Katie Flynn is the pen name of the much-loved writer, Judy Turner, who published over ninety novels in her lifetime. Judy's unique stories were inspired by hearing family recollections of life in Liverpool during the early twentieth century, and her books went on to sell more than eight million copies. Judy passed away in January 2019, aged 82. 
 
The legacy of Katie Flynn lives on through her daughter, Holly Flynn, who continues to write under the Katie Flynn name. Holly worked as an assistant to her mother for many years and together they co-authored a number of Katie Flynn novels. 
 
Holly lives in the north east of Wales with her husband Simon and their two children. When she's not writing she enjoys walking her dog Tara in the surrounding countryside, and cooking forbidden foods such as pies, cakes and puddings! She looks forward to sharing many more Katie Flynn stories, which she and her mother devised together, with readers in the years to come.

Katie Flynn

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Katie Green

A poignant, heart-lifting graphic memoir about anorexia, eating disorders and the journey to recovery 
 
Like most kids, Katie was a picky eater. She’d sit at the table in silent protest, hide uneaten toast in her bedroom, listen to parental threats that she’d have to eat it for breakfast. But in any life a set of circumstance can collide, and normal behaviour might soon shade into something sinister, something deadly. 
 
 Lighter Than My Shadow is a hand-drawn story of struggle and recovery, a trip into the black heart of a taboo illness, an exposure of those who are so weak as to prey on the vulnerable, and an inspiration to anybody who believes in the human power to endure towards happiness. 
 
‘Even at its most heartbreaking it never feels sombre … Inspiring, plucky and, in the end, consoling, it’s hard to put down’ Observer

Lighter Than My Shadow

Kingsley Amis

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Hubert Anvil is a 10 year old boy blessed with the voice of an angel. The Church hierarchy decrees that Hubert should be turned into a castrato - an alteration that could bring Hubert fame and fortune, but would also cut him off from an adult world he is curious to discover. In a dystopian world where Martin Luther never reformed and where the Holy Office's power is absolute, where will Hubert turn if he decides to defy their wishes 
 
©Kingsley Amis 1976 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

The Alteration

Deborah Moggach

Christmas should be a joyous occasion filled with peace and love, but the looming prospect of the festive season fills Russell ‘Buffy’ Buffery with dread. Retired actor, thrice divorced, hapless father – Buffy is well versed in the complicated family Christmas, shuffling between exes and children. 
 
Except this year will be different. He has inherited a B&amp;B in rural Wales, and can finally escape the nearest and dearest, and play ‘Myne Host’ to a group of paper-hatted strangers, on escape-routes from their own clans. But when the strangers check in with their emotional baggage, and the Cab Sav begins to flow, Buffy soon realises that Christmas is never without its little complications… 
 
Join the gang at Heartbreak Hotel as they run riot, and celebrate Christmas the Buffy way.

Twin Beds

Christmas at Heartbreak Hotel

Wesley Stace

By George is the utterly original story of a flawed but formidable family - and of two very different boys. One is an eleven-year-old schoolboy, the other a ventriloquist's dummy. With no voice of his own but plenty to say, the dummy tells his life story; from his humble beginnings in the 1930s to his rise in fame as force's favourite during the war and the horrible secret he's been made to keep. 
 
Years later, his self-possessed but vulnerable namesake finds himself packed off to boarding school, far from his mother Frankie, dynamic actress and Principal Boy; his grandma Queenie, children's party entertainer extraordinaire; and his bed-ridden but redoubtable great-grandmother. 
 
While the dummy lies dusty, silent and forgotten, his young counterpart sets out to learn about his dead grandfather's past as a world-famous ventriloquist, his magical powers and their family's curious history.

By George

Joseph O'Connor

The Irish Male at Home and Abroad is the hilarious sequel to Joe O'Connor's bestseller The Secret World of the Irish Male. From flirting lessons in downtown Manhattan to being offered a good ride in Disneyland by the now legendary Wanda, it was a long, strange and hilarious trip. Now, in The Irish Male at Home and Abroad, O'Connor returns faster, funnier and filthier than ever before. 
 
Impersonating Santa Claus in a busy Dublin store on Christmas Eve, spending a penny in Lord Jeffrey Archer's penthouse loo, traipsing the local-radio publicity circuit in 100-degree Australian heat, on the run in revolutionary Nicaragua, contemplating the Shroud of Turin, or making a deposit in a grotty sperm bank - here are tall tales and short stories: absurd, anarchic and unforgettably side-splitting adventures from home and abroad. 
 
Laugh-out-loud funny, yet always affectionate and sometimes poignant, O'Connor roams through an Ireland of wife-swapping sodomites and late-night sodalities, when not getting lost in the restless new Europe of beach holidays, terrible beauties and Baywatch lookalikes. It's going to be another weird and uproarious trip. But like Wanda once said: Hitch a ride, sweetheart, and hang on real tight!

Irish Male At Home And Abroad

Antony Moore

"Since I last saw them I've not got married, or had any children, or got a promotion, or inherited a fortune; I've been doing exactly the same things I was doing last time I went." 
 
"Well tell them you've expanded." 
 
"They'll see that for themselves." 
 
Another school reunion looms for Harvey Briscow, and once again he agonises over whether to attend; as the owner of a comic shop, a devout drinker, smoker and full-time misanthropist, he's spent much of his time wondering what might have been had he chosen another path. Nothing in Harvey's life has changed since the last reunion, five years ago, or indeed the one before, and short of fabricating a fantastic change of fortune there's little to be had by going. Not until Josh, his sole employee and only true friend, suggests he may have opportunity to reclaim a very rare comic Harvey once swapped, does he galvanise himself into action. 
 
On arrival at the crowded event he meets the much-maligned Charles 'Bleeder' Odd, who has now matured into a successful businessman and appears nauseatingly content with his lot. But as Harvey makes inroads to retrieve his lost comic, he begins to suspect that all is not as it seems. The worthless item he exchanged it for must have some significance... 
 
The Swap cracks along at a tremendous pace. On one level Antony Moore's debut is a superbly plotted thriller, on another, a hilarious black comedy that will amuse anyone who has attended, or considered attending, a school reunion.

The Swap

J. M. Barrie

Wendy, Michael and John are sleeping when the window of their nursery blows open and lets in a very remarkable boy, Peter Pan, and his fairy, Tinker Bell. Peter soon entices the three children from their beds and out through the window to Neverland. There, they encounter mermaids, fairies, the Lost Boys, the Indian princess Tiger Lily and her tribe, and do battle with an villainous gang of pirates and their leader, the sinister Captain Hook, in a magical adventure which has enchanted generations of children and adults alike.

Peter Pan

E Nesbit

Anthea, Cyril, Robert, Jane, and the Lamb are back – the Psammead may have vanished but there are plenty of wishes still to be granted. 
 
‘Rain, rain, go away,’ said Anthea; ‘but it never DOES go’ 
 
I expect you know how boring it can be to stay indoors on rainy days. it was on one of those dull days that the five children accidentally set their nursery on fire (with fireworks). No one thought that that disastrous day would bring the start of new adventures. 
 
But the new nursery carpet, when it arrives, comes with something odd wrapped inside it: an enormous glowing egg. And inside is the most beautiful bird you’ve ever seen – in fact, not a bird: a noble and fabulous phoenix. New adventures just might have begun… 
 
Includes exclusive content: In the Backstory you can ponder what you would wish for and find out which character you most resemble!

The Phoenix and the Carpet

Charles Dickens

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SIMON CALLOW 
 
Wealthy old Martin Chuzzlewit is surrounded by a host of grasping, unscrupulous relatives and suspects the family vices of selfishness and greed are already showing in his grandson. The younger Martin is therefore cast out upon the world to learn to fend for himself. Apprenticed to the oily hypocrite Peckniff, he meets both the sweet-tempered Tom Pinch and the irrepressible Mark Tapley, with whom he sets forth to America to find his fortune. Dickens created some of his most gleefully repulsive and enduring characters in this tale of corruption and virtue, murder and unrequited love.

Martin Chuzzlewit

Joshua Furst

In Short People, we encounter, among many others, Jason and Billy, best friends who discover by the age of six how to conquer the world, only to see this idyll then shatter before them; Shawn, whose baptism compels him to make life a holy hell for everyone around him; and Evan, who finds that his pursuit of a Boy Scout merit badge is luring him into uncharted social territory. In the meantime, an agonized couple exhausts their expectations for their own kids, with an aftermath that afflicts them all. There's also Mary, whose sixteenth birthday precipitates an adulthood she is scarcely prepared to enter, and Emmy, who began that same transition when she was only twelve. Finally, and perhaps most harrowingly, is the nurse who with eerie prescience delivers so many babies to their destiny. 
 
In a remarkable display of imagination and compassion, Joshua Furst reconstrues our preconceptions about innocence, purity, faith and memory through an unflinching, pitch-perfect gaze, with both authority and originality. Each new story enhances a collection whose importance is thoroughly contemporary and at once hilarious and heartbreaking.

Short People

Hannah Berry

'Nowadays I don't get out of bed for less than a murder. I don't get out of bed much...Until today.' 
 
'Private Researcher' Fernández Britten is the messenger who would view being shot as a blessing. The years spent uncovering people's secret dramas and helping to confirm their darkest suspicions have taken their toll. Battered by remorse over the lives he has ruined, he clings to the hope of redemption through delivering, just once, a truth with a positive impact. It's a hope he has been clinging to for a long time. 
 
And so Britten and his 'unconventional' partner, Brülightly, take on the case of suicide Berni Kudos. At least, suicide was the official verdict. His fiancée, Charlotte Maughton, believes his death was something more sinister. 
 
Blackmail, revenge, murder: desperate acts are exposed, and this is no tree-lined avenue to justice. Each new revelation stirs the muddy waters of a family's dark secrets, and each fresh twist takes them further from that elusive redemption. 
 
There are murder mysteries and there are murder mysteries, but this is a noir where nothing is black and white.

Britten and Brulightly

Louis de Bernières

John the gardener is disillusioned with his life, past and present. Alan is John's assistant, helplessly in love with Sylvie, the stable girl. These three characters are united by their friendship and by George, the barn spider. 
 
Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was previously published in the collection Notwithstanding.

Talking to George (Storycuts)

John Burnside

The Mercy Boys are four Dundee men who meet every day in their local pub and drink: first to find order, then oblivion. Each has his own ghosts, his dreams of escape. But when death comes to the Mercy Boys it comes suddenly and with staggering violence, and their dreams of leaving bleed into nightmares.

The Mercy Boys

Angelica Malin

Thirty women, from Megan Barton-Hanson and Shaparak Khorsandi to Shon Faye and Stephanie Yeboah write on what single womanhood in the modern age means to them. 
 
 
Have you ever worried about going on holiday alone? 
 
Felt queasy at the thought of Valentine's Day without a date? 
 
Thought to yourself, "I want what she has?" 
 
This book is the tonic you need. 
 
 
ANGELICA MALIN - MEGAN BARTON HANSON - ANNIE LORD - STEPHANIE YEBOAH - SHAPARAK KHORSANDI - POORNA BELL - CHARLIE CRAGGS - REBECCA REID - ASHLEY JAMES - CHANTÉ JOSEPH - ROSIE WILBY - SALMA EL-WARDANY - NATALIE BYRNE - SHON FAYE - VENUS LIBIDO - JESSICA MORGAN - FRANCESCA SPECTER - SHANI SILVER - RACHEL THOMPSON - BELLA DEPAULO - MIA LEVITIN - FELICITY MORSE - KETAKI CHOWKHANI - LUCIE BROWNLEE - CHLOE PIERRE - SOPHIA MONEY-COUTTS - NICOLA SLAWSON - RAHEL AKLILU - SOPHIA LEONIE - ROSE STOKES - MADELEINE SPENCER 
 
Curated by journalist and author Angelica Malin, Unattached explores the nuances of being single today through the voices of thirty women; with personal essays reflecting both the unique challenges (hello, going to a wedding alone), and the glorious benefits (goodbye, joint bank account). 
 
Unattached shines a light on brilliant women stepping into their power, owning being alone, and reveals the true depth of female potential when we choose to go against what society expects of us and revel in our own strength.

Unattached

Empowering Essays on Singlehood

Roddy Doyle

Two men meet for a pint – or two – in a Dublin pub. They chew the fat, set the world to rights, curse the ref, say a last farewell… In this second collection of comic dialogues Doyle’s drinkers ponder: 
- a topless Kate Middleton 
- Barack and Michelle Obama (‘fuckin’ gorgeous’) 
- David Beckham (‘Would you tattoo your kids’ names on the back of your neck?’ ‘They wouldn’t fit’) 
- Jimmy Savile (‘a gobshite’) 
- the financial crisis (again) 
- abortion (again) 
- and horsemeat in your burger… 
 
Once again, those we have lost troop through their thoughts - Lou Reed, Seamus Heaney, Reg Presley, Nelson Mandela (‘he should never have left the Four Tops’), Phil Everly, Margaret Thatcher, Shirley Temple - and they still have that unerring ability to ask the really fundamental questions like ‘Would you take penalty points for your missis?’

Two More Pints

Andrew Porter

Andrew Porter's stories offer a stunningly astute vision of contemporary American suburbia, full of tension, heartbreak and emotional complexity - the work of an important new voice. 
 
These ten stories take us across the country - from rural Pennsylvania to suburban Connecticut - and deep into characters struggling to find meaning in their day-to-day lives. A childless couple, craving the affection of an exchange student, fail to set set the boundaries that would keep him safe. And in the title story, a college student looking for her soul mate confronts an impossible choice.

The Theory of Light and Matter

James Hawes

Take four ne'er-do-wells: a 28-year-old ex-public schoolboy who can't bear the idea of setting down; Suzy the Black Widow, who has a deliciously flat stomach and drives like she's breathing through the carbs; Brady the Reservoir Dogs fetishist; and Chico the fat Portuguese waiter. Add some plastic guns, the IRA and a white Merc with fins and you have a plan. What plan? The plan to walk into Michael Winner's private bank and walk out with half a million quid. Fast, clever, stylish, funny and utterly compulsive, this is a first novel with everything.

A White Merc With Fins

Paul Dombey is an ambitious London merchant. He pins all his hopes for the future of his shipping firm on his fragile son whilst his daughter, Florence, goes unnoticed and neglected. It is only when the firm faces ruin, and Dombey is staring at a life of desolate solitude that Florence may finally be valued. Can this heartless businessman be redeemed? Dombey and Son is a delicious and lively satire about pride and its downfall.

Dombey and Son

Julie Myerson

When Donna, Will and Gayle find Frank Chapman lying bruised and battered on the ground on Clapham Common, they feel drawn to help the old man. A connection is forged between the four of them that threatens to upset the careful balance of their lives...

The Touch

Andrew Davies

Read her name! B. Monkey. You can still see it, emblazoned on the cars, the trains, the writing on the wall. Now she's Beatrice. Steady job, steady man, off the drugs, on the level. But going straight can't compare with the heady thrill of life on the edge. Not when the past keeps hooking in to the present. Not when Alan, her love, her rescuer, her future, can never hope to understand...

B Monkey

Jason Fagone

Bill 'EL Wingador' Simmons, Sonya 'The Black Widow' Thomas, David 'Coondog' O'Karma, Bill 'EL Wingador' Simmons, Sonya 'The Black Widow' Thomas, David 'Coondog' O'Karma, Eric 'Badlands' Booker, Timothy 'Eater X' Janus - just a few of the stars of one of America's fastest growing sports: competitive eating. In a country in which a third of the population is clinically obese, competitive eating has made the leap from trestle tables and paper napkins to stadium arenas - in the past two years, more than 1.4 million households have tuned in to Nathan's hot dog contest on ESPN. 
 
 
Beginning with a trip to Japan in search of the elusive (and surprising slim-line) champion Takeru Kobayashi and ending up at the sport's annual grand finale in Coney Island, Jason Fagone spends a year with the stars of the scene, watching as they eat their way into (or out of) oblivion, and finding out just what compels a 'gurgitator' to force down forty-six dozen oysters in ten minutes. 
 
Wickedly funny and devastatingly insightful, Jason Fagone uses this weirdest of sports as a lens through which to examine the dark side of the American Dream - the never-ending quest for wealth, celebrity, possessions and food. And along the way, he uncovers the wonderfully human stories at the heart of this seemingly unnourished corner of American culture. Bigger, better, richer, fatter, Insatiable unlocks a world we all need to face up to. Dig In.

Insatiable

Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream

The Hardings are teetering on the brink. Elson – once one of Houston’s most promising architects, who never quite lived up to expectations – is recently divorced from his wife of thirty years, Cadence. Their grown son, Richard, is still living at home: driving his mother’s minivan, working at a local coffee shop, resisting the career as a writer that beckons him. But when Chloe Harding gets kicked out of her East Coast college, for reasons she can’t explain to either her parents or her older brother, the Hardings’ lives start to unravel. Chloe returns to Houston, but the dangers set in motion back at school prove inescapable. Told with piercing insight, taut psychological suspense, and the wisdom of a true master of character, this is a novel about the vagaries of love and family, about betrayal and forgiveness, about the possibility and impossibility of coming home.

In Between Days

Matthew Baylis

Alastair Strange is having trouble.  His girlfriend Martha, tired of late night telly and takeaway pizzas, has reinvented herself as the real estate princess of Putney. His dream job has turned into a nightmare and his Dad's been arrested for burglary.  Just when things couldn't get worse, along comes Alastair's old friend, society It-girl Tara, with a tantalising job offer. Alastair finds himself teaching media studies in an Ealing school.  A cushy number, he thinks, but that's before Tara calls the favour in- The derelict Ealing Studios are next to the school - their presence haunts Alastair and acts as a continual motif for his story, combining the quirky wit and eccentricity of the Ealing films with an eye for the absurdities of modern urban life.  Flat-sharing with the impossible Davenport, dealing with mysterious girls on the bus and disastrous blind dates, it would seem that there is, perhaps, one last comedy left in Ealing.

The Last Ealing Comedy

Marta Morazzoni

Alphonse Courrier possesses all the might reasonably make a man content: a prosperous ironmonger's business and a position of respect in his Auvergne village, a dutiful, coolly beautiful wife who runs an irreproachable household, two healthy sons, and a hidden mistress - "the ugliest girl in the village but probably the happiest". 
 
Prying eyes and wagging tongues, however, are the life force in a small community, and though Courrier thinks he can play the village gossips with the same skill he brings to the card table, life has a way of dealing the hand you least expect ...

The Alphonse Courrier Affair

Günter Grass

Starusch, a bachelor aged forty teaching 'German and history (two inseparable subjects), undergoes protracted treatment by a dentist who uses TV to distract his patients. Gagged in his chair, the patient projects onto the screen his past and present with the fluidity and visual quality of the movies. Reality and fantasy, the actual and the repressed, overrun the screen in a mirror image of German history. Thus among other episodes we see Krings, one of Hitler's most ferocious 'fight-to-the-finish' generals, return from Russian captivity and engage in sandbox reconstructions of Germany's battles, determined to win them this time. In a casual throwaway, the author reveals his true identity -- Field Marshal Schoerner. 
 
Under the influence of local anesthesia, Starusch's imagination releases h erotic fantasies and the very violence he tries to combat in his pupils, one of them a militant Maoist. The dentist, dispensing humdrum wisdom and painkillers with godlike aloofness, objects to violence, real or imagined, advocating universal Sickcare and a diet preventive of caries as a cure-all. Meanwhile, Scherbaum, Starusch's favorite pupil, grimly prepares to burn his dachshund Max to stir u the conscience of dog- and cat-loving Berliners. 
 
Juggling mockingly with lost and found illusions, with the tensions between reformists and revolutionaries, middle age and youth, Grass has created a satirical portrait of social confusions that adds to his customary exuberance a new mastery of subtle control.

Local Anaesthetic

David Adams Richards

The novel tells the story of Sydney Henderson and his son, Lyle. As a young man, Sydney, believing he has accidentally killed a friend, makes a pact with God, promising never to harm another if the boy's life is spared. In the years that follow the almost pathologically gentle Sydney tries to hold true to his promise - at terrible cost to himself and his family.

Mercy Among The Children

Adam Ross

A hotshot young lawyer, burdened by years of guilt and resentment, comes to the aid of his irresponsible kid brother, only to realise he's a pawn in a treacherous scheme. A lonely professor, frequently regaled with outrageous tales by the office handyman, suddenly fears he's being asked to abet a murderous fugitive. A man down on his luck closes in on a mysterious job offer while doing a good turn for his fragile neighbour, but his efforts backfire in a terrifically surreal - and hilarious - manner. Four college kids goad each other on in a series of escalating dares, culminating in a result as ambiguous as it is tragic. An enterprising adolescence uses his brief career as a child actor to fulfil the crush he has on a friend's seemingly untouchable older sister. 
 
Laced throughout with glimmers of redemption and a refreshing combination of warmth and cynicism, these noirish narratives have a youthful energy that belies their hard-won wisdom, and together they showcase one of our most outstanding new writers.

Ladies and Gentlemen

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Malcolm, Peter and Charlie and their Soave-sodden wives have one main ambition left in life: to drink Wales dry. But their routine is both shaken and stirred when they are joined by professional Welshman Alun Weaver (CBE) and his wife, Rhiannon. 
 
© Kingsley Amis 1986 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

The Old Devils

Esther Vilar

How far would you go to get someone's attention? 
 
Carlota is a precocious twelve-year-old who is fond of making elaborate inventions and devoted to her astonishingly beautiful yet mildly eccentric, French nanny, Mademoiselle. 
 
Despite being courted by all the eligible bachelors in town, Mademoiselle never shows the tiniest jot of interest in the opposite sex until, on Christmas Day, Carlota's home-made decorations catch fire and the local fire brigade rush to the scene. Among the tall, athletic firefighters there is one short, balding man called Nick Kowalski with whom mademoiselle falls instantly and passionately in love. 
 
She turns to Carlota for help- how can she ever contrive to meet him again and ignite his affections? The answer lies in a box of matches...

The Seven Fires of Mademoiselle

Raymond Williams

Matthew Price and Peter Owen both have their roots within the borders of Wales. Together they decide to build a new town, Manod, in the depopulated valleys of South Wales. Seemingly a splendid idea, and yet a world of plotting, scheming and resistance lies in store.

The Fight For Manod

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