A list of books published by Stroud dwelling authors, writers and poets featuring 25 titles covering everything from thrillers, food, comedy, biographies, poetry, romance, history, music and more…
SHOP LOCAL! Many of the books can be ordered and delivered through our local bookshops! Contact Stroud Bookshop on 01453 756646 or Yellow Lighted Bookshop via their website yellowlightedbookshop.co.uk for further info.
Long live the printed word.
Felicity Everett: The Move
Karen has packed up her life and is making The Move. She’s on her way to the idyllic country cottage which her husband has painstakingly renovated for her. They’re escaping the London bustle and the daily grind. And they’re escaping their past. A fresh start in a beautiful, peaceful village. It will be different here, right? But something is awry. The landscape, breathtaking by day, is eerie by night. The longed-for peace and solitude is stifling. And the house, so artfully put together by her husband, has a strange vibe. Now that Karen is cut off from her old friends and family, she can’t help wondering if her husband has plans of his own, and that history might be repeating itself.
Publisher: Harper Collins
Katie Fforde: A Springtime Affair
Gilly runs her own B&B business from her much-loved family home, which she doesn’t want to part with – at any price. But that's before she meets handsome estate agent Leo, and soon she begins to wonder whether selling up might not be such a bad idea after all. Meanwhile Gilly's daughter Helena has a budding romance of her own. A talented weaver, she's becoming very close to her new landlord, Jago, who's offered to help her at an upcoming craft fair. It’s what friends do, and they are just friends. Aren’t they? With spring in full bloom, Helena and Gilly begin to ask themselves the same question: Might their new loves lead to happily ever after?
Publisher: Cornestone/Penguin
Jonny Fluffypunk: Poundland Rimbaud
Poetry, flash fiction and threadbare philosophy fused together into something that is part memoir, part suburban escapism and part lavishly illustrated cry for help. Includes the transcript of the author’s extensively-toured no-fi solo stand-up spoken word theatre show Man Up, Jonny Fluffypunk: One Man’s Struggle With Late-Onset Responsibility – fully annotated to enable the reader to recreate the thrills of live performance in the comfort of their own bedroom. Or bath.
Publisher: Burning Eye Books
Nell Gifford and Ols Halas: Gifford Circus Cookbook
Giffords Circus has been touring the south of England every summer since 2000. It is a traditional village circus with a uniquely British flavour, blended with extraordinary acts from all over the world. Their restaurant Circus Sauce is headed by chef Ols Halas and seats circus goers in a beautifully decorated tent on site. They offer a new menu every week and use seasonal and local produce from the surrounding area. They serve freshly baked bread, roast chicken and truffle suet pudding, smoked ham hock in pastry, dressed crab with samphire, queen of puddings, mounds of Eton mess, and lots more, with some guests returning several times in the summer to experience a new menu within familiar surroundings. This extraordinary book is a celebration of the food that brings the circus and its audience together, alongside the story of the circus itself and its vibrant community. Full of colour, personalities, stories and images of the circus and its slow journey through the English summer countryside, the book's 100 recipes are nothing but delicious, joyful and hearty.
Publisher: Hardie Grant
Melanie Golding: Little Darlings
A terrifying encounter in the middle of the night leaves Lauren convinced someone is trying to steal her new-born twins. Desperate with fear, she locks herself and her sons in the bathroom until the police arrive. When DS Joanna Harper picks up the list of reported overnight incidents, she expects the usual calls from drunks and wrong numbers. But then a report of an attempted abduction catches her eye. The only thing is that it was flagged as a false alarm just fifteen minutes later. But Harper chooses to investigate anyway. There’s nothing on the CCTV, and yet Lauren claims that the woman is still after her children. No one will listen to Lauren – except Harper. And now Harper must ask herself, is Lauren mad, or does she see something no one else can?
Publisher: Harper Collins
Chris Head: A Director’s Guide to the Art of Stand-up
Stand-up: it's the ultimate solo art form. Yet, behind the scenes, you will increasingly find the shadowy figure of a director. For comics themselves and for those who support them, this is the first book to give the director's perspective on creating and performing stand-up comedy. Drawing on his own experience of directing stand-up alongside speaking to comedians and their directors, Chris Head produces a revealing perspective on the creative process, comic persona, writing stand-up, structuring material and delivering a performance. Directors interviewed include Logan Murray, John Gordillo and Simon McBurney, who between them have directed Eddie Izzard, Michael McIntyre, Milton Jones, Lenny Henry and French & Saunders. With a foreword by BBC arts editor Will Gompertz and contributions from many other interviewees including Oliver Double (author of Getting the Joke), this is the only book that goes all the way from one-liners to theatre via comedy club sets and full-length shows.
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Polly Higgins: Dare To Be Great
This is a book unlike any other. It does not tell you what you must do, it does not set out a guide for the 10 definitive steps to becoming great by next Thursday. Dare To Be Great is both a playful, inspirational conversation and a heartfelt, lived call, daring each one of us and our society as a whole to become truly great. Celebrated Earth lawyer Polly Higgins was a luminary in the environmental justice movement as she worked to Stop Ecocide across the globe. She was a beacon for how to live the brave, bold lives that, at our best, we imagine for ourselves. This book shares insights from her own remarkable journey, inspiring us to recognise and step into a greatness within - that is not about grandiosity but something far more exciting: aligning with our unique purpose in service of a better world.
Publisher: Flint Books
Adam Horovitz: The Soil Never Sleeps
Adam Horovitz, also author of Turning and A Thousand Laurie Lees, was the Pasture-fed Livestock Association's poet in residence for a year, staying on four of their farms over four seasons. The Soil Never Sleeps urges a better understanding of our interactions with the natural world and weaves the farmers' voices into the poems. Following the collection's success, Adam was commissioned to spend time on two Exmoor farms. In this Second Edition, new poems address the farming challenges and beauty of Exmoor over two seasons, culminating with lambing.
Publisher: Palewell Press
Cynthia Jefferies: The Outrageous Fortune of Abel Morgan
1660, England. War is at an end, yet for Christopher Morgan his personal conflict rages on. Haunted by the tragic death of his wife, Christopher is desperate to escape the pain her memory brings, although looking into the eyes of his young son, Abel, he cannot help but be reminded of what he has lost. Over time, father and son develop a strong bond until they are callously torn apart when Abel is snatched by smugglers and sold overseas. From the shores of Constantinople to the coast of Jamaica, time and tide keep them apart. Christopher will sail across oceans to find Abel, never losing faith that one day they will be reunited, and, as the years pass, Abel will learn that fortune favours the brave.
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Alice Jolly: Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile
As the nineteenth century draws towards a close, Mary Ann Sate, an elderly maidservant, sets out to write her truth. She writes of the Valleys that she loves, of the poisonous rivalry between her employer's two sons and of a terrible choice which tore her world apart. Her haunting and poignant story brings to life a period of strife and rapid social change, and evokes the struggles of those who lived in poverty and have been forgotten by history. In this fictional found memoir, novelist Alice Jolly uses the astonishing voice of Mary Ann to recreate history as seen from a woman's perspective and to give joyful, poetic voice to the silenced women of the past.
Publisher: Unbound/Penguin
Bill Jones: The Life and Times of Algernon Swift
Our young and earnest hero, Algernon Swift, returns from his travels abroad and must once more face the trials of life, love and the English language. Back at home, Algernon tries to cope with the exorbitant passion of the exquisite Mavis (a woman with X on her mind) and his elderly uncle, Reverend Hawker, and his exasperating inability to mean one thing at a time. Well-meaning in a world of double meanings, can Algernon avoid becoming another of Mavis's Xs or, at least, plunging into an existential crisis of his own? Amidst perpetual solicitude, can Algernon find both solace and solitude? Punning on subjects as diverse as Henry VIII's wives, Pre-Raphaelite painters, mathematics and fairy tales, we are taken on a hilarious and punishing journey of jokes – both high-brow and homespun – as Algernon attempts to make sense of, and even delight in, the world of word-play.
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Rachel Joyce: The Music Shop
1988. Frank owns a music shop. It is jam-packed with records of every speed, size and genre. Classical, jazz, punk – as long as it’s vinyl he sells it. Day after day Frank finds his customers the music they need. Then into his life walks Ilse Brauchmann. Ilse asks Frank to teach her about music. His instinct is to turn and run. And yet he is drawn to this strangely still, mysterious woman with her pea-green coat and her eyes as black as vinyl. But Ilse is not what she seems. And Frank has old wounds that threaten to re-open and a past he will never leave behind …
Publisher: Black Swan/Penguin
Elisa Lodato: The Necessary Marriage
Jane is sixteen when she first becomes aware of Leonard Campbell. He is a tall, gentle man with full lips and no ring on his left hand. He is her teacher. As Leonard begins to show her attention, giving her novels to read and discuss over dinner, their attraction grows and they fall in love. It is only once married, tied down with two children in 1980s suburbia, that Jane realises she might have settled too early, losing much of herself in the process.Then Marion and Andrew, a couple whose passion frequently tips into violence, move in next door, forcing Jane to confront feelings she didn't know she could have. And when Marion abandons her family, Jane steps in to help with the couple's two boys, setting in motion a series of events, all of which expose the push and pull within every relationship. As desire and loyalty are blurred, it becomes clear that nobody can escape the devastating impact of a family falling apart.
Publisher: Weidenfeld and Nicolson
Robert Louis Kreamer: The Hippie Trail - After Europe, Turn Left
In 1977, a twenty-year-old naive American takes a break from his university studies to undertake an epic nine-thousand-mile overland journey from Munich to Kathmandu. With his camera and his journal, he records and recounts his journey, wanderings and musings with candor and humor through cities and countries that are now inaccessible and too dangerous for the modern backpacking tourist. Like a later-day, international doppelganger version of "On the Road," the search for universal truth and the meaning of life tramps alongside the author while visiting places like Beirut, Damascus, Tehran and Kabul with a casual nonchalance, and revealing a seemingly lost era of more freedom, openness, tolerance, and promise.
Publisher: Fonthill Media
Ian McEwan: Machines Like Me
Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. With Miranda’s assistance, he co-designs Adam’s personality. This near-perfect human is beautiful, strong and clever – and soon a love triangle forms, which leads Charlie, Miranda and Adam to a profound moral dilemma. Can you design the perfect partner? What makes us human? Our outward deeds or our inner lives? Provocative and moving, Machines Like Me explores whether a machine can ever truly understand the human heart.
Publisher: Vintage/Penguin
Elvie McGonagall: Viva Loch Lomond!
Viva Loch Lomond! is the first full length collection of poems published by the stand-up poet, comedian and broadcaster Elvis McGonagall. It features pieces from his hit Edinburgh Fringe Festival shows One Man and His Doggerel and Countrybile together with a number of greatest hits, B-sides and previously unpublished gems. Deftly witty, satirical but not afraid to be plain daft, Elvis McGonagall's work takes aim at our septic isle of zero-hours contracts, food banks and Kirsty Allsopp cup-cakery and beyond. From Scottish independence to the "war on terror" via turbo-capitalist greed, from Blair and Bush to Dave and Boris via the death of Thatcher, from William Wallace's taste for cheese to the Queen's love of gangsta rap, Elvis kicks against the pricks and the injustices inherent in austerity Britain but still finds time to wax lyrical about the joys of whisky, Greek islands and the godforsaken rural idyll where he currently abides. His tightly written quick-fire verse, shot through with his customary moral umbrage and rhetorical power, is here annotated with his own irreverent explanatory notes highlighting the workings of his befuddled mind as he scribbled these poems from the dubious comfort of his revolting armchair at the Graceland Caravan Park.
Publisher: Burning Eye Books
Nikki Owen: Subject 375
The first installment in the Project Trilogy. Plastic surgeon Dr Maria Martinez has Asperger’s. Convicted of killing a priest, she is alone, in prison and has no memory of the murder. DNA evidence places Maria at the scene of the crime, yet she claims she’s innocent. Then she starts to remember…A strange room. Strange people. Being watched.As Maria gets closer to the truth she is drawn into a web of international intrigue and must fight not only to clear her name but to remain alive.
Publisher: Harper Collins
Hannah Persaud: The Codes of Love
Ryan and Emily appear to have it all, successful jobs, a beautiful house and the secret to a happy marriage. A secret that involves certain ‘rules’. Beneath the surface trouble is brewing in the shape of Ada. Whimsical, free spirted and beholden to no-one, she represents the freedom Emily’s been striving for, and the escape that Ryan didn’t know he wanted. As they are separately, and secretly, drawn to her, things start to unravel. The ‘rules’ are still the rules, to be taken seriously, not to be broken….This is a wonderfully compelling portrait of a marriage by a striking new talent.
Publisher: Muswell Press
Rosie Price: What Red Was
Throughout their four years at university, Kate and Max are inseparable. For him, she breaks her solitude; for her, he leaves his busy circles behind. But loving Max means knowing his family, the wealthy Rippons, all generosity, social ease and quiet repression. Theirs is not Kate’s world. At their London home, just after graduation, her life is shattered apart in a bedroom while a party goes on downstairs. What Red Was explores the effects of trauma on mind and body, the tyrannies of memory, the sacrifices involved in staying silent, the courage of a young woman in speaking out. And when Kate does, this question: whose story is it now?
Publisher: Harvill Secker/Penguin
Kate Riordan: The Stranger
Cornwall, 1940. In the hushed hours of deepest night a young woman is found washed up on the rocks. Was it a tragic accident? Or should the residents of Penhallow have been more careful about whom they invited in? In the midst of war three women arrive seeking safety at Penhallow Hall. Each is looking to escape her past. But one of them is not there by choice. As the threat of invasion mounts and the nightly blackouts feel longer and longer, tensions between the close-knit residents rise until dark secrets start to surface. And no one can predict what their neighbour is capable of…In a house full of strangers, who do you trust?
Publisher: Penguin
Mandy Robotham:The Secret Messenger
Venice, 1943. The world is at war, and Stella Jilani is leading a double life. By day she works in the lion’s den as a typist for the Reich; by night, she risks her life as a messenger for the Italian resistance. Against all odds, Stella must impart Nazi secrets, smuggle essential supplies and produce an underground newspaper on her beloved typewriter. But when German commander General Breugal becomes suspicious, it seems he will stop at nothing to find the mole, and Stella knows her future could be in jeopardy. London, 2017. Years later, Luisa Belmont finds a mysterious old typewriter in her attic. Determined to find out who it belonged to, Luisa delves into the past and uncovers a story of fierce love, unimaginable sacrifice and, ultimately, the worst kind of betrayal…
Publisher: Avon Books
Katri Skala: A Perfect Mother
A bracing, hypnotic story of mid-life crisis about the complexities of love, relationship and legacy. During a visit to Trieste in Northern Italy to research his long lost great-grandfather, Jacob meets Charlotte and Jane, and the three are forced to confront their individual and shared histories. Their sense of themselves is challenged and they must piece together a future none of them saw coming.
Publisher: Hikari Press
Stroud Short Stories vol.2
Declared by the Cheltenham Literature Festival to be “possibly the best short story event in the South West”, Stroud Short Stories’ reputation is based on the quality of the stories read at its events. This, the second Stroud Short Stories anthology, covers the period from November 2015 to May 2018. That’s six events and nearly 60 stories written and read by the cream of Gloucestershire’s authors – some professional, some amateur – but all inspired by the challenge of creating an exciting and inspirational evening of short stories.Stroud Short Stories organiser John Holland has edited an anthology of stories in a diverse range of styles and with an extraordinary array of themes, which will in turn amuse, enchant and challenge the reader.
Publisher: Stroud Short Stories
This Is Not A Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook
It's time. This is our last chance to do anything about the global climate and ecological emergency. Our last chance to save the world as we know it. Now or never, we need to be radical. We need to rise up. And we need to rebel. Extinction Rebellion is a global activist movement of ordinary people, demanding action from Governments. This is a book of truth and action. It has facts to arm you, stories to empower you, pages to fill in and pages to rip out, alongside instructions on how to rebel - from organising a roadblock to facing arrest. By the time you finish this book you will have become an Extinction Rebellion activist. Act now before it's too late.
Publisher: Penguin
Tamsin Treverton Jones: Windblown
The Great Storm of 1987 is etched firmly into the national memory. Everyone who was there that night remembers how hurricane force winds struck southern Britain without warning, claiming eighteen lives, uprooting more than fifteen million trees and reshaping the landscape for future generations. Thirty years on, the discovery of an old photograph inspires the author to make a journey into that landscape: weaving her own memories and personal experiences with those of fishermen and lighthouse keepers, rough sleepers and refugees, she creates a unique portrait of this extraordinary event and a moving exploration of legacy and loss.
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Pieter Tritton: El Inferno
Caught in an Ecuador hotel room with 8kg of cocaine, Pieter Tritton was no mule or dupe. He had planned and organised everything. The consequence: a 12-year sentence inside one of the world’s deadliest prison systems, where gun fights, executions and riots are a part of everyday life. As a Brit banged up abroad, Pieter had to learn how to survive – and fast – because one wrong move would mean death. This is the insider account of what it’s like to live in a place worse than hell and come out a changed man on the other side.
Publisher: Ebury Press/Penguin