Aderyn Press – förlag

When Francis House enlists in the British Army in 1907 at 15 years and three months, he is not thinking about war. He imagines he simply wants to earn his stripes - to ease his traumatised father's Boer War memories, or perhaps to please his favourite sister, Lily, with whom he has always dreamt of adventure. But he soon discovers that simply becoming a soldier is not enough.

When Francis House enlists in the British Army in 1907, at the tender age of fifteen years and three months, he is not thinking about war. He imagines he simply wants to earn his stripes – to ease his traumatised father''s Boer War memories, or perhaps to please his favourite sister, Lily, with whom he has always dreamt of adventure. But he soon discovers that simply becoming a soldier is not enough and, against the advice of his sergeant, he determines to seek out a real fight. Wading ashore at Gallipoli seven years later, Francis thinks he might just have found the site of his greatest opportunity. Here, he thinks, he might finally prove himself a man. First, though, he must find his missing friend Berto.He needs to say sorry. He cannot yet imagine the ghosts that might stand in his way.

Eighty-eight-year-old Michael Doherty lies in an open coffin. He's not yet ready to pass over. His granddaughter Sarah has inexplicably abandoned her plans to settle in Spain. She is scarred by the Sandstone City he knows only too well and Michael doesn't understand why. He is granted a special grace period of forty days to help her heal.

Eighty-eight-year-old Michael Doherty lies in an open coffin, listening to those who have come to pay their respects. Despite his dead son Cormac''s protests, he''s not yet ready to pass over. His granddaughter is the reason. Twenty-something Sarah has inexplicably abandoned her plans to settle in Spain and returned home deeply scarred by the Sandstone City, and he needs to know why.He is granted a special grace period of forty days. Forty days to discover and heal his granddaughter''s trauma. Forty days to face his own past. Forty days to find peace before he must make his final departure.But Michael and Sarah are not alone. Ghosts populate the streets of Salamanca and they have a message for Sarah.Set between modern-day Belfast and the Spanish Civil War, The Sandstone City is a story about the decisions we make, the choices denied us, and how we navigate what''s left.

When lonely and socially isolated translator, Gareth, takes up traditional Japanese archery, he learns that to study Kyudo is to reach out, to another culture, another time, other people… But when one of them - Mie - reaches back, two lives that should never have touched become strangely entangled.

Winner of the Bath Novel Award 2020When lonely and socially isolated translator, Gareth, takes up traditional Japanese archery in 1990s Bristol, he learns that to study Kyudo is to reach out, to another culture, another time, other people… But when one of them reaches back, two lives that should never have touched become strangely entangled.In wartime Tokyo, Tanaka Mie finds herself wandering the burned-out ruins of her dead parents'' fire-bombed home with only hazy recollections of how she survived. Setting out on a hike to a mountain village shrine, away from the charred city, she begins a life to which she is not sure she is entitled, a life which feels like living on the other side of the sky.To visit the past or the future, even in imagination, is to change it. But it is also to be changed.The Arrow Garden is a delicately-wrought tale of truth, selfhood, and acceptance, which transcends time in its lyrical exploration of what it means to live.

WW2 fiction, for readers of Sarah Waters, Kate Atkinson, and Maggie O'Farrell.

Five women, trapped by duty, fighting to survive…Gentle Ingrid puts her life at risk when she tries to save her beloved daughter from her husband''s zealous beliefs.Liesel, a lesbian, marries a gay man in hopes that they can feign the ideal marriage and, in doing so, protect each other from persecution.Lovesick Greta, spurned by Liesel and lost, joins the Resistance, then disappears.Gisela, a prostitute once contentedly in control of her own destiny, is incarcerated at Ravensbrück, where she must fight for a future she cannot yet imagine.While Lore, craving a life beyond Berlin, wifedom and motherhood, steps down a dark and dangerous path.Exploring themes of motherhood, identity, trauma, fascism, and survival, Fragments of a Woman offers a nuanced and heartbreaking exploration of what it meant to be a woman living under National Socialist rule.