Kirjahaku

A wonderfully rich and absorbing historical novel following the fortunes of a struggling artist around the courtly world of Elizabethan London. Norfolk, the 22nd year of Elizabeth I's reign. An ambitious young painter strikes out from his humble beginnings for the teeming City of London. Haunted by the image of his bride's gruesome death, and fuelled by his desire to portray the splendour of life, he sets his sights on a place at the Queen's glittering court. Yet talent alone does not open the doors to royal favour, and the artist is thrown into the petty intrigues and rivalries of the English portrait schools. Here he meets Kat, a legendary courtesan with an unusual proclivity for paint. Their complex alliance leads them into a world of bribery, politics and power, and a court peopled by the celebrated figures of the age. A Likeness is a masterly portrayal of Elizabethan England, the lives of noblemen and servants, artists and courtesans. It is also a deliciously erotic tale of two young people's desires and a thriller of intrigue and double-dealing.

A delicately balanced novel of childhood secrets, hidden treasure and the lengths people will go to in order to protect – or discover – what they deem valuable. The Margate Shell Grotto really exists: a serpentine corridor decorated in swirling patterns using 50 varieties of shell, and whoever made it created an enigma that has puzzled historians and speliologists for generations. Though it has been suggested that the cave might be Phoenician in origin, the fact that most of the iconography is Egyptian and Eastern suggests a more recent, 19th century origin. Fanny Newlove is new to Margate, the daughter of Evangelist parents and spurned by the local children as being from the 'sheers' – here, anywhere north of London is considered foreign territory. When her brother finds an entrance to a hidden grotto on land their father has been advised to buy, the discovery sets into motion events that will rock this outsider family. The shells on the walls and the elaborate altar suggest a religious function – so why do the locals speak of buried treasure? And why does dour young writing master Davidson condemn shells as daemonic, upsetting Fanny's father's Christian sensibilities by invoking the Kabbalah's 'realm of shells', the basest plane of physical existence and hellish world of hidden devils? As different people stake their claim to the grotto – including Fanny's father, whose principles have been outweighed by the lure of tourist money – Fanny will learn that in the adult world, the nature of value is never simple.

Sonia Overall is a novelist, poet and lecturer based in Kent. The Art of Walking is a collection of responses to movement and place, reflecting the writer's interest in the relationship between walking and creativity, self and setting.

In Heavy Time psychogeographer Sonia Overall takes to the old pilgrim roads, navigating a route from Canterbury to Walsingham via London and her home town of Ely. Vivid in her evocation of a landscape of ancient chapels, ruined farms and suburban follies, Overall's secular pilgrimage elevates the ordinary, collecting roadside objects - feathers, a bingo card, a worn penny - as relics. Facing injury and interruption, she takes the path of the lone woman walker, seeking out 'thin places' where past and present collide, and where new ways of living might begin. 'It is a talisman of a book. Heavy Time doesn't just describe a pilgrimage, it becomes one, for both writer and reader. It is an invitation to resist 'busyness', to think of ourselves as explorers, to seek out 'the everyday divine'. It has sent me out looking for 'thin places: pockets in the landscape where the membrane is so tightly stretched that other worlds might shine through.' Beautiful and essential.' - Helen Mort

This is a manual for creative writers, but the approaches and exercises can readily be adapted by practitioners working in other media. All of the exercises included here have been foot-tested. Use the book to walk and work alone or in groups, together or separately. Use it to generate ideas, create text and read differently. ? Walking outside, in varied environments, will offer you novel experiences to draw upon. Many of the exercises here can be carried out in your immediate environment, or if mobility or opportunity are an issue, in your own home. Rescale and adapt at will. Inside the book: Creative walking: ambulant writing exercises: * Sparks. (Use a spark to get started on a walk or to switch things up during a longer walk. ) * Experiments. (Use an experiment to probe deeper.) * Projects. (Use a project to develop a creative piece.) Walking-reading practices: * Walk Like (HG) Wells * Wide Sargasso Walk (Jean Rhys) * Walking with Riddley (Walker) Creative walking-writing: DIY toolkit * Catapults (Use them to help you drift, moving away from familiar routes) * Writing prompts (Use them to see your environment through a particular lens). * Distance Drifts (Use them to explore new spaces or freshen up the familiar). ?