Kirjahaku

In 2016, Britain's political class brought schism and rancour to the nation, the referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) dividing countries, workplaces and families in a manner unseen since the seventeenth century. The government's incompetence displayed in the subsequent withdrawal negotiations did nothing to heal the rift in society and, following the United Kingdom's eventual exit from the EU, the opposing sides, Leaver and Remainer, continued their hostilities. As economic and social conditions worsened, civil war erupted onto the streets. In this unhappy shape the nation was prey to all manner of self-styled saviours. One, a visitor from a Britain of the future, becomes the medium through which to escape the miserable conditions that the politicians had naively delivered. But is it possible truly to escape the past?

Locked in to a world of regulation and routine, the narrator reflects upon his condition, one of being inescapably medicalised, and relives the events leading up to his current state of being. An unexpected intervention to his solitary thoughts comes from the natural world, bringing the suggestion that there is an alternative, and that the time will come again when he can choose a different path altogether.

The accuracy of recalled childhood memories in adulthood is the subject of extensive research and debate, and controversies exist surrounding the authenticity of recovered memories. This recollection of episodes from a childhood spent in 1950s England is enhanced by the author s ADHD syndrome; it supplies a rare clarity to counteract the errors commonly found with authentic memories, when the adult has to infer missing details. The vignettes of an early life that comprise this book represent a world of freedom and adventure now sadly lost to history, but they paint a picture that is as vivid today as when they were first experienced.

His Orgy of Crime is the narrative of a boy apart. It is in most part a reassembly of facts, the shocking incidents for which Paul is the author having taken place in the 1960s. Paul's story commences with his going up to secondary school, where he dismisses normal schoolboy patterns of behaviour for a more sociopathic bearing. The book's surprising conclusion, several decades later, demonstrates that one can survive - and survive very well - when rejecting the accepted norms of upright and respectable society. It also asks the reader just how responsible are we for the actions of others?

Two decades after the assassination of President Trump and the deployment of a nuclear device in the Middle East, the world order has not rebalanced. The final extinction of North Sea oil has left the UK weak and isolated, its failed governments north and south of the border provoked into taking desperate measures, Scotland's north-east seeing the transformation of redundant oil towns into regulated settlements for the millions fleeing the southern Mediterranean. With order maintained by a business-savvy Chinese administration, a conundrum is set for the band of Scottish partisans struggling to preserve their nation. Encumbered by an insidious regime of electronic surveillance, Rory, Rosey and Zippo find the threat they face becoming more opaque as they unravel the plans of Rosey's grandfather until, doubtful as to who is their enemy, the three comrades find themselves labouring in a quixotic theatre of war that exchanges political idealism for high-tech tyranny.

Four tales linked by the theme of epiphany. They comprise a priest searching for God at the centre of the galaxy, a young man looking for his lost first love, three old men seeking a reprise of their youth, and a female slave pondering her identity... Each will discover that what they wished for was in fact something entirely different. But did any of them recognise their epiphany?

Frank is any one of us, and like us he is unique. This series of tales, drawing from actual and imagined events, threads together seven episodes from the life of an ordinary man. To be Frank, he has constantly to reconcile acquired principles with natural impulse until, in late life, they become conjoined. From teenage rebel to educator, to scientific researcher, to corporate man and animal saviour, do Frank's final days reflect the man you see developing in front of you?

Two men in conversation. One is the listener, engaged in a private quest for knowledge, the other is the storyteller, unwittingly wallowing in the revelation of his secrets. Layers of his life are laid down uncritically but has he learned from the overall structure of his existence?

Stephen knew that something bad had happened. After all, he'd been there, hadn't he, he'd been a part of it. But how bad it was he could never be sure. Everything seemed to conspire against his knowing. A decade later, as a young man, an unexpected opportunity to discover the truth presents itself. Only, is it the truth he wants to discover? This speculative adventure threads its way dramatically across three episodes of twentieth century cultural upheaval, through the struggle and aftermath of the first and second world wars to the social revolution of the 1960s.