Sun Tans for the Gaiety Girls

Jack Richards is a self-employed young man. A very early tragic marriage rendered him a celibate who has not spoken to ladies other than costumers and shop assistants for over five long years. One sunny Sunday morning he meets four young female dancers desperate to top up their sun tans. There are no local facilities for topless sunbathing, so in a moment that surprises him, he offers them the use of his secluded back garden of his renovated farmhouse. One week changes all their lives. By the following Sunday night, all four girls have managed to win their way into Jack’s affections and bed. He even gets to discuss marriage with one who shares an interest with him. But will their plans come to fruition and will Jack become happy, or hurt once again?

Has he made the right choice? Do you think he could have done better? Don’t leave your choice too long. At the end of the first week, choose which of the girls loves him deeply until the bitter-sweet end, one of them does. Enjoy.

Sunset Collector

Illusion and disillusion

Friendship and betrayal

Ecstasy and madness

Two young Englishmen arrive in LA in 1980, hungry for experience. They dive headlong into technicolour Hollywood days, sunkissed and free beneath exotic palms. At night they slide on charm through a Sunset Strip parade of hookers, pimps, dealers, gigolos, hitmen, punks and struggling actors. They set up camp in a glamorously sleazy joint and befriend the eccentric barflies. They are a million miles away from Thatcher’s grey, dreary London town, where everything closes by 11.

Innocence collides with experience and there gradually emerges a darker vision of LA: a Manson-haunted, coke-addled, hedonistic playground. A beautiful girl appears at their door at 3am and breaks up the bachelor party. Triangular mind games herald cracks in the unbreakable friendship, then reality itself starts to unravel, on a tragicomic journey of self-discovery, reaching a climax with a mind-bending trip out into the desert.

At the dawn of the 80’s, a rite of passage journey through an impressionistic whirlwind of sex, drugs and mental illness.

Surf n Turf

Disconcerted by her boyfriend’s hasty marriage proposal, London-born Sarah cycles from Cape Town to the Karoo in search of her heritage, and her heart.

On the way, disaster strikes leaving her lost and confused in an arid landscape. Rescued by a handsome sheep farmer, she has just a locket; a phrase: “touch the stars” and a faded map, to navigate her way forward.

As for Luan, one minute he is warm and friendly, the next haunted by pain and so distant.

What has hurt him so deeply? What will it take to melt the ice around his heart? Can Luan help Sarah find what she is looking for?

Surreal Journey

The world of pubs and clubs has grown wearisome for one of Earth’s solo travellers. Inspired by pop culture and the ideals of his fading youth, he undertakes a trip across the Atlantic to find what he hopes will be somewhere to belong. Where has he really ended up? Can he save himself from disillusionment on an altogether surreal journey?

Survival: A Story of Friendship

It is a true story based on 13 years of research: the story of friendship between a Jewish boy, Freddy and his Christian friend, Helmut (who are separated by the political turmoil of the aftermath of the First World War in Germany), who obliged Freddy and Freddy’s family to seek refuge in France. It is also the story of friendship between Freddy and George, Freddy’s classmate whom Freddy meets in school in Paris. Moreover, it is also the story of Sigmund, whose patriotic blindness impacted his and his family’s life; the story of Nellie, who left Germany for Colombia before Nellie’s parents sought refuge in France and whose mission would be to reunite the family in a peaceful and friendly country.

Furthermore, the novel also emphasises the emotional costs of the First World War and its indirect result on the onset of the Second World War.

Survival: A Story of Friendship – Part 2

Survival: A Story of Friendship – Part 2 is about the voyage Freddy and his mother, Helene, take to escape Europe and the ravages of World War II. After promising Sigmund on his deathbed that they would reunite the family in a peaceful and friendly country, they make their way via ship to Colombia, the country Nellie had made her home just as the Nazi movement in Germany was gaining momentum. After their safe arrival, Freddy is forced to look for work in order to support his mother and himself while adjusting to new surroundings at the same time. After some fortuitous, work-related encounters, Freddy decides to not only run his own lingerie business but produce the raw materials he needs himself.

This is the story of how someone who was unable to complete school or go to university, due to strictly unfortunate circumstances, had the vision and skills to found a company that would provide jobs and well-being. Thus giving back to the country that granted him what the German Nazi government had taken away from him: his nationality.

Survivor's Eyes

With mankind on the edge of extinction, can our humanity survive? Or is civilisation just a thin, fragile veneer, masking our animal nature?

In the ruins of our society, a lonely, bitter man ekes out an existence, shying away from all human contact. He struggles with starvation and ever-present mortal danger. However, his greatest battle is to try and retain some vestige of the civilised man he once was, even if that means living alone.

Taiden's Truth

THE DAUGHTER HAS RISEN…

The four islands of the Shalmeir are falling into chaos. The world is under threat from a fallen deity intent on revenge and destruction. Only one can end these dark and difficult times – or so Salzahr’s Prophecy states, but prophecies without proof are no more than myth, and the so-called ‘Daughter of the Shalmeir’ is nowhere to be found.

When a lonely princess befriends a prisoner dwelling in the dungeons of her castle home, his remarkable story has the potential to reverse the Shalmeir’s fortunes irrevocably.

However, it is one thing to seek the truth and another to know it. Having acquired this revelatory knowledge, can she find the strength to accept and rise to all it implies?

Taiden’s Truth is the debut novel of author Emma Champion

and Part One in The Taiden Trilogy.

Take Two Tablets

“If people think I’m bad, then I’ll be good at that!”

Macy Lord is living her worst life: victimised at home, vilified at school.

When novice Religious Studies teacher Mr Fairclough asks his class to re-interpret The Ten Commandments, Macy resolves, for the sake of authenticity, to break them. Blaming, blaspheming, coveting, dishonouring, lying, stealing, and worshipping shiny stuff all come easy, but then she kills – and kills again.

Traumatised by her potential parricide, Macy goes on the run: faking adulthood in London, blurring art and death in Paris, escaping undercover in Arabia, raising the bar in Brooklyn.  

Pursued by a coterie of vengeful cast-offs, Macy craves her calm, cool Mr Fairclough, but having lost his star pupil, he too has eschewed education for misadventures of his own.

If nurture is absent, will nature take its course? Can Macy find redemption in the chaos of her life? And how will she ‘complete the set’ with The Seventh Commandment still unbroken?

Takh - The Spirit

“I have always loved animals. My constant encounters with both domesticated and wild, as a boy in a village, impressed me for life.”

Nikos Savvakis

In this modern-day equivalent of a medieval bestiary, Nikos Savvakis casts an admiring, occasionally quizzical eye over the creatures with whom we share this world.

Among others, frogs, pigeons, hedgehogs and the ‘princely’ octopus are presented in an unexpected light. Man’s best friend provides moments of both comedy and sorrow, while the title poem ‘Takh – The Spirit’ is in praise of that most magnificent of human allies, the horse.

Showcasing their author’s gift for arresting but appropriate imagery, these slyly witty poems are sure to delight animal-lovers everywhere.

Tales from Here and There

From country bars, back seats of cars
and colonies on Mars,
there’s tales to be told.

Three dozen such tales spanning irony,
pathos and humour from here and there
are presented in no particular order.

So, start anywhere
for your first ten minutes of distraction
from the cares of life.

Tales Of The Hove Amber Cup

During roadworks in Hove, a Bronze Age tomb of exceptional size was unearthed. Inside was an oak tree coffin containing the skeleton of a tall male, and accoutrements showing him to have been of high social status. There was a bronze dagger, an axe and a whetstone. Resting on his breastbone he held a cup, shaped like a modern item of breakfast crockery but with a rounded base. It was made of Baltic amber. Who was this person? Why was the cup made of amber so dear to him? Amber, that offspring of sunshine and trees, has the Baltic Sea as a godmother. How did he come by it? Was he a trader? How far did he travel? Did he bring home new ideas together with exciting spices and artefacts no one there had seen before? All answers can only be speculative conjectures. The cup having been found in Hove does prove though, that Albion had contact with the Baltic Sea. Tales of the Hove Amber Cup is a celebration of this 3000-year-old British treasure.