Naomi Booth

'raw content is a work of dark, aching beauty' Helen Jukes, author of Mother Animal'A stunning mix of horror and tenderness, love and despair. It's rare to see such a raw and real account of early motherhood' Kirsty Logan, author of The Unfamiliar: A Queer Motherhood Memoir'A brooding and bruising psychodrama about the anxieties of 21st century motherhood, that links the primal potency of the female body with the northern landscape's elemental power' Stu Hennigan, author of Ghost Signs'My childhood was a map marked with danger zones . . . Me and my sister were cared for. We were bathed and fed and clothed. But, as with many children, we couldn't have told you if we were loved. Our experience of care came in the form of a warning'Grace's work requires her to be careful. She spends her days reading and editing legal case files, making sure the latest judgments are published as quickly and accurately as possible.But outside of her work, Grace is not a careful person. Her father's history as a police officer working across an infamous case shadows her life, as does the violent history entrenched across the Colne Valley landscape of her childhood, and her fears often surface as recklessness. When Grace becomes unexpectedly pregnant, she tries to accommodate her boyfriend and the prospect of the baby in her life. But after the relief and strange joy of the birth, Grace starts to imagine all sorts of terrible injuries and deaths befalling her child. The steep stairs to her apartment, the kitchen scissors, a boiling kettle all suddenly hold visceral and overwhelming potential for disaster. The baby's vulnerability terrifies her: fault-lines in her relationship begin to show, and her family history and repressed memories of violence break to the surface.Tender, gripping and life-affirming, raw content tells the story of a woman grappling with a new form of love that feels like a disaster.

Swoon is the first extensive study of literary swooning, homing in on swooning’s rich history as well as its potential to provide new insights into the contemporary. This study demonstrates that passing-out has had a pivotal place in English literature. Beginning with an introduction to the swoon as a marker of aesthetic sensitivity, it includes chapters on swooning and generic transformation in Chaucer and Shakespeare; morbid, femininised swoons and excessive affect in romantic, gothic, and modernist works; irony, cliché and bathos in the swoons of contemporary romance fiction. This book revisits key texts to show that passing-out has been intimately connected to explorations of emotionality, ecstasy and transformation; to depictions of sickness and dying; and to performances of gender and gendering. Swoon offers an exciting new approach the history of the body alongside the history of literary response.

Esther lives in the Pennines with her father. She is obsessed with experimenting with ways to pass out: from snorting Daz powder to attempted autoasphyxiation in a serviced apartment in north London. But what happens when you take something too far? And what has Esther's mother, a beautiful dancer wasting away in her bedroom, to do with it all?

Swoon is the first extensive study of literary swooning, homing in on swooning’s rich history as well as its potential to provide new insights into the contemporary. This study demonstrates that passing-out has had a pivotal place in English literature. Beginning with an introduction to the swoon as a marker of aesthetic sensitivity, it includes chapters on swooning and generic transformation in Chaucer and Shakespeare; morbid, femininised swoons and excessive affect in romantic, gothic, and modernist works; irony, cliché and bathos in the swoons of contemporary romance fiction. This book revisits key texts to show that passing-out has been intimately connected to explorations of emotionality, ecstasy and transformation; to depictions of sickness and dying; and to performances of gender and gendering. Swoon offers an exciting new approach the history of the body alongside the history of literary response.

'Engaging, modern fables with a feminist tang' Sunday TimesDARK, POTENT AND UNCANNY, HAG BURSTS WITH THE UNTOLD STORIES OF OUR ISLES, CAPTURED IN VOICES AS VARIED AS THEY ARE VIVID.Here are sisters fighting for the love of the same woman, a pregnant archaeologist unearthing impossible bones and lost children following you home. A panther runs through the forests of England and pixies prey upon violent men.From the islands of Scotland to the coast of Cornwall, the mountains of Galway to the depths of the Fens, these forgotten folktales howl, cackle and sing their way into the 21st century, wildly reimagined by some of the most exciting women writing in Britain and Ireland today. 'A thoroughly original package that has a hint of Angela Carter' The Times'Sharp writing and cleverly done' Spectator

"At minus five degrees, even the densest blood materials start to turn: the beginnings of a human heart will still into black ice." Callum has been given an opportunity: Jozsef's house is the perfect place to live - plenty of room, a sought-after London location and filled with priceless works of art. All that Jozsef asks in return is for some company while he's ill and the promise that if it all gets too much, someone will be there to help him at the end. It's fortunate then, when Callum meets Lauren who works in Human Resources and specialises in getting rid of people. Jozsef welcomes them both inside, and so begins a deadly spiral of violence. Pushed ever onwards by the poison of ambition, and haunted by loses from the past, these characters are drawn together in a catastrophe of endings. Naomi Booth's second novel is a groundbreaking dissection of class, xenophobia and compassion. Exit Management will seize you in its cold hands and show you the dark heart within us all.

`We came out here to begin again. We came out here for the clear air and a fresh start. No one said to us: beware of fresh starts. No one said to us: God knows what will begin.’ Timely and suspenseful, Sealed is a gripping modern fable on motherhood, a terrifying portrait of ordinary people under threat from their own bodies and from the world around them. With elements of speculative fiction and the macabre, this is also an unforgettable story about a mother’s fight to survive. Heavily pregnant Alice and her partner Pete are done with the city. Above all, Alice is haunted by the rumours of the skin sealing epidemic starting to infect the urban population. Surely their new remote mountain house will offer safety, a place to forget the nightmares and start their little family. But the mountains and their people hold a different kind of danger.With their relationship under intolerable pressure, violence erupts and Alice is faced with the unthinkable as she fights to protect her unborn child.

Sealed is a gripping modern fable on motherhood, a terrifying portrait of ordinary people under threat from their own bodies Heavily pregnant Alice and her partner Pete are done with the city. Alice is haunted by rumors of a skin-sealing epidemic starting to infect the urban population. She hopes their new remote mountain house will offer safety, a place to forget the nightmares and start their family. But the mountains and their people hold a different kind of danger. With their relationship under intolerable pressure, violence erupts and Alice is faced with the unthinkable as she fights to protect her unborn child. Timely and suspenseful, Sealed is a gripping modern fable on motherhood, a terrifying portrait of ordinary people under threat from their own bodies and from the world around them.