Adam Wilderness

Imagine that on a solitary coastal walk you watch a lone ballerina dancing on an embankment, outlined above the marshes against a full moon. Who is she? Why does she come here? Simon, a bespectacled Jewish librarian and reformed drunkard, finds his life turned inside-out by just such a vision. He spies on the girl and cannot rest until he discovers the strange truth about her.But he is involved with Suzy, a dreamy misfit who works at a tripe shop, and with Roger, her brute boyfriend, in a non-Euclidean love triangle. They strive to make sense of Southport, a bizarre English seaside town where feral wallabies, hooded parades, terrorists and invisible stranglers complicate life.When Simon finds out that his vanished father was a diamond thief, rumours of hidden loot and offers of violent death abound. But the course of true love is as bent as a dog's hind leg. Through moments of dark comedy and mild horror, Suzy and Simon battle their way toward a happy ending.This offbeat satire is for anyone who likes to see a bohemian romance win out against the odds in the surreal modern world.

Suppose that Satan has himself elected Mayor of a sleepy English seaside resort, on a pledge to clean up the streetwalkers, the beggars and the homeless. His methods are whimsical and quirky, but he knows villainy like he knows the back of his claw.Stood in his path are Helen, a tipsy transgender prostitute, Paul, an unemployed college teacher with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and a bunch of misfits that includes a poker-playing priest and an old-style rat-catcher. Should be no contest really. After all, the poor long-suffering author is murdered in Chapter Twenty-Two.But this dystopian and darkly comic fantasy novel defies logic and battles its way through low life crises and spoof horror to a hard-won happy ending. This is literary fiction, though not quite as we have been used to it. Try it now for a very unusual read.

For some of us, childhood is only a nightmare away. When Stephen Connolly, a self-taught artist, drops out of Cambridge University to paint in the slums of 1970s and 1980s Liverpool, it soon gets much closer than that. He struggles against both anti-Semitism and his brutal Jewish mother, against merciless poverty and corrupting affluence. He is pulled apart by two passions, for bed-mate and for soul-mate. The prostitute Anna teaches him urban survival and the petite lecturer Jenny clings to him like a mad mollusc to an unstable rock.The city is in turmoil from mass unemployment and riots. But the greatest threats to Stephen's sanity are the monsters and imaginary playmates that emerge from the fog of his solitary, haunted childhood.Rough, sinister, bohemian, the story battles its way to a happy ending through tragedy, grim humour and the bastard miracle of love. Try this for something scarier and more hard-edged than the average historical romance.

We are all homeless beggars. Everybody is searching for comfort, money or love. Even you and I.But Martin is a gentle tramp on a strange quest. With his world in a rucksack, he roams England in pursuit of Care in the Community and of Old Stompy, the stuffed Patagonian giant sloth donated long ago to a museum by his eccentric grandfather. Let us follow his progress as he wheedles and bluffs, helps and hinders, uses and is used.He settles for now in Liverpool, where he is torn between three women. Kathy is his former teenage sweetheart, devious and alcoholic. Alison is a scruffy bisexual drop-out, loyal but accident-prone. Fran is a neurotic housewife, oddly convinced that life has a meaning. Worse still, Martin must survive the friendly advances of Mr Snowman and his gang of ham-fisted cocaine dealers.Over the unexpected resolution of these conflicts looms the smirking, bear-like, enigmatic figure of the giant sloth. Could Old Stompy know the answers? Perhaps true love, safety and the community are still out there. Try this unusual homeless romance to share in the search.

If you can't see Mr Punch, that means he's right behind you. Now. Don't you dare look around.Elements of fantasy and mild horror, dark comedy and perverse optimism, mingle in these bizarre stories. Make sense of them at your peril. They are linked by such surreal figures as Tommy Flyblow, a philosophical tramp, and Mr Punch, a grinning psychopath who breaks into the 'real' world from childhood nightmares and the English seaside.Transgender bohemians, a Paraguayan giant anteater, Pepper's ghost, Jenny Greenteeth and a raving postmodernist street preacher could also turn up. Even bird-headed men seem at home in this warped but recognisable view of our appalling times.This book is for anyone not afraid to wonder what lies beyond the spectacle of normality. If you have a clue what's happening, you can explain it to such baffled observers as Tommy Flyblow, Cute Max and, of course, Caroline the dustbin man. Why not try your luck with it now?