatic Eva, who works in the museum cafeteria where Gert catalogues Egyptian relics. Hoping to lay the ghosts of her own past to rest, Gert is trying to understand her difficult childhood: her relationship with her obsessive twin, Frank; her father who vanished to Africa to run a crocodile farm; and her vain, neglectful mother who still sends her begging letters. Can Gert somehow come to terms with her traumatic upbringing and make a new life with Eva? Or will she once again be unlucky?

It is late December and fifteen - year - old Caris is trying to hang an angel on a Christmas tree in a terraced house in Newcastle - upon - Tyne. She is interrupted by the arrival of the police who have come to announce that her mother, Louise, has been caught stealing a shoe in a department store in town. Caris's father, Mac, a taxi driver, struggles to keep the family together as Christmas looks set for disaster, especially when Louise's drunken, dishevelled mother moves in. While Mac finds solace talking to his passengers, Caris is drawn into the intriguing darkness of the nearby vale where she meets George, an unpredictable boy form a very different sort of family. Their relationship leads her away form school and what she has know, into a new an unnerving world.

The Taxi Driver's Daughter

Cynthia Fuller

When we're ill we're forced to recognize that we've become another person, frail and mortal. The adjustment is painful. This anthology of poems supplies images and emotions that help us to accept our inexpressible vulnerability.

The Poetry Cure

Jessica Andrews

J. A. Mensah

Crista Ermiya

Angela Readman

Glynis Reed

Degna Stone

The original Northern Powerhouse, Newcastle upon Tyne has witnessed countless transformations over the last century or so, from its industrial heyday, when Tyneside engineering and innovation led the world, through decades of post-industrial decline, and underinvestment, to its more recent reinvention as a cultural destination for the North. The ten short stories gathered here all feature characters in search of something, a new reality, a space, perhaps, in which to rediscover themselves: from the call-centre worker imagining herself far away from the claustrophobic realities of her day job, to the woman coming to terms with an ex-lover who’s moved on all too quickly, to the man trying to outrun his mother’s death on Town Moor. The Book of Newcastle brings together some of the city’s most renowned literary talents, along with exciting new voices, proving that while Newcastle continues to feel the effects of its lost industrial past, it is also a city striving for a future that brims with promise.

Bloodlines

Julia Darling

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