From Wellies and Chapped Legs to Brogues

Ten-year-old David’s life is not easy, living in dire circumstances with his alcoholic mother in a wreck of a home. His one true friend is Rebecca, the other children tolerate or make fun of him.

Following an accident, he is befriended by Hobo, who moves in and out of the village with his belongings in a pram.

When David’s mother dies over the Christmas period, he spends time at Rebecca’s home and is then taken into care. He escapes, seeks solace with Hobo and together they escape the village, and in time, David is sent to live with Hobo’s brother on the South Coast, where he learns Hobo’s story.

Here, David's life changes completely, but there are still setbacks and challenges along the way before he returns to the village and his life becomes entwined once again with Rebecca.

From Worthy Down to Diego Suarez

From the moment when Douglas, a torpedo bomber pilot, became a double agent, he was marked for extinction by both sides. In the early years of World War II, Naval Intelligence saw him as dangerously unreliable while the GRU discovered that during the Spanish Civil War he supported POUM, anathema to Joseph Stalin who believed they were allies of Trotsky. After he had been awarded the DSC, attempts to murder him began in earnest for the third time. The hope was to kill him in action. Who would strike the first blow?

Frozen

You are not alone in your grief and anger. You are not alone in your despair, waiting for an honest call to action. You are not alone in your need to be empowered and emboldened. May you find the companionship you seek as you read the poems of Frozen.
And together, we will thaw.

Fucking Pterodactyl

Margareta du Plessis the Republican Madam Prime Minister does “Madam Prime Minister’s Questions” as she takes a few swipes at her pterodactyl Democrat opposite by calling him a “fucking pterodactyl” over his sex allegations of her gay brother’s doings with a European male whore on live Gay TV the night before, by tossing her half-drunk glass of wine right at him where it just missed him by inches as it pulverized upon the olive-green work-bench right beside him. Madam Prime Minister also had a go at her pterodactyl counterpart over the acquisition of androids which work without any pay and don’t require any food, that are set to replace general biological office workers who she’s commissioned to immediately work in an Andromeda exotic jewellery mining colony for jewels to be made and sold intergalactically. So, the pterodactyl calls for immediate strikes in the House of Commons, London, circa 30,050 AD. in an alternate sci-fi reality.

Gate-Crashers

It’s Christmas 1984 in Manchester and seventeen year old Nick Hopper has devastating news on his mind.

Rather than reveal his tragedy to school mates in their gloomy old pub, Nick seeks a change of heart and goes to a trendy hotspot where life gets in the way of death when a beautiful girl writes on the back of his hand urging him to seize the day and choose life!

Along with his carefree best friend Heff, Nick embarks on the greatest night of his life gate-crashing a lavish house party to pursue the girl of his dreams, Jasmine.

Welcomed into the in-crowd’s heady ‘sex, drugs and pop music’ party world, Nick is forced to face his demons and discover who his real friends are when to win Jasmine’s heart he unwittingly throws the wildest New Year's Eve house party ever!

Generation Care

Drawing on his experience of over 50 years of health care service the author has imagined how life would improve if mankind moved towards a more caring and loving society. While mankind has greatly benefited from the goods and services which have been delivered by capitalist societies, the excesses of capitalism and the selfishness which leads to inequity have ruined many lives. Love calls us to a caring capitalism in which competition delivers high standards while governance protects the poor. Everyone’s basic needs are met by this society. The model of inspection against governance standards has been used with great success by the Care Quality Commission to improve care and to protect vulnerable patients in the UK National Health Service. With the potential disasters of a viral pandemic followed by the environmental threat of global warming, capitalists are being called to work primarily for care and not primarily for money. It is interesting that this same message is contained in the teachings of Jesus who founded our culture.

Genevieve – Book I

The manuscript follows a primary protagonist who has gone by many names over the years but stuck to her most recent alias due to its relatable nature: Genevieve, derived from the patron saint of Paris, St. Genevieve, who is often depicted holding a candle and the devil beside her who blows it out when she goes to pray at night.

She is the CEO and founder of the First Fruit Corporation (FFC), a successful architectural and development firm in the organised-crime riddled Clarence City, her ambitions to tear down old sky scrapers and rebuild them in her own ingenious designs, changing the city skyline, gains her a lot of enemies and fewer friends as a strange man and his soldiers come to town bringing her dark and mysterious past of Punic era to her door step.

George (The Teenage Years)

This is an introduction of George to the masses. He is the representative of a whole lost generation (lost to the government and the British public) who have recently been in the news as the revelation of who they are comes out.

George tells the story of an 11-year-old Windrush boy who arrived in England from the island of Jamaica in 1965. The story is narrated in third-person and speaks of the boy’s first experience of being in a cold country, the absence of an introduction to his new family, the difficulties he faces as a new boy in a new school, the struggles to find his place, his resistance in conforming to stereotypical expectations and his fights to maintain the self-pride and independence he learnt from his early years in Jamaica.

As George progresses through the school and struggles to assimilate, he moves from being the outsider to become a cultural educator and a facilitator of his peers and brings together the different groups within his association. However, he has difficulty reconciling his family and church life with his secular associates. Through the boy’s eyes, the narrator depicts how it was at that time for the West Indian immigrant community in London and the group of unnoticed children whom they brought from the islands, how they mixed and associated with each other, their embryonic family and the indigenous population.

George and the Briton

Mark is a young British sailor who is deployed to Antioch in Syria as part of a delegation to brief the Emperor Diocletian on the liberation of Britain from a usurper. By coincidence, he meets the Tribune Constantine who introduces him to a fellow Roman Army officer, George. Mark can write in Latin so George appoints him as his clerk.

Mark is tasked to keep an account of the operations of the ‘special forces’ unit that George commands on the front line of the Eastern Roman Empire. He also keeps his own private diary and is required to provide Constantine, who is a member of Diocletian’s personal staff, with periodic accounts of operations.

As George achieves some extraordinary results and Diocletian manages to stabilise the Roman Empire following a generation of chaos and uncertainty, a new problem arises. Diocletian’s deputy, Caesar Galerius, starts seeing Christianity as a subversive religion. This becomes a challenge for George, his family, and some members of his unit.

This is the tale of Constantine and George, told through the eyes of a young soldier’s diary.

German Girls

Paul is totally smitten by the lovely Heidi during a holiday encounter in Swanage in the summer of 1978. Will their holiday romance become something much more serious when he sets out to see if his love for her blossoms in her home city of Frankfurt?

German Girls 2 - Secrets

German Girls 2 – Secrets is the sequel to ‘German Girls’ in which Paul Gardener (19) meets Heidi Wortmann (17) while on holiday in England and falls in love with her. He believes that she loves him too as she has said so in several letters; however, things are not that simple!

Paul flies over to Heidi’s home city of Frankfurt for a week’s holiday with her to develop their relationship but is dismayed to find that she seems to have changed her mind about him and he cannot understand why.

Can Paul unravel the reasons for Heidi’s strangely cold behaviour towards him? What will be their future together?

Gertie and Amos

Imagine being born into a harsh, 19th century institutional environment where the slightest deviation from the rules means cruel punishment. Yet Gertie’s indomitable spirit overcomes all obstacles as she applies to the Queen for help. Once out in the male-dominated world of politics and social unrest, her spirit unleashes her determination to create change.