In 1912, Stefan Haase, a Rhodes scholar from Germany studying Theology at Oxford, forms a friendship with fellow student James Millward. Stefan soon meets James’ sister Beth, a young, feisty and agnostic suffragist, and the two are drawn to each other despite their spiritual and intellectual differences.
   The three are separated by the war ­– James in Flanders as an officer in the trenches, Stefan as pastor to a German regiment and Beth as an auxiliary in France. The bonds that they share will be severely tested as each must face the carnage, cost and upheaval
of the war and its aftermath.

David Willington was educated at Clifton College in Bristol and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Classics. He was a schoolmaster for thirty-seven years and in retirement lives in Perthshire. A Journey of Faith is his sixth novel.

ISBN  978 1856398 206 4          210 x 132mm           Paperback           290pp           £14.99

When Franz Xaver Kappus, an aspiring poet and military cadet, wrote to Rainer Maria Rilke for advice in 1903, he could not in his wildest dreams have expected such a voluminous response from the acclaimed German writer. The young poet wasn’t to know that he would serve as a sounding board. Rilke, in his late twenties, had a lot on his mind; not least his estrangement from his wife, the mother of his eighteen-month child; his love-hate engagement with Paris and Auguste Rodin; the beginnings of a novel; and the modernisation of his poetry.

Focusing on this moment of personal and artistic crisis, Augustus Young picks up the thread of Rilke’s life, seeking to weave a patchwork portrait of the enigmatic poet and his intimates. Of the latter, most prominent are his long-suffering wife Clara and Lou Andreas-Salomé, a close confidante and ruthless mentor. Utterly committed to creating the conditions he deemed necessary to make poetry, Rilke’s personal life is an analyst’s dream. Building on the foundation of the surprisingly open Letters to a Young Poet, this book is a new and revealing investigation into one of the most misunderstood poets of the Modernist era and how his poems relate to the life.

Augustus Young was born in Cork, Ireland, worked in London as an epidemiologist and now lives in France. A much-published poet, he has also written the widely acclaimed auto- fiction, Light Years (2002), Storytime (2005), The Secret Gloss: A Film Play on the Life and Work of Soren Kierkegaard (2009), The Nicotine Cat and Other People (2009), m.moire (2014), The invalidity of all guarantees (2016), Brazilian Tequila (2017), Heavy Years: inside the head of a health worker, and The Credit, an opera in search of its music (2018).

This outstanding and greatly neglected novel of the war, revolution, civil war and early Bolshevik rule in Russia, first appeared in English in 1930 under the title Quiet Street. At the story's centre is a family: Grandfather (an ornithologist), grandmother and granddaughter living in a corner house in Sivtsey Vrazhek and it is through their experiences and those of their circle that we experience the surrounding momentous events. It was not the author's intention to fashion an abstract historical sweep but rather to focus on the experiences of individuals (even some of those from the animal kingdom). For Osorgin, nature is a more powerful force in life than the solipsistic concerns of humankind.

At the heart  of the novel is a portrait of the coming-of-age granddaughter, Tanyusha, and her development as an individual within the surrounding chaos. Written in short chapters, the wealth of the novel is in the vignettes of individuals and incidences. Cumulatively, they affirm life over death and humanity over ideology.

Mikhail Osorgin was born in 1878 into the landed gentry. He studied law at Moscow State University. After participating in the revolution of 1905, Osorgin fled Russia and eventually spent ten years in exile, mostly in Italy, where he earned a living as a journalist. Returning to Russia in 1916, he wrote mainly for socialist newspapers but was arrested by the Cheka in 1919. Although released through international pressure,  in 1922 he was expelled by Lenin from Russia. He died in exile in France in 1942.

                                                                                             ISBN  978 185398 196 8          200 x 140mm           Paperback         316pp          £18.99

Another Existence by Nikki Bridgman

A passing in the family: death becomes the catalyst . A world is not plunged to chaos if it has always been so. A memory suppressed for so long, always finds impetus; if able could splinter its veneer. Yet, at what cost; trauma induces the craving of beauty, for some other life. Thirty years lived with a mother’s disappearance unexplained. There are yet those who can prevent forgotten dust to rise. Who would believe different, or be able to understand.

   In this powerful London novel, Nikki Bridgman transports the reader into the uncertainty of a disturbed mind; the dark, fragmented world of a schizophrenic victim of ritual abuse whose existence is overwhelmed by her acts to survive in the search for a glimmer of hope. Another Existence, rendered in a brilliant and elliptic style, captures a phantasmagoric world of everyday events and the deepest psychological turmoil.

After a childhood in a quiet region of the Cotswolds, Nikki Bridgman now lives in London. She has worked in fashion, theatre and music, as well as in Group Risk for a FTSE 250 LSE listed company. Another Existence  is her first novel.

The Lion of Canterbury [Published]

by Anthony Frewin

In 1832 a stranger arrived in Canterbury dressed like a Turkish sultan and with seemingly limitless wealth. He claimed to be Sir William Percy Honeywood Courtenay and said that he was the King of Jerusalem, a Prince of Arabia, the Prince of Abyssinia, and King of the Gypsies.

   He entranced many in the city and soon had a sizeable following among the agricultural labourers who saw in his radical politics an answer to their poverty.

   Some five years later after unsuccessfully standing for parliament and being incarcerated in a mental asylum 'Sir William' led the last armed uprising in England that left twenty dead and many seriously wounded at what became known as the Battle of Bossenden.

   Who was 'Sir William' if he was not who he claimed to be? Who indeed? And why?

The Lion of Canterbury is a rollicking tale written with particular sensitivity to the language of the period that brings readers into the heart of the strange story of Sir William Courtenay.

ANTHONY FREWIN was an assistant to the film director Stanley Kubrick for nearly thirty years. He has written more than a dozen books, including  an annotated bibliography of books that could almost exist but don’t, The Secret Library of George Armoulian and The Count of Comedy. He also has written a number of screenplays including Colour Me Kubrick starring John Malkovich, and (with Sean Ellis) 2016's Anthropid detailing the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in 1942.

                                                                                      April - Fiction   Paperback 224pp   ISBN 9781853981937   £12.99 in the U.K. only

The Chance Less World

of Thomas Bayes by Andrew Sinclair

The Man who Fixed our Terms of Luck, Life and Death

Thomas Bayes (1701-1764) was a philosopher, Presbyterian minister and statistician who gained renown posthumously for his theorem from An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances.
   Bayes' theorem changed the way we now assess most events and has a profound influence on the plans and aims of today's governments and businesses. In the past his work stood luck and fortune on their head and they became insurance and statistics. In the future, with the development of artificial intelligence, Bayes' work will become ever more important.
   Andrew Sinclair's The Chance Less World of Thomas Bayes is the first popular guide to Thomas Bayes' life and work and explores the world of man's ability and desire to know what might come in the future.

May - Non-fiction                                               

Paperback 268pp

ISBN 9781853981944

£17.99 in the U.K. only