Below you will find a list of novels for adults. Even within this category, there is diversity. ‘A Moth Ate Words’ is an ambitious sprawling thriller with a series of historical settings. ‘How to Survive …’ is a humorous, coming-of-age tale about a Greek god. ‘Three Boys’ is more of a novella, extensively researched ‘faction’, imagining the boyhood lives of Hitler, Stalin and Churchill. ‘Ye Olde Sceptred’ is political satire.
How to Survive The 21st Century: A Handbook for Pensioners
Released: 2023
Genre/s: Humorous Fiction, Myths & Fairy Tales
Finding himself in a sleepy market town, trapped in the body of a pensioner, Zeus is oblivious to the fact that he is being hunted down by a shapeshifting murderess. Back on Olympus, his wife and brother are conspiring against him.
Amidst feverish intrigue, who could predict the rise of an obscure nonentity to challenge the entire pantheon of gods? As for Zeus, he is on an altogether different journey, during which he will (unintentionally) acquire humanity. It will all lead to a painful existential choice. Through nemesis comes redemption.
Definitely one of my books of the year
Witty, clever and compassionate
a moth ate words
Sometimes the truth is dangerous and needs to remain buried.
A complex and ambitious novel that moves across time. The contemporary story begins with Adrienne, troubled by childhood memories. Was her Uncle Jim a molester? Was he even a relative, or just a lonely and harmless lodger at her grandmother’s house? How truthful is her recollection of the day her mother abandoned them? Adrienne comes to believe that if she can find out more about her ancestors, she might get closer to understanding herself. The sole remaining family member who might shed light on this is her Aunt Hattie, struggling with her own fragmented memories through the mist of dementia. The one clue her aunt can pass on is that the family wealth was squandered on ‘tulips and bubbles’. Adrienne sets out to unearth information about her ancestors, whose stories become woven into the book.
Her husband, Lionel, is a historian, also digging into the past, in his case, our (flawed) collective, tribal memory. His university is full of devious characters, scrambling for promotion, and given his autism, Lionel finds it difficult to understand its codes. A close colleague has pinched his big idea for a research project that will compare the English people in pre and post-Roman periods. Unexpectedly, Lionel finds himself leading a major project, his study uncovering three graves that raise a tenuous Arthurian link and draw him into contact with a charming, but ruthless politician, with shadowy links to an extreme right-wing group. The ambiguous story of the bodies he has unearthed become yet a further layer of the book.
The different strands within the novel highlight an unchanging story, relating not only to the central characters but to the people of this island. We discover how groups vanish, to be replaced by others that can appropriate their identity along with their land. In so doing, this allows for different ways for the reader to consider Englishness, nationalism and prejudice, as well as the nature of love and self-sacrifice.
three boys
Three boys growing up in different corners of Europe … three boys who will change the world …..
Moving between Georgia, during the days of the Russian empire, Austria, in the twilight of the Habsburg dynasty and Victorian upper class England, Three Boys interweaves the stories of the children who will grow up into the three dominant figures of the twentieth century.
Combining imagined scenes with factual evidence, Three Boys draws from accounts of each boy’s childhood, searching for the real people behind the myths. Each boy will grow up damaged by childhood experiences; each will be drawn towards conflict; and the personalities of each will ensure that all those around them will be engulfed by conflict. As the story illustrates, even a monster begins as a child.
YE OLDE SCEPTRED
There never has been a ship on the Seven Seas with the pomp and grandeur of Ye Olde Sceptred. Perhaps, there never will be again.
Commanded by a succession of fine sea captains, the magnificent liner has crossed and recrossed the oceans, seemingly unaware of the perils ahead. However great their experience, however profound their knowledge of all matters naval, the captains have only been able to guess at the coming storms.
Can the liner survive these dangers? Can Captain Avon control his passions? Can Captain Ted acquire the requisite knowledge of English idiom to match his French? Is anybody safe under the command of the Snatcher? How can two heroes, Captain Iggle Piggle and Bo-Jo fulfil the identical destiny? Meanwhile, the ship is falling apart and nasty creatures lurk in the lower decks.
A short and riotous history of a doomed country, from the days of Suez to Brexit, a tale of misadventure and ineptitude, in which the real victims are the oink-class passengers. Us!
Mandatory reading – and so funny!
A hilarious trawler through the shenanigans of the last 80 years of British political history
