Soft cover original, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed by author to the title page.

Charles Wenmouth is a young blacksmith and Methodist lay preacher in the furthest, widest reaches of south-west England. It is 1870 and preachers such as Wenmouth devote their Sundays to walking great distances across country to preach morning and evening to ever dwindling congregations. Wenmouth himself burns with faith, but it is a faith that is balanced by the pleasures he takes in nature and the world around him. His only distraction is a local blind girl, Harriet French, whom he is drawn to by the faith she maintains despite her debilitating condition. Over the course of one long Sabbath, after preaching morning through evening, Wenmouth returns to his village and devastating news. Will he finally begin to face the doubt that has threatened to consume him for many years past?

Short-listed for the Whitbread First Novel Award 2005.

Soft cover original, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed & dated on publication date by author.

Charles Wenmouth is a young blacksmith and Methodist lay preacher in the furthest, widest reaches of south-west England. It is 1870 and preachers such as Wenmouth devote their Sundays to walking great distances across country to preach morning and evening to ever dwindling congregations. Wenmouth himself burns with faith, but it is a faith that is balanced by the pleasures he takes in nature and the world around him. His only distraction is a local blind girl, Harriet French, whom he is drawn to by the faith she maintains despite her debilitating condition. Over the course of one long Sabbath, after preaching morning through evening, Wenmouth returns to his village and devastating news. Will he finally begin to face the doubt that has threatened to consume him for many years past?

Short-listed for the Whitbread First Novel Award 2005.

Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed by author to the title page.

Winner of the Whitbread Award for First Novel 2005.

Debut novel: A brilliant novel from a genuinely exciting new voice in British fiction. A novel for anyone who enjoyed The English Patient. Set in Malaysia in the 1930s and 40s, with the rumbling of the Second World War in the background and the Japanese about to invade, The Harmony Silk Factory is the story of four people: Johnny, an infamous Chinaman -- a salesman, a fraudster, possibly a murderer -- whose shop house, The Harmony Silk Factory, he uses as a front for his illegal businesses; Snow Soong, the beautiful daughter of one of the Kinta Valley's most prominent families, who dies giving birth to one of the novel's narrators; Kunichika, a Japanese officer who loves Snow too; and an Englishman, Peter Wormwood, who went to Malaysia like many English but never came back, who also loved Snow to the end of his life. A journey the four of them take into the jungle has a devastating effect on all of them, and brilliantly exposes the cultural tensions of the era. Haunting, highly original, The Harmony Silk Factory is suspenseful to the last page.

Lucky Day begins with natural landscapes through which love and lyric flicker and flare. The sparrows, pigeons and magpies of the urban periphery lighten the atmosphere, edging the collection towards the city in the funny elegy 'Bird List'. The sequence that follows, 'Hand Held', is personal and vulnerable, a finally celebratory exploration of his experience as the father of a child with severe learning difficulties. The collection concludes with poems of love and memory, affirming in the end the luck of survival.

Short-listed for the Whitbread Best Poetry Book Award, 2005

Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed by author to the title page.

Dylan is the only boy living in the tiny Welsh town of Manod. His parents run the Snowdonia Oasis Auto Marvel garage - and when he's not trying to persuade his sisters to play football, Dylan is in charge of the petrol log. And that means he gets to keep track of everyone coming in and out of Manod - what car they drive, what they're called, even their favourite flavour of crisps. But when a mysterious convoy of lorries trundles up the misty mountainside towards an old, disused mine, even Dylan is confounded. Who are these people - and what have they got to hide? A story inspired by a press cutting describing how, during WWII, the treasured contents of London's National Gallery were stored in Welsh slate mines. Once a month, a morale-boosting masterpiece would be unveiled in the village and then returned to London for viewing. This is a funny and touching exploration of how Art - its beauty and its value - touches the life of one little boy and his big family in a very small town.

Shortlisted for the Whitbread Children's Novel Award 2005.

Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed by author to the title page.

Debut novel: Identical twins, Georgia and Bessi, live in the loft of 26 Waifer Avenue. It is a place of beanbags, nectarines and secrets, and visitors must always knock before entering. Down below there is not such harmony. Their Nigerian mother puts cayenne pepper on her Yorkshire pudding and has mysterious ways of dealing with homesickness; their father angrily roams the streets of Neasden, prey to the demons of his Derbyshire upbringing. Forced to create their own identities, the Hunter children build a separate universe. Older sister Bel discovers sex, high heels and organic hairdressing, the twins prepare for a flapjack empire, while baby sister Kemy learns to moonwalk for Michael Jackson. It is when the reality comes knocking that the fantasies of childhood start to give way. How will Georgia and Bessi cope in a world of separateness and solitude, and which of them will be stronger? Wickedly funny and devastatingly moving, 26a is an extraordinary first novel. Part fairytale, part nightmare, it moves from the mundane to the magical, the particular to the universal with exceptional flair and imagination. It is for anyone who has had a childhood, and anyone who knows what it is to lose one.

Short-listed for the Whitbread First Novel Award 2005.

Nominated for the Guardian Literary Award 2005.

Hardcover, UK First Edition, First Printing, Signed by author to the title page.  Book comes with a promotional bookmark.

Captain Oates, hero of the Antarctic, has been dead for nearly a century. But, not in Sym's head. In there, he is her constant companion, her soul mate, her adviser. It is as if he walked out of the Polar blizzard and into her mind. In fact, if it were not for Titus, life might be as bleak a place as the Antarctic wilderness. Then, a short family expedition makes her ask the question she has long been avoiding: who but the mad trust for happiness to someone or something that isn't there?

Short-listed for the Whitbread Children's Novel Award 2005.