Bücher veröffentlicht von Stairwell Books

The Words from a Distance workshops were conceived one chilly morning in March 2020 a few days before the national lockdown was announced. They focused on writing for wellbeing, offering women a chance to gather online, to record their experiences, process thoughts and feelings, or simply to escape them for a while in the company of others. Although we were going nowhere, we travelled great distances together, sharing inner and outer journeys. This book is a distillation of that unforgettable time.''Here we have prose and poems, formal and experimental writing, close observation of daily life and flights of imagination. Everything, that is, that makes us human. These fifteen writers, who were thoughtfully guided by Judi Sissons, approach similar themes from different perspectives, so the writers are in conversation with each other, singing like the birds did during those strange, still months when we were unable to get close to each other.''Victoria Field''Here is a distillation of creativity fostered by mutual support - the work of a writing community transforming individual experiences into stories and poems to share. Lockdown woodland walks, consolatory rescue hens, edible oysters, satirically depicted departments for future success - these and other gems will tease, comfort, shock and amuse you.'' Hannah Stone

Part memoir part biography of a beloved father York author Rita Jerrams final collection of poignan. In this final collection of stories by well-known York writer, Rita Jerram, Rita recalls her fathers eventful life and her own youth. This delightful memoir vividly records a vanished world.

Twins Katrina and Alex normally live on a houseboat in London, but are spending the summer in Scotland while their mum receives treatment. Aunt Clara is an artist, like Alex, and Uncle Archie is a forest ranger. Almost right away, the twins find themselves searching for what seems to be a big cat. Or, is something stalking them?

Harriet is a young hippopotamus who has always felt like an elephant. A gentle, engaging story about a young hippopotamus who has felt like an elephant as long as she can remember. She decides to ask the elephant herd if she can live with them, and be an elephant. She is accompanied by a chimp, a sandpiper and a giraffe, puzzled by her decision but who keep her company on her journey. The no-nonsense elephant matriarch simply informs her she had better "keep up", thus accepting her, and a small elephant walks beside her, as her animal friends wave goodbye and wish her well, and a small elephant walks beside her. Her animal friends wave goodbye and wish her well.

Poetry about the sudden, drastic changes wrought across the country due to Covid and lockdowns: British, but universal. "You will weep.. for/what you always assumed was real.../...places, comings and goings, meetings/and encounters, the uninhibited touch of others." from 'The New Rules to Abide By'"Beagrie's latest collection is recurringly good - recurringly catch-in-the-throat good. With expert twists and turns of language and emotion, he deftly makes us explore the layers of the pandemic's impact. From the punch-in-the-gut poignancy of 'On Touch', through a wonderful complexity of prose poems on our disturbed and disturbing times, this is a collection that will resonate long after Covid fades from our collective memory." - Char March"This collection chronicles the strange legend of the plague year - all distances, absences and grief - bursting with energetic presence, restlessly, defiantly embodied. The poems' diverse robust forms are as if each one were being tested to see if it can bear the weight of all that surreal sudden change. There is strength in such faithful truth-telling, even amid heartbreak, fracture and loss. Bob Beagrie finds words for the unsayable, to ask what will endure in our unknown future."- Linda France

The King has been defeated and the spirit of the Mantra restored and Suni reunited with her father but all is not quite right. Then strangers arrive from the sea bringing hope for the town: but nothing is quite as it seems.

The surprising world of the Dominatrix, as seen on TV. Lorraine's passions, her start, her clients, and her real-life challenges and rewards. Have you been naughty?

Starspin is a reflective collection which includes poems published in a wide range of leading magazines and journals including Carillon; Dream Catcher; Envoi; Labrys; Lunar Poetry; Manifold; Northwords Now; Orbis; Other Poetry;Poetry Monthly; Smiths Knoll; Stride; Tears in the Fence; The Journal; Ver; Wandering Dog. These poems are a reminder that all life comes at a price but that we should value that cost and the benefits that ensue. Barrasford Young''s poems are masterpieces of observation offering the reader a vivid landscape of poignant well-crafted poetry. His long time love of books and literature as a retired publisher and bookshop owner offers the reader a lens to see the world of wide experience. This poem from the book exemplifies his wry observation, empathy and descriptive skills:The unnecessary death of an otter cub in a new hydro scheme Dark hydro water turbines back to lightbehind my house.At its high intake a cub caughtin unnatural rock fights          concrete scours her cubsilk pelt concrete strips her skin to gut her bones break     her will fails in wild trapped waterthat should have buoyed hershe fought and did she not feel terrorat that slow closing of body,fear the dark clawsfingering through her eyes? She did not know of death,but felt something failand found no gentleness. Not being aware of extinctionmakes it no easier. "Barrasford Young is at his best with his sharp natural descriptions and recreation of scene and place."PaulineKirk, Editor, Fighting Cock Press 

Serpent Child  is the autobiography of Patricia Riley. It describes the life of a child of seperated parents in post war Britain at a time when children were still ‘seen but not heard’ and when even for married parents children were preferably seen somewhere else.Many children were hurried off to boarding schools, even at a very tender age; and, if they were noticed at all, children could become pawns in harmful, even dangerous parental war games. In an enlightening, at times humorous, and important book, Pat describes a past that is not always past.‘Children were once viewed as property for the most powerful parent usually the father. Much of the history of family law is the history of the emancipation of children.‘High Court judge Mrs Justice Parker once remarked how children were too frequently weaponised by their parents, and were ‘child soldiers in the separation war’. It has taken family courts and family justice professionals decades to deal with this chronic weaponising and to help children move into a demilitarised zone within or outside of their family.‘This is an important book about an issue that is rarely covered in such depth, and I wish it every success.’  Anthony Douglas CBE, Chief Executive of Cafcass, January 2019.Patricia Riley is the author of Looking for Githa, the biography of the ground-breaking playwright Githa Sowerby

Helena Hailstanes is sick of the secluded life her father, Sam, forces her to live on the shores of Loch Duie. She runs away and encounters Megan, who as a muddled and meddling young Sea Witch cursed Helena and Sam, creatures of an ancient race of shape-shifting otters, to remain in human form.

This intriguing detective story introduces DI Ambrose in the first of a series of tales of murder most foul. Foul Play happens in a fog bound theatre with a cast of eccentric actors to keep the reader engaged until the very last page. We also meet popular team members DS Waters and WPC Meadows for the first time This novel is the first cooperation by mother daughter duo Pauline Kirk and Jo Summers writing as PJ Quinn.Set in a partially bombed out theatre in the sleepy town of Chalk Heath where the leading lady is attacked on stage during a rehearsal. This is postwar austerity Britain, James Dean, Danny Kaye and Brian Rix are all the rage, yet in Chalk Heath, culture is represented by the Players. Ambrose and his team set about finding the killer.This was a time when forensic science was in its infancy and crime scene processing was primarily good observation with a bit of fingerprint analysis and blood typing thrown in to taste. For the crime novelist this period allows for good character development and greater freedom to explore the relationships between all the principals. Foul Play is an exemplary tale of high drama in a dramatic setting while Ambrose, who remembers the theatre in is prewar glory, and coping with his own wayward son, attempts to reconcile his younger self, his son;  the damaged theatre and acting troupe with the essential business of solving the crime.

Most of the world's major cities are inundated; a tsunami has wiped out houses, shops and schools along the Hartlepool shoreline. And now the authorities are walling in the flood zone…Seventeen-year-old Zoe, knocked unconscious during the sudden flood, cannot recall her name and can only summon flashes of her immediate past. Zoe meets Alma, who has a mysterious link to global entrepreneur  & opportunist Volk Volkov, himself a refugee: of his own past, and of a Soviet prison camp. But will Alma and Volk's drama trap Zoe in The Zone?The ancient past and possible future collide with Creationists, environmentalists, former prisoners, flood tourists and feral castaways in Eliza Mood's rollicking survival story set in the near future. O Man of Clay is a finely imagined and complex dystopian novel about an England of the future overwhelmed by environmental catastrophe. Like the best novels set in the future, this one is really about our miserable, dismal, toxic present and its message is salutary, prescient and terrifying.  The writing is also very, very good.Carlo Gébler, novelist