Alcemi – förlag

A short break in a shoreline cottage is an ideal place to struggle with your demons. For Elly and Martin it is the chance to forget their hasty exit from Paradise following classroom scandal. But she makes a life-changing find on the tideline, a diamond dress-ring with finger bones still attached. Scroll back a few months and at Martin's place of work - a Chester hospital - we meet new nurse Hayley. Young, gorgeous; she is a player, and totally turned off by the ward surgeon, Richard Congreve. Until, that is, she catches a whiff of something expensive in his Jag and is ensnared by a gift so desirable it may prove fatal. As we question who the ring and its finger really belong to, the cottage collects the secrets of those who have stayed there. Why has Elly such power over them all? Ranging between Wales, the north of England and Goa, this is a novel about possession, betrayal - and how much we can afford to lose."Williams' writing is off-beat, subtle, haunting, fresh." - Kate Long"A controlled and gifted stylist, Williams is inventive and inspiring in her craft." - Prof. Colin Nicholson, JTB Judge"Wonderfully varied style and excellent characterisation." - Morning Star

Aled is used to his dad Geraint waxing lyrical about some saint's clifftop lookout; some Greek temple or another hosting a thousand sacred prostitutes; some village near Corinth. Geraint is the county archaeologist, after all. So when travel agent Aled takes a recce trip to that same Peloponnese village, his father is surprised. When Aled fails to return on the eve of his marriage, Geraint becomes alarmed and sets out on his trail. Relationships – father and youthful son; son and elderly mother; fiancés, lovers; colleagues - none are immutable. This novel shows those thresholds of choice, those liminal moments and places where a door may open onto another world, or at the very least, another way of relating to the one we have."Evocative... Chris Keil's writing, which is limpid and often arrestingly vivid, has a charged quality that conveys the mysteries pulsing behind the everyday surfaces of things." - the Guardian"Hypnotic."- Jan Morris"Infused with a lyrical voice and the vocabulary of the poet." - New Welsh Review

This is a novel about exile, told by a Jewish chef who uses extraordinary recipes as a subversive form of storytelling. Set on the eve of world war, it brings together the burlesque and the tragic, drawing on historical characters such as Greta Garbo and kabarett legend Klabund, in addition to the atmosphere and cultural innovations of 1920s Berlin.Esther Rosenbaum could give Nigella Lawson a run for her money: she is the creator of chocolate hearts stuffed with saffron pen nibs, jugged hares served in toy drums and an edible Cuckoo Clock, filled with marzipan birds that hide a terrible secret. All is served up at a very special banquet in an inflation-hungry city edging towards disaster... 2"[An] extravaganza where the real and the imagined take turn and turn about... sumptuously detailed and fantastical... [this novel is] at once full of disturbing delicacy, and at the same time [forceful]... [marked by its] humour, verve and hallucinatory strangeness." — Clare Morgan, Times Literary Supplement"A remarkable novel...[set against]the resistible rise of Nazi thuggery... The fact that [chef] Esther is also anorexic adds a contemporary twist... Comparisons with magic realism come immediately to mind, and the author manages to balance the fantastical elements with the gritty realism of the descent into fascism... the real and imaginary characters are equally magical, as are the incredible creations of this precursor of today's celebrity chefs." — Morning Star"Casts an intoxicating spell, blending tragedy, satire and magic realism to create a sensuous exploration of food, revolution and the resurrection of community through memory." — New Welsh Review"Simpson takes full advantage of [the] possibilities [for lovers of the absurd and grotesque]... an intriguing first novel." Marta Segal Block, www.booklistonline.com"Moving and inspiring... very much recommended reading." James A Cox, Midwest Book Review

Lee is a grown man with a sweet tooth and a mild case of uniform fetish. A phone call from a distant hospital summons him to the bedside of his father, Arthur; a man he barely knew. He seeks solace in his father's nurses, despite being told they attend mandatory training on not dating the bereaved. With Rita, he discovers she's more interested in Jesus. With Ann, Lee finds himself on random circling routes along country roads, looking for her missing dog Quincy. When his eccentric mother Pet shows up, she starts to spill gin and family secrets. Do these explain why their only photo of Arthur is a shadow cast from behind the camera? A love story – intimate, warm, drily humorous - about the missing parts of our lives, and the things we fill them with. "Haunting... account of lives struck by loss and threatened by love... a singular voice."— John Williams, author of The Cardiff Trilogy"Demonstrates a proper allegiance to the peripheries... a supple intelligence: a sprightly, welcome voice in a time of stalled metaphors and gassy rhetoric." — Iain Sinclair

Mark's best friend, Jim, has just jumped from the twentieth floor. Mark walks out of his own life and heads for London; dreams of songwriting, and the rhythms of better living drumming gently in his mind. He soon finds himself flat-sitting for a supposed friend from the past, and on grief's low-battery setting, often cold and underfed, he drifts through a familiar yet sometimes alienating London cityscape. Using music and literature to help make sense of things, and spurred on by guilt at failing to save his friend, Mark decides to keep a benevolent eye on three young lads he encounters, Joe, Mike and Bono; and these 'Three Musketeers' challenge perceptions of British "hoodie youth culture" through acts of kindness of their own. When Mark and the boys finally meet Japanese student, Kazu – nervous, and Samurai obsessed - their worlds are changed forever. Flooded with warmth and humanity, this debut novel looks at friendship, altruism, songwriting and Samurai philosophy."Jayne Joso's novel skillfully melds the esoteric and the everyday, the surreal and the banal, to create a strangely gripping narrative full of dark humour." — Joe Moran"An unexpected and moving story about the redemption of misfits and the consolation of strangers." — Natalie HaynesVisit website here: http://jaynejoso.blogspot.com/

Nominated for the 2010 Portico Prize for FictionBumping, set on contemporary Tyneside, interweaves three stories. Each presents a character whose obsessions and attachments become magnified through chance encounters, leading to unforeseen and ultimately catastrophic results. The 'bumping' of the title conveys something of these random processes, as well as one character's passion for recreational lock-picking. The stories are told in a number of voices: middle-aged way leave officer Frank; teenagers Nicky and Barry; and the heart-breakingly confused and ever-optimistic elderly Tom. The novel's themes include relationships with home and place, male preoccupation with mechanisms and systems, moral evasion, and the tyranny of random events. Bumping is about obsession and longing on contemporary Tyneside. It is also a novel about youth and old age, delusion, lock picking and Californian ladybirds."Edgy, occasionally funny, sometimes dark... reveals [an] amazing eye for detail... [the sections on teenagers] Barry and Nicky and [senile old man] Tom, are classics."The Morning StarTony Bianchi was born and grew up in North Shields, on Tyneside. Formerly Literature Director at the Arts Council of Wales, he is now a freelance writer, translator and arts consultant and lives in Cardiff. He has won prizes for his Welsh-language fiction, including the Daniel Owen Memorial Prize and nominations for the Welsh Book of the Year.

The Deer Wedding is a novel set in Croatia, spanning two generations, two brutal wars and the controversial histories of two very special works of art. In 1941, artist Antun Fiskovic experiences a sea-change in his fortunes following the dramatic revelation of the identity of his real parents, just as occupying forces take over the government of his country. Fifty years later, a young woman called Dagmar Petric tries to solve the mystery surrounding her journalist father's premature death. Antun and Dagmar's stories come together in 1998, three years after civil war has torn apart the countries of the former Yugoslavia. Set in Zagreb and late Nineties Hvar - a former tourist paradise now home to wartime refugees - this novel interweaves public and private history to explore violence, family secrets and personal as well as national reconciliation.Praise for Penny Simpson:"A sumptuously-detailed and fantastical novel... full of... humour, verve and hallucinatory strangeness."Clare Morgan, TLS (on The Banquet of Esther Rosenbaum)"Alive... startling and original... quirky, unsentimental... funny... The writing flies off the page."Tessa Hadley and Meic Stephens, Judges Report, 2007 Rhys Davies Short Story CompetitionPenny Simpson is the 2007 winner of the Rhys Davies Short Story Competition. Her short fiction features in the widely acclaimed Dalkey Archive Press collection, Best European Fiction 2010, prefaced by Zadie Smith. DOGDays, her debut collection of short stories, was published in 2003. She is a Fellow of the Hawthenden International Writers Centre. This is her second novel, following The Banquet of Esther Rosenbaum (Alcemi, 2008).

"Buzzes with insight and imagination... big themes of environmental responsibility and escape, mental illness and the policing of joy. A very fine debut."Richard GwynA black comedy about sex, financial boom and bust, corruption, cultural collision, fertility and altruism.In a heady neo-Orient, a galaxy of unlikely and unusual characters find themselves intricately, messily bound together in the unique, rather dubious corporation known as Eastern Vision. They include a pseudo-Buddhist monk, an illegal immigrant, a teenager with precarious mental health and a quixotic pair of young and hungry businessmen. Trading in everything from faux-Eastern art to real estate, from sperm donation to gypsy magic, Eastern Vision has reached the top of the money mountain, and fallen over the other side. As the bust takes its toll, the team and others battle for control, of the company, of each other and of themselves, as they hurtle towards an end none of them could have predicted."An unusual, engaging and unpredictable novel packed with a cosmopolitan cast of colourful characters."Lindsay Clarke, author of The Chymical WeddingRomy Wood taught drama in comprehensive schools for ten years. She works as an associate Lecturer for the Open University. This novel is informed by her experiences of Romania and Thailand, where she has friends and family, as it is by Romy's life as a woman with Bipolar Disorder. She lives with her husband and three children in Cardiff.

The Vanity Rooms is the third instalment in the Tristyn Honeyman series, following the Welsh minister on the trail of nefarious goings-on at the limits of the ordinary world. Following his battles with a Satanic secret societies in The Mourning Vessels (2008) and Precious Cargo (2010), Honeyman returns for another genre-hopping, rollercoaster ride.A charitable foundation is offering free accommodation to aspiring celebrities, in a building once occupied by a chapter of French Revolutionaries. One such applicant takes rooms hosted by a brilliant chess master, inheriting a mobile phone with mind-altering apps, and a bizarre chess set which is leading him, move by move, to an unimaginable destiny.Peter Luther is a solicitor based in Cardiff. His previous three novels – Dark Covenant ("A word-of-mouth publishing sensation", Times Online; 2008), The Mourning Vessels (2008) and Precious Cargo (2010) – are all set in Wales, all published by Y Lolfa. Peter's books have been widely acclaimed in Wales in the likes of the Western Mail, Wales on Sunday and on BBC Radio Wales, as well as in The Big Issue and on Times Online. The Mourning Vessels is a previous Waterstone's Welsh Book of the Month (November 2008).