Glenn Haybittle – författare

2084: In a post-apocalyptic world controlled by UniCorp, where the memory of the “genetically inferior” has been chemically tampered with, Alowa escapes her captivity as a dispenser. She is sheltered in the reservation where dangers abound and her fears grow that she might be an “immigrant” – a bioengineered facsimile of a human being. She is told a boy called Solstice has her memories and she will have to enter History to find him.1943:  Max’s family have been deported from England to Italy when Mussolini declares war on Great Britain. Max has Italian lessons with a Jewish woman and falls in love with her daughter. Then the Nazis arrive in the sleepy fishing village. 1890: Weayaya, living on the Standing Rock reservation, dances the ghost dance. Then Sitting Bull is killed and she and her young son are among the Lakota fleeing towards Wounded Knee. 

The Memory Tree: four interlocking narratives which forge a thrilling path through time and heritage.

 During the Battle of Britain Evie Devereux is an RT operator in the control tower of a Fighter Command airfield. Here she commences an affair with a Spitfire pilot, Jack Cave. Jack, ashamed of his father who was shot as a coward in France during world war 1 and of his working class background, has invented a new identity for himself as Guy Wentworth.

In 1943 Evie joins the SOE. Like Jack, she too now has a false identity. Reports that the Gestapo have infiltrated entire SOE circuits in France have been ignored by London HQ. On the night of her departure she finds a note in her pocket warning her not to trust the man she is travelling with. 

Evie & Jack is a riveting novel of suspense, deception and love which brings vividly to life the experiences of a Spitfire pilot and an undercover secret agent working in the Gestapo-infested atmosphere of occupied France.

Max and Ada, ten-year-old neighbours, are engrossed in composing a book of spells in a tree house in Paris when the Nazis arrive to occupy the city. Max, the child of a rape and abandoned by his mother, is in foster care; Ada is Jewish. Almost fifty years later Max, the black sheep of the family, summons his grandson to tell him the story of those years in Paris and reveal a guilty secret that has eaten away at him. His mind is now set on digging up the past and he wants Mark to accompany him across the English Channel. His dying wish is to shed light on the two missing women in his life: Ada and his mother. Mark though is struggling with his own existential crisis. There is a missing woman in his life too.    A deftly accomplished tightrope act of pathos and humour, The Tree House is a bewitching   novel of loss and restitution, heritage and the hereafter. 

In 1966, not long before the flood arrives that devastates the city, an unsolved rape takes place in the crypt of a deconsecrated church that rocks the English community in Florence.

A generation later the church has become an atelier run by the American artist Jared Regis who is working on a large religious painting and teaches the techniques of the old masters. When a barrister arrives in Florence, referring to his last client as the Prince of Darkness, and claims to have knowledge of the rape, Jared''s life takes a menacing turn and three of his students will be forced to ask questions about their heritage. 

"Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness."

Nick and David meet at school in South London and soon become inseparable, united by their love of music. In their late teens they form a band, Orfée. At the height of their fame in the early 1980s, David commits an unforgiveable act of betrayal and the band breaks up. 

     Years later, down on his luck, Nick discovers by chance he has a daughter. And that her recent disappearance is the subject of a police investigation. 

Katie is part of a cult of militant environmentalists, living in a former monastery in southern France and presided over by the enigmatic Seed who never allows himself to be seen. The tasks required of her become ever more frightening and sinister.  

Sam Pearson, thirteen years old, is being bullied at school. He has only two havens - the role model Nick Swallow provides as he learns to play the bass guitar and the company of his grandmother, once a ballerina, who is sinking further into dementia.  

Scorched Earth tells the stories of three characters who have never met but who will have a significant influence on each other''s life.