Three books kick off Fiction Direct. Here we showcase them, describe them, along with other "shelf fillers", interesting books by our authors, until we have further FD novels in print. Moving on from the first two books we have Inside DAMMA (Ruth Aylett, Morag Burgon-Lyon, Greg Michaelson and Judy Robertson) back from the printers and we are excited to announce the Launch on 3 December in Edinburgh. See events. Before that, we did Sally Evans' Lettersgait and Morelle Smith's Beyond the Lion Gate.
We are so proud of our spit new covers that we can't bear to present them in postage stamp size. View the covers below.
On other pages here you'll find events when you can meet authors and see the books, and reviews and comments as we build them up. There'll also be more events in different locations to suit our readers and authors -- watch this space!
Inside DAMMA
Inside DAMMA
If you believe in magic, or are leery about walking on pavement cracks, DAMMA would like to hear from you! Contribute to cutting edge research - all perfectly safe and entirely ethical.Or is it? Come inside the Department of Applied Meta-Magical Anthropology. Are its staff mages, magicians, conjurors, con artists? Or ordinary folk, desperately juggling work and life, chasing the next deadline as they fend off their bosses? This laugh-aloud tale, set in a University that could be near you, shows there’s less to luck than black cats and ladders
BEYOND THE LION GATE: A beautifully engaging novel of young people working in an organisation in Albania in the 1990s. How Paula faces the changing truths about her fellow workers, and learns to deal with her strong response to Engjell, and how the group of friends and workers manage to move on. More than a love story, full of authentic detail of the problems, dangers and landscapes in a country recovering from political turmoil, and with a warm underlying philosophy of survival.
Paperback, 145 pages, 50,000 words
LETTERSGAIT, Sally's second novel about authors, this time a successful Victorian novelist and her descendants through the twentieth century and beyond. Family secrets, a sestineer, and locations including Lettersgait on the Fife coast, Manchester, London and Teesdale.
Paperback, 275 pages, 80,000 words.
'I'm loving Lettersgait, especially the sestinas' -- Stella Birchall, High Barn Books
'Unique, enjoyable reading. Each sestina is better' -- Anjal Suzanne Angel
Below are our non-postage-stamp-size-covers, including INSIDE DAMMA, coming in November 2023.
Below these, we have added some shelf-fillers: recent books by our authors (either diehard or the authors' copyright), until we have more Fiction Direct novels for you and from you.
The 'gate' theme is accidental. Lettersgait follows Sally's Wildgoose (see below) as a long book about writers, this time a successful Victorian woman novelist and her descendants as their lives spin out through the twentieth century and beyond. Morelle's Beyond the Lion Gate is a powerfully engaging novel about young Europeans working in Albania in the 1990s and how they come to terms with the shifting sands of their relationships. A must read. And thirdly, Inside DAMMA:
If you believe in magic, or are leery about walking on pavement cracks, DAMMA would like to hear from you! Contribute to cutting edge research - all perfectly safe and entirely ethical.
Or is it? Come inside the Department of Applied Meta-Magical Anthropology. Are its staff mages, magicians, conjurors, con artists? Or ordinary folk, desperately juggling work and life,
chasing the next deadline as they fend off their bosses? This laugh-aloud tale, set in a University that could be near you, shows there’s less to luck than black cats and ladders.
Below:
Further books on sale until we have more FICTION DIRECT novels (see Introduction)
[temporarily on sale]
POETIC CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE NOVEL WILDGOOSE
Essay by Sally Evans
Readable PhD thesis of 20,000 words in booklet form. Covers ethics, structure, poems in the novel and poetic consciousness.
Sally's first published novel, first published by Rd Squirrel Press and reprinted by them, now available only from FD
[temporarily on sale]
THE BUOYANCY OF THE CRAFT by MORELLE SMITH
The Writing and Travels of Annemarie Schwarzenbach told in novel form. diehard literature, 2021
[temporarily on sale]
SHAPING THE WATER PATH by MORELLE SMITH
Morelle's themes are water, travel and liminality in this exciting book, where a few powerful prose pieces sit happily among shorter and longer poems and you know you are in the presence of a perceptive traveller.
Back and front cover photo-montage by the author.
The white line on the front cover is a reflection, i will substitute a better photo soon
[temporarily on sale]
THE WAVE SINGER by GREG MICHAELSON
After The Event, life is precarious: so much is known but so little is realisable. The Wave Singers crave epiphanies. The Villagers toil for a good harvest. The Arkists seek solace in The Book. The Colonists build implausible machines. Set in a strangely familiar landscape, The Wave Singer is a dystopian allegory about growing up in a harsh world of deceptive options.
The Bees [Sally Evans]
The Bees [Sally Evans]
[temporarily on sale]
THE BEES by SALLY EVANS diehard Poetry in Landscape
Satirical romance: a long narrative poem of the Bees and an Elephant Artist in the Scottish Highlands. Larger sized landscape book Illustrated with 8 pen and ink b/w full page drawings by Reinhard Behrens
[temporarily on sale]
A BURRELL TAPESTRY AND A MARION BURRELL SAMPLER
A small but surprising book of poems about the Burrell shipping dynasty followed by the lesser known feud between William Burrell and his daughter Marion, and the extraordinary life Marion led through the 20th century.
Sue Sims, Marion's goddaughter, wrote, 'Marion would be astonished.'
When this book was published, the Burrell Collection closed for a number of years. I'm not saying the two things had anything to do with each other.