Bloomsbury

When Alton's ageing, blind uncle asks him to attend bridge games with him, he agrees. After all, it's better than a crappy summer job in the local shopping mall, and Alton's mother thinks it might secure their way to a good inheritance sometime in the future.But, like all apparently casual choices in any of Louis Sachar's wonderful books, this...

Touch is the first sense to develop in the womb, yet often it is overlooked. The Senses of Touch examines the role of touching and feeling as part of the fabric of everyday, embodied experience. How can we think about touch? Problems of touch and tactility run as a continuous thread in philosophy, psychology, medical writing and representations in...

June 1890, Portugal. A child was born in somewhat curious circumstances. Until the age of sixteen, his life was a safe and happy one. At that point it changed suddenly, almost brutally. Handicapped by a physically freakish appearance, he not only survived but grew up to become a celebrated restaurateur. He had unusual talents: he had the help, in...

It was part youthful zeal and part teen crush that led Zarah Ghahramani to join a student protest movement. But dabbling in student politics was to lead to disaster when one day she was bundled into a car and taken to Tehran's most notorious prison: Evin. Far from her comfortable middle-class home, Zarah had to find refuge from her ruthless...

Hilary Bailey re-invents the history of the Trojan Wars and tells a new story of Cassandra. Legend has it that Cassandra died at the hand of Clytemnestra, but in this novel she escapes to a farm in Thessaly, and writes her own account of the fall of Troy. On a quiet farm in ancient Greece, an aging widow sits down to write her story. Now that the...

4Godber Plays: 4 brings together four recent plays by one ofBritain’s most prolific, popular playwrights. The author is theartistic director of Hull Truck Theatre and the publication is timed tocoincide with the opening of Hull Truck’s new theatre building in theheart of Hull.In Our House May, a widow, mother and grandmother, ispacking up...