Recommended Reads
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Put the Phone Away
When New Zealand schoolteacher Chris Valli confiscated a student’s cell phone during class, he never imagined it would cost him his career and ultimately, deregistration. Cast out by the system he once served for 10 years, Chris was left questioning everything he believed about respect, consequences and having the mental health strategies or behavioural toolbox to cope as a former primary school teacher who transitioned to secondary.
In the ashes of his teaching career, Chris finds a new voice—as a journalist and author in what he describes as owning his mistakes and truths. With raw honesty and insight, he chronicles the silent struggles inside classrooms, the moral grey zones teachers walk daily, and the dangerous power of community public perception in the age of viral outrage.
Put the Phone Away is a powerful memoir of redemption, reinvention, and resilience. It’s a story for every teacher who’s ever felt powerless, for every parent navigating the digital minefield, and for every reader who’s ever wondered what really happens behind the school gates.
With humour, heartbreak, and hard-earned wisdom, Chris Valli shows that sometimes, losing everything can help you find your true calling. Chris says his growth didn’t come from success but from sitting with the truth he once tried to avoid. “Teaching made me perform. Writing made me reflect. And in that reflection, I finally found myself. Vulnerability is a strength.”
£7.99 -
4 Armour-Plated Friends
Please allow Lola, Rocky, Colin and Pauline to introduce themselves to you and become your friend whilst reading what they get up to at work, enjoying their holidays and just hanging out being best friends. Find out how useful and unusual it is to be Lola, Rocky, Colin and Pauline, who are all armour-plated but look and behave differently.
Lola is an armour-plated armadillo and a vegetarian.
Rocky is an armour-plated rhinoceros and needs to go to Specsavers.
Colin is an armour-plated crocodile and his eyes are yellow but can turn red.
Pauline is an armour-plated Pangolin and likes to roll up into a tight ball.
£10.99 -
A Smattering of Applause
These disparate short stories form a cohesive whole in the lives and tales of a starving artist, a war correspondent, a shelter survivor and other vivid characters.
Their struggles and at times inept counsel lead to a resolve that surpasses the reader with redeemed prophecy like life itself; the examples of the underclass narrate the troubling complexities of class and hypocrisy. With humour and dignity, the lesser self is elevated to a higher truth and a greater communal understanding.
£6.99 -
Dating Before the Internet
Based on a true story about dating before internet dating was available. It is about trying to find the right man to share your life with, marriage or not, but finding a suitable man was proving to be a trial and error, mainly error, with upsets and sexual encounters along the way. An unforgettable experience. Take the bull by the horns and have a go.
£6.99 -
TimeShips and GalaxyShips
Embark on another exhilarating journey with the intrepid Clason twins, Tarvin and Harden. Guided by their wise old grandfather Axel, they travel back in time to Earth’s enigmatic Carboniferous period aboard Axel’s state-of-the-art TimeShip. Their mission? To launch a fleet of six unmanned GalaxyShips into the vast expanse of the Milky Way.
These GalaxyShips, cruising at whatever sublight speeds our rocket engines can muster, will deploy survey drones to map the cosmos in stunning 3D detail as they cruise through the galaxy during our past until we trigger them to download their data in our present. These maps, created millions of years in Earth’s past, hold the key to humanity’s future exploration.
When reported to Earth in the present day, their detailed maps are the lifeline for quantum navigators, providing them with the quantum-mapped destinations for their starship’s quantum entanglement drive. By quantum jumping from one drone-mapped location to the next, new exploratory ladders to the stars are established, paving the way for humanity’s routes for bold journeys into and across the galaxy.
Join the Clason twins on this thrilling adventure, where the past and the future intertwine in a dance of cosmic proportions.
£16.99 -
Angel or Devil
When brilliance meets recklessness, the consequences are deadly.
Eminent cardiologist Dr Gareth Hughes-Parry, a man driven by obsessive perfectionism and haunted by his own vices, makes a split-second decision after a cyclist swerves into his path. Should he stop and risk everything—his career, his reputation, his freedom—or disappear into the night? He drives on.
The cyclist is later declared brain dead. To Gareth’s horror, the victim turns out to be one of his own patients—someone he was treating for unexplained dizzy spells.
As the walls close in, Gareth’s carefully constructed life unravels. Enter Chief Inspector Brian Jones, a quirky but razor-sharp detective determined to uncover the truth. With a manslaughter charge looming, Gareth finds himself at the centre of a high-stakes courtroom battle. But justice won’t wait for the gavel to fall.
The victim’s vengeful brothers take matters into their own hands, abducting Gareth and demanding ransom. What follows is a breakneck game of cat and mouse—culminating in a pulse-pounding car chase led by Gareth’s fiery father, Terry, and his band of unlikely vigilantes.
A story of guilt, redemption, and how one fateful moment can shatter everything.
£9.99 -
A Theory of Law
From the science of evolution and consciousness to the rule of law and truth, A Theory of Law presents an original theory of law with a wide variety of insights into the fundamentals of legal theory.
In A Theory of Law, the long-term debate between legal positivists and natural law theorists is solved in favour of the latter, with the effect that unjust state action does not amount to valid law. Whilst legal positivists argue that state action can amount to law regardless of how unjust it is, A Theory of Law argues that such a position is significantly lacking both in intellectual rigour and in truth.
The heart of this matter concerns the nature of truth, and, with this in mind, a definition of truth is given. Truth, it is suggested, is not neutral as between good and evil, so legal truth must be an expression of the good.
With a variety of important ideas in a form easily accessible to those without legal training, students and established scholars, A Theory of Law is a must-read for those interested in widening their knowledge of the nature of the laws which govern our society.
£14.99 -
Abchurch Imperial
The story is set in a church in the City of London during the period 1900–1940. The background of the novel is witness to the international height of British imperial power – albeit an imperial power which was waning.
The Church of England, trying to cling to an imperial past which reinforced its own authority, has almost lost sight of its ecclesiastical purpose to promote Christian values to parishioners at a local church level.
Thomas, a young vicar, patiently and almost alone looks after the interests of his communicants and by so doing appears out of tune with the age. He is overlooked for promotion and often ignored by his fellow clerics.
Eventually, however, his honesty, hard work and Christian good intentions make a clear statement to local residents, who in return regularly flock to his church services and social events.
If the Church of England is indeed to survive in a post-imperial age, perhaps it will have to rethink its Christian mission and its values.
£8.99 -
The Homecoming
Selling Larkdale Hall seemed the right remedy for the escalating troubles of the Heriots. However, stepping towards their independent lives, not knowing what was going to happen, seemed only to exacerbate tensions amongst them. Their initial troubles intensified, their woes worsened, causing them to fall into deeper and more serious difficulties. Charles Heriot, once a pillar of society, becomes unrecognisable to all who knew him. This respectable and revered man turns into a low-down drunken adulterer. And, only a miracle could patch up his awkward estrangement from the lovely Clarinda, who is dumbstruck and bewildered by his behaviour.
Then, Haydon. He imagined he had found some paradise with Rowena, only to find he had married a woman with a trail of debts following her. Now he truly knows the meaning of money worries. He is at the end of his tether not only for himself and Rowena but also for Bertie, Betsy and their newborn baby. Their lives are an utter shambles.
It is not plain sailing for Matilda and Leyton either. She does love Leyton but finds him extremely insensitive at times. Her feelings get hurt; she becomes exasperated by things he says. At times being with him is something of a labour. Then he loses his job at Larkdale Hall, where he had been retained, when Richard Heriot sold the house. To make matters worse, Matilda must come to terms with not being a mother. She had not bargained on not getting pregnant.
All in all, the Heriots were going through hell. Now this family is not only fragmented and fragile but also a family on the cusp of destruction.
However, Richard Heriot did have a plan. He believed his wonderful plan could be the magic key to saving his family. But would his fantastic idea be the final solution for his beloved family? Only time would tell.
£10.99 -
His Brother's Keeper
His Brother’s Keeper is a sweeping romance-drama set against the vivid backdrop of Jamaica, where the clash between rural traditions and urban ambitions reshapes lives and relationships.
At its heart is a love story tested by more than desire, shaped by questions of gender expectations, the pull of migration, the ache of fertility struggles, and the unyielding weight of religion. Families fracture and loyalties are tested as dreams of modernity collide with the stubborn roots of rural life.
Tender, raw, and deeply human, His Brother’s Keeper explores what it means to belong, to hope, and to love in a society caught between the old ways and the new. It is a story not only of romance but of resilience, sacrifice, and the choices that echo across generations.
£7.99 -
Santified Sins
By day, he is Bishop, a spiritual leader whose sermons draw thousands and whose prayers can move a congregation to tears. By night, he is the Godfather, a silent mastermind of Portmore’s criminal underworld, feared and respected in equal measure.
For years, he has balanced the pulpit and the streets, commanding loyalty from both choir and crew. To the public, he is a man of God. To those who know better, he is power incarnate.
But when grief, betrayal, and ambition threaten to unravel the fragile line he has walked for decades, the Bishop must decide how far he is willing to go to protect his legacy and whether his salvation lies in faith, fear, or fire.
Set against the vibrant yet volatile backdrop of Portmore, Jamaica, this gripping tale of duality, dominance, and deception asks: How long can one man serve two masters?
£7.99 -
The Secret of the Dark Fleet
The Secret of the Dark Fleet – A Cosmic Adventure Like No Other.
When best mates Mike and Rick set out for a late-night pizza run, they never expected to be abducted by aliens and launched into a wild journey across the cosmos. From battling robot mercenaries on the Moon to evading fierce alien canines on Mars, their adventure is a whirlwind of danger, discovery, and unexpected reunions.
But between interplanetary chases, mysterious Sasquatches, and a galaxy-wide conspiracy, the duo find themselves fighting not just for their own survival, but for the future of humanity itself. Friendships are tested, secrets revealed, and nothing is ever quite what it seems.
Fast-paced, imaginative, and packed with heart, The Secret of the Dark Fleet weaves speculative science with forgotten myth and pulse-pounding suspense. It’s a story of chaos and camaraderie, of cosmic origins and the choices that define us—all served up with a cold Galaxy Bitter and the Moon’s finest pepperoni pizza at The Stardust Tavern.
Are you ready to unlock the secrets of the Dark Fleet?
£10.99
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