Wilton Square Books

Seven assassins. One election. The fate of the British Empire hangs in the balance. Felix Grey returns in a high-stakes historical mystery of power, politics and murder. Prime Minister Felix Grey is still reeling from the fallout of his last ordeal, which left his home secretary dead and his own reputation in tatters. With a general election looming, a fragile Labour party emerging, and an odious Tory leader waiting to seize power, he would rather retreat than fight. Duty, however, and the quiet pressure of King Edward VII, leave him with no choice. As tensions rise at home, danger gathers abroad. In India, demands for independence grow louder, and a shadowy group of seven assassins is dispatched to strike at the heart of the British establishment. Their targets include senior politicians and even the king himself. The message is clear: empire will not be preserved without bloodshed. Relying on his wits and a loyal circle of allies, Felix must uncover the conspiracy before it tears the country apart. Felix Grey and the Seven Assassins is the second novel in this historical crime series, combining political intrigue, real historical figures, and a high-stakes assassination plot into a fast-paced, witty caper that will delight fans of classic historical mysteries and intelligent, plot-driven fiction.

1333. Edward III is at war with Scotland. Nineteen-year-old Sir Harry de Lyon yearns to prove himself, and when powerful English baron, William Montagu, invites him on a secret mission with a dozen elite knights, he jumps at the chance. They ride north, to a crumbling Scottish keep, capturing the feral, half-starved boy within and putting the other inhabitants to the sword. But nobody knows why the flower of English knighthood snuck over the border to capture a savage, dirty teenage boy. Montagu gives the boy to Harry as his squire, with only two rules: don't let him escape, and convert him to the English cause. At first, it's hopeless. The Scottish boy is surly and violent, and eats anything that isn't nailed down. Then Harry begins to notice things: that, as well as Gaelic, the boy speaks flawless French, with an accent much different from Harry's Norman one. That he can read Latin too. And when Harry finally convinces the boy - Iain mac Mail Coluim - to cut his filthy curtain of hair, the face revealed is the most beautiful thing Harry has ever seen. With Iain as his squire, Harry wins tournament after tournament and becomes a favourite of the King. But underneath the pageantry smoulder twin secrets: Harry and Iain's growing passion for each other, and Iain's mysterious heritage. As England hurtles towards war once again, these secrets will destroy everything Harry holds dear.

‘Courageous and intelligent’ Elissa Soave, author of Ginger and MeDepressed and suicidal, Helen was admitted to a psychiatric ward and sectioned under the Mental Health Act. At her lowest, she almost succeeded in taking her own life. But somehow, she endured and later, she recovered. love lay down beside me and we wept sprang from these emotionally shattering experiences. Amid the horror though, there were moments of pure comedy and unexpected comradeship. And of course, plenty of material for writing. This is a profoundly moving and masterful account of one woman's physical and psychological catastrophe. It's a tribute to the love that supported her through it, and it's an offering to the reader who might find comfort or understanding in this story.

'Beautiful and complex' — Annie Proulx'A writer of exceptional gifts' — Louise Kennedy'O'Grady strikes a beautiful note' — Kevin BarryMoving from West Belfast and County Monaghan to the streets of San Francisco, Timothy O’Grady’s exhilarating new novel is an epic portrait of art and war, authenticity and selling out, told through the fates of three men. Ronan Treanor, Monaghan native and teller of this tale, is a celebrated theorist of postmodern architecture in New York. Paul Crane, single son of a hotel maid in Indiana, turns his mathematical gift into a multimillion-dollar career as an investment banker. And the mysterious Ryan, who drew as a boy in besieged West Belfast, but was swept up in the war against the British and lived a decade of extreme and escalating violence as a sniper. Through him, the war in Ireland and its psychic legacy are brought into close focus in a way rarely seen in contemporary fiction. Their lives merge and conflict, rise and fall, as one man becomes the undoing of the next. Hauntingly beautiful, lyrical and profound, this is a novel about what happens when you cannot escape your past, featuring drawings and paintings by Anthony Lott. 'O’Grady evokes place, the latent violence of Ireland in the 1980s and its psychic displacements. The prose is mesmerising' — Una Mannion, author of Tell Me What I Am'Monaghan reveals the legacy of violence and political division in a gripping narrative and a precise and original voice' — Erica Wagner, literary critic'Monaghan is written with an intensity that is remarkable in contemporary fiction . . . Timothy O’Grady is a major writer of our time' — Patrick Joyce, author of Going to My Father’s House

What if the only way to fix toxic masculinity were to erase it entirel? ark Vogel is like the older brother Stefan never had, but one day he disappears without a trace. A year later, after encountering a woman who looks near-identical to Mark, Stefan becomes obsessed. He finds that dozens of young men have disappeared over the years, many of them students at the Royal College of Saint Almsworth, and most of them troubled or unruly. Why are students going missing? Who are these women who bear striking resemblances to them? And what is their connection to the selective student accommodation on the edge of campus, Dorley Hal? tefan starts studying at Saint Almsworth for one reason and one reason only: to find out exactly what happened to the women who live at Dorley Hall, and to get it to happen to him, too. An electrifying début by Alyson Greaves, Welcome to Dorley Hall is an intense exploration of gender and society that will appeal to readers of Torrey Peters, Imogen Binnie and Gretchen Felker-Martin.

‘Remarkable. Will be a great comfort to those who need it’ Sarah PerryIn 2017, Sophie Pierce’s world changed forever when her twenty-year-old son Felix died suddenly and unexpectedly. Thrown into this new reality, she had to find a way to keep on living. By writing a series of letters to Felix – composed during walks and swims taken close to his burial place by the River Dart – Sophie gradually learned how to dwell in the landscape of sudden loss, navigating the weather and tides of grief. The Green Hill collects these letters alongside Sophie’s account of the years following Felix’s death, into which she weaves poignant memories of his life. What results is a deeply moving, beautifully captured record of how – amid the plants and rivers of Dartmoor, and in the sea off the South Devon coast – Sophie was able to hold on to and nurture her bond with Felix, both in her mind and through a physical engagement with the landscape: actively mourning, rather than grieving. The book is a celebration of the natural world and the role it plays in our lives and relationships, as well as examining how beauty, a sense of place and the passing seasons can help us contend with our own mortality. Above all, though, The Green Hill is one woman’s story of navigating through trauma and loss, and towards a fragile, complicated kind of joy.

The Time Traveler''s Wife meets Crazy Rich Asians in this speculative romance set against Singapore''s tumultuous past. Immersed in Southeast Asian history, time-travel, and an impossible love story, The Light Between Us is perfect for readers of literary historical fiction and modern romantasy alike.At work one night, photography archivist Charlie Sze-Toh receives a misdirected letter from Wang Tian Wei, a 1920s colonial era Chinese photographer. Through a mysterious digital folder at her end and photographic plates at his, they begin a conversation that leads to a transcendental romance that spans lifetimes.In his time, Tian Wei scours a turbulent Singapore for his missing friend, Aiko, leading him to the perfumed chambers of a Japanese brothel. Meanwhile, in the modern day, Charlie struggles against a family dynamic dominated by her stepmother, a manipulative matriarch who uses family secrets as bargaining chips. Communication starts to become difficult and Tian Wei?s letters are tinged by the increasing threat of Japanese Occupation. Will one last fate-defying letter from Charlie allow Tian Wei to keep their love alive?Inspired by her research into Singaporean historical archives, Elaine Chiew weaves Chinese mythology and early 20th century colonial Singapore into this speculative epic.

A freezing Easter Monday in 1917. The Somerset Light Infantry is launched into the Battle of Arras. Three young friends fight for their lives and the chance to return home. Robert is twenty-three years old, a farmer’s boy from Somerset, who joins up against his father’s wishes. Robert forms fast friendships with Stanley, who lied about his age to go to war, and Ernest, whose own slippery account betrays a life on the streets. Their friendship is forged through gas attacks, trench warfare, freezing in trenches, hunting rats, and chasing down kidnapped regimental dogs. Their life is one of mud and mayhem but also love and laughs. This is the story of Robert’s journey to Arras and back, his dreams and memories drawing him home. His story is that of the working-class Tommy, the story of thousands of young men who were caught in the collision between old rural values and the relentlessness of a new kind of war. It is a story that connects the past with the present through land, love and blood.

'Think about a tune ... the unsayable, the invisible, the longing in music. Here is a book of tunes without musical notes ... It wrings the heart' John Berger'The voice that O'Grady has crafted succeeds so well ... running in parallel, Pyke's stark arresting images are laced between the paragraphs and chapters. The interplay between the two mediums is delicately powerful' Hilary White'A masterpiece' Robert Macfarlane'O'Grady does not just respond to Pyke's stark, beautiful photographs: he gives voice to thousands' Louise Kennedy'The experience of Irish emigration uniquely and powerfully illuminated' Mark Knopfler'If the words tell the story of the voiceless, the bleak lovely photographs show their faces. Fiction rarely gets as close to the messy, glorious truth as do memories and photographs. This rare novel dares to use both' Charlotte Mendelson, TLSAn old man lies alone and sleepless in London. Before dawn he is taken by an image from his childhood in the West of Ireland, and begins to remember a migrant's life. Haunted by the faces and the land he left behind, he calls forth the bars and boxing booths of England, the potato fields and building sites, the music he played and the woman he loved. Timothy O'Grady's tender, vivid prose and Steve Pyke's starkly beautiful photographs combine to make a unique work of fiction, an act of remembering suffused with loss, defiance and an unforgettable loveliness. An Irish life with echoes of the lives of unregarded migrant workers everywhere. Since it was first published in 1997, I Could Read the Sky has achieved the status of a classic.

‘Go to Empty Wigs for prose that never ceases to dazzle, for an extended holiday from contemporary pieties and to disgrace yourself with laughter’ Paul Genders, Literary ReviewEmpty Wigs is a hallucinatory ride through the twentieth century that will cement Jonathan Meades as one of the great imaginative writers of our age. It moves from bloody Algiers in 1962 to the Welsh Marches in the late nineteenth century, from Lüneburg Heath to suburban southern England. Its characters are damned and doomed. They exert free will so make terrible choices. Their appetites are base. Their lives are without end. They lurch to extremes. From euthanasia to terrorism and political assassination, with secrets and betrayals, great gothic houses and pseudo-scientific experiments, Empty Wigs is a vast compendium of tales from the jungle of existence which show humankind at its most abject. Many of its stories are bleak, perverse, harrowing. Many are tragically farcical. But the writing is neon-rich, gorgeous and baroque, funny and joyfully offensive. Told through frames within frames, mazes within mazes, colliding narratives and quick changing moods, Empty Wigs is a late modern masterpiece and a return to the novel’s origins. ‘Loudly immoral, deafeningly well written and indiscriminately offensive, Meades’s novel is a breath of filthy air in a puritanical age’ Cosmo Adair, The Times‘Meades finds the mot juste, the striking reference, to complete every brilliant line. Is it all a bit too much? Reader, it is’ Stephen Smith, The Observer‘A head-spinning turn that can quicken from high farce into deep seriousness, vaulting across time and space’ Chris Harvey, Daily Telegraph

Words from the Hedge is a passionate evocation of the history, beauty and importance of our hedgerows by a craftsman who has been laying hedges for almost three decades and has the scars to prove it. Hedges are as old as civilisation and as emblematic of the British countryside as chalk streams, hay meadows and oak trees. But unlike woodland and rivers, farmland hedges remain on the periphery of the public consciousness, often going unnoticed and almost always underappreciated. Wielding his pen as deftly he does a billhook, professional hedgelayer Richard Negus takes us on a journey that reveals these ribbons of thorn and barb are so much more than mere decoration or boundary markers. They are essential for much-needed wildlife recovery. If we don’t get our hedges right, there is little hope for species like the almost-extinct turtledove. And yet, no hedge is truly 'wild'; each one is a testament to generations of human skill and labour, requiring ongoing maintenance to survive and thrive. But there is a problem: we need more hedgelayers, and this is something Negus is trying to solve. Introducing a lively band of fellow countrymen and countrywomen along the way, Negus explores everything from the practical complexities of modern farming and land ownership to the challenges faced by conservationists. Written with vigour and humour, as well as rare insight and honesty, Words from the Hedge is a timely exploration of how we can use hedges to make the British countryside a place where nature has a home.

An intimate and compelling memoir of how a traumatic journey into motherhood led one woman to revisit the myriad mental-health assessments she had received growing up, until she discovered that she’d been autistic all along. Laura Richmond had no idea that childbirth could result in post-traumatic stress until she experienced it for herself. After a harrowing labour, she was admitted to a psychiatric mother and baby unit together with her six-week-old son. Having been funnelled into mental health services almost twenty years earlier, Laura had tried every medication going and everyone had different views on what her problem was. She’d found that sometimes no one – however qualified they are or however deeply they care – really knows what to say or how to help. She was increasingly desperate, until the birth of her son sparked a sequence of events that would change everything. Laura retraces her steps through all of this. In doing so, she reflects on the tensions and absurdities within modern mental health care, the ways in which trauma shapes us and directs us, and how we can learn to trust ourselves as parents and as people. All My Worldly Joy is a story of self-discovery and profound love. It is a story of how one woman's life has been transformed, and of the thousand tiny joys her son brings every day.

Stories are living things. They are viral. They enter us through our eyes and our ears and they take up residence inside us. Unriddling the World is a collection of fifty traditional narratives – stories from the winding track that leads from nursery rhyme to the great tales of creation and redemption, by way of ballads, riddles, folk tales, legends, epics and myths. They’ve been shaped by countless voices and they’ve stood the test of time. They are concentrations of human experience and they speak in the enigmatic picture-language of dreams. These Fifty Wonder Tales form the heart of Hugh Lupton's repertoire: from ‘The Stone Monkey’ to the ‘Oil of Mercy’, from ‘The Pottle of Brains’ to the ‘Pool of Dharma’, they are a gift from the past to the future, shaped for retelling by a master storyteller. They’re alive . . . and they’re waiting to be told again.

In 1991, a new comedy hit British screens and, at first glance, it was just another sofa-based sitcom. Soon, it became clear Bottom was a masterpiece. Mixing cartoon-style slapstick, knob gags and Beckettian nihilism, it left an indelible mark on British comedy. Written by and starring comedy legends Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson as reprobates Richard Richard and Edward Hitler, their depraved universe unfolded over three chaotic BBC TV series, five explosive live shows and a formidable feature film. Celebrating the legacy of TV’s greatest losers Richie and Eddie, this book features thorough ‘Bottom Inspections’, ‘Bottom Nuggets’, unseen photos, draft script excerpts and interviews with cast and crew sure to reignite fans’ love for Rik and Ade’s unmatched talent for toilet humour. Crafted by the creators of the popular Talking Bottom podcast Paul Tanter, Angela Pearson and Mat Brooks, this is the ultimate guide to the outrageous and unforgettable sitcom that continues to delight and disgust audiences today.

Moving from West Belfast and County Monaghan to the streets of San Francisco, Timothy O’Grady’s exhilarating new novel is an epic portrait of art and war, authenticity and selling out, told through the fates of three men. Ronan Treanor, Monaghan native and teller of this tale, is a celebrated theorist of post-modern architecture in New York. Paul Crane, single son of a hotel maid in Indiana, turns his mathematical gift into a multi-million-dollar career as an investment banker. And the mysterious Ryan, who drew as a boy in besieged West Belfast, but was swept up in the war against the British and lived a decade of extreme and escalating violence as a sniper. Through him, the war in Ireland and its psychic legacy are brought into close focus in a way rarely seen in contemporary fiction. Their lives merge and conflict, rise and fall, as one man becomes the undoing of the next. Hauntingly beautiful, lyrical and profound, this is a novel about what happens when you cannot escape your past, featuring drawings and paintings by Anthony Lott.

Deep underwater lurks a mysterious man-made illness. It has gone by many names over the years – Satan’s disease, diver’s palsy, the chokes – but today, medics call it decompression sickness. You know it as the bends. In the winter of 2012, British diver Martin Robson joined an expedition to southern Russia which sought to find a submerged cave system never seen by the human eye. On their final day, as Robson attempted to surface after reaching a record depth in the Blue Lake, disaster struck: just seventy-five feet down, he was ambushed by the bends. Forced to gamble on an underwater practice most doctors believe is a suicidal act, he sank back into the water. Soon, his only hope for survival was a dramatic mercy mission organised at the highest levels of the Russian government. Between the Devil and the Deep is the first book to tell the terrifying true story of what it feels like to get the bends, taking you inside the body and mind of a man who suffered the unthinkable. Writer Mark Cowan also explores the fascinating history of decompression sickness, the science behind what causes the disease, and the stories of the forgotten divers who pushed the limits of physical endurance to help find a solution.