Barbican Press

"Bold, beautiful and ebullient, it fizzes with life and dazzles with sheer power and intelligence" – Alison MacLeod "Perfectly constructed, wonderfully written stories" – Suzanne Joinson "Moving and powerful. This is such an important book." – Ed Hogan Welcome to the infamous Duncock Estate. Nestled on the South English coast, it is a place where identity matters; where people hold down jobs and do their best. Where taboos are broken, adultery is committed, and problems can''t be wished away. But even tragedy can be tinged with fragile hopes and humour. Brilliant Blue is a remarkable debut collection. Its characters are as rich, complex, dark and ambitious as any you will find in fiction. Let Karen Stevens lead you into areas where few writers dare to tread.

A darkly satirical literarythriller that will captivate readers of transgressive fiction and socialcritique. When Faisal emerges from the English Channel after his record-breaking swim from France, Brian and Eileen Pratchett expectgratitude—after all, they rescued him from the refugee pool, fed him, trainedhim, transformed him. But Cameron, a young Scottish drifter, has come searchingfor his brother Malcolm, one of the Pratchetts' earlier 'projects.' Malcolm wasgoing to be a tennis champion. Instead, he disappeared. As Cameron's questions growmore pointed and Faisal's gratitude turns ambiguous, the Pratchetts' carefullymaintained facade begins to crack. Behind their respectable seafront home withits immaculate rose garden lies a darker story—one of control, obsession, andthe terrible price of failing to meet expectations. Swimming for England is amasterful psychological portrait that operates simultaneously as thriller,social satire, and searing indictment. Goodman's prose is both beautiful andbrutal, his imagery visceral, his characters rendered with uncomfortable intimacy. This is fiction that disturbs, provokes, and lingers—perfect for book clubsseeking compact, challenging material and readers who appreciate the intersection ofliterary ambition and page-turning suspense.

Silently, digitally, a boy takes apart your family Tom''s a regular teenager – sullen, anxious, super-smart, feeling safe within his bedroom and wedded to his screen. On a packed train, a London commodities trader gets under his skin. The trader''s got a fine wife, two kids, a yappy dog, big house, annual bonus. Tom hacks him. The trader''s hardware becomes stuffed with dangerous, damaging images. Call it collateral damage. Hacking is what Tom does. He''s got control of the keyboards of key players in the fossil fuel industry. If he doesn''t bring down the grid, who will? Roads and trainlines lead the main players to a violent confrontation in the brutalist surrounds of London''s Barbican Centre. Government agents work to prevent a global blackout. Tom''s set to save the planet. Who will win?

“An imaginative debut” – Sharma Taylor “Damion Spencer is a voice to look out for” – Irenosen Okojie A Barbican First debut The Devil''s Horsewhip is a startlingly fine novel-in-stories about Caribbean folklore, superstitions and legends surrounding death by a writer whose prose judges at Wasafiri have described as vivid and with a spectacular voice. At the pinnacle of the pandemic—a year already punctuated with daily funeral processions—a Jamaican expat gets an envelope covered in red writing from his doctor. It sends him into a mad tumble between bad omen days and fever dream nights until all that he thinks about is that bitter day in the Jamaican White River Valley, where he and other teenagers escaped a double-cutlass-wielding madman out for blood. But death is not one to give up easily. The years are not long enough, neither is fleeing across continents too far for death''s spite and all the worse duppies not to come knocking. Who will cheat death a second time? A Christian woman who decides to sleep with an obeah man''s monkey. The man with the answer to whether Haitian voodoo is stronger than obeah. A woman who knows how to mourn a dead baby. Or the ones who know how to trap a rolling calf, outrun a three-foot horse, and battle a Chinese duppy and win. If you''re superstitious or wary of those who are, come read these sticky tales spun in barbwire.

A startling debut noir. A Trail of Blood on the Snow is a chilling exploration of masculinity, madness, and the harrowing legacy of abuse. "He remembers me. He remembers the screaming and the blood on the snow. He remembers everything, I can tell." Rex is 41. Halfway to death and no happier for it. Any promise of a better life got stifled decades ago, when Rex was a limping school kid and Max was the school bully. Then, a chance encounter. Max standing smug and handsome at a gas station with his oh-so-perfect family. Rex secretly follows them home. Watches them. Thinks about his own miserable life. What Max did to him, and how a real man would claim revenge. Rex acts. Is this the making of a monster, or the breaking of a man?

"McNeil''s deeply felt observations offer a transporting, thought-provoking lens on nature. It''s captivating stuff." Publishers Weekly "Meditative and sumptuous… Latitudes is a rich, textured portrait of the natural world and a plaintive reflection on the destruction of climate change." Foreword Reviews "Full of lived experience, this book ponders the question of our own animal relationship with the planet, between what we know and what we feel, between mind and body, instinct and intellect." Julia Bell, author of Massive and Hymnal "Her shimmering prose brings into sharp focus the beauty of the remote places where we can glimpse – and sometimes hear – what our planet was like before us. And what it might be in the silence that will come after the frenzy of human dominance." Margie Orford "This one has knocked me sideways: it''s, on a sentence-by-sentence level, honestly the best thing I''ve read this year." Georgina Godwin, Monocle Radio Relating thirty years of living in and writing about some of the world''s last remaining wild places, Latitudes is a thrilling and thought-provoking exploration of a changing planet. At once memoir, journal and travelogue of Earth''s wildernesses, Latitudes ranges across the Antarctic, the Arctic, the savannahs and deserts of Africa, the Southern and Atlantic oceans and the boreal forests of Canada. Latitudes is a powerful, innovative book of creative non-fiction that tracks one writer''s life-long experience of reckoning with an age of dramatic ecological loss. It shows us the importance of listening to the living world that is speaking to us, if we open ourselves to hear its voice.