JM Originals – serie

'A powerful debut with plenty of northern soul . . . it's these untold stories that need to be on the page - now more than ever' BENJAMIN MYERS, Guardian 'A spirited and heartwarming portrait of a fast-dying community, and the dogs are wonderful' FT'These hands,' he said, and spread the paira them out wide so we could see the callouses and the little lines of coal dust underneath his skin; 'these hands were made to pick out summat precious from somewhere that doesn't wanna give it up.'County Durham, 1998. The pits have closed and jobs are hard to come by, but charismatic ex-miner Bertie has a plan. He runs an underground gambling ring at the local dog track which offers down-on-their-luck blokes a way to turn their life around.Reg's ten-year-old son George knows his dad hasn't been the same since Mam died, and the letters with scary red type that keep coming through the door can't be good news. So when Bertie offers Reg and George the chance to race Goldie, a beautiful fawn greyhound, they jump at the opportunity.To succeed they'll need to learn how to navigate the larger-than-life world of the flapping track, all while dark secrets from Bertie's past threaten to unravel the operation. Do Reg and George have what it takes to pull off the gamble of a lifetime?'A love letter to a disappearing community' Service95'Beautiful, heartbreaking, uplifting, funny . . . At times my own heart was racing as if with the dogs . . . a story of love, of loss, of hope; of life and how to live it even when the chips are down' JENNY KNIGHT, author of Wild Moon Rising'Told with a full-blooded voice that is as quick and alive as the hounds that fill its pages, Underdogs captures a forgotten way of life in a forgotten part of England with rare honesty and wit ' SCOTT PRESTON, author of The Borrowed Hills

LONGLISTED FOR THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZEChildhood friends Asghar and Zahra were born into the same British Muslim community in west London. But they grow up into very different people. Asghar is a shy boy nervous of stepping outside his family's comfort zone, while Zahra is an ambitious woman who has just finished her degree at Cambridge.The novel opens on their wedding day as friends and family wonder what could possibly have brought this odd couple together. After a comically disastrous honeymoon, painful secrets from the past throw the relationship further off-balance. And then there's the sinister preacher taking a keen interest in them . . . A funny, sympathetic and very human novel about the first year of a marriage, and the difficulties of reconciling the sometimes conflicting demands of family, religion and society, Asghar and Zahra is the debut of a striking new talent.