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One of Merthyr's Victorian brickyard girls, Saran watches the world parade past her doorstep on the banks of the stinking and rat-infested Morlais Brook: the fair-day revellers; the chapel-goers and the funeral processions. She never misses a trip to the town's wooden theatres, despite her life ruled by the 5 a.m. hooter, pit strikes, politics and the First World War that takes away so many of her children. Her Glyn will work a treble shift for beer money; her brother Harry is the district's most notorious drinker and fighter until he is 'saved'. The town changes and grows but Saran is still there for Glyn, for Harry, for her children and grandchildren.In his 1935 novel Black Parade, writer, soldier and political activist Jack Jones creates a superbly riotous, clear and unsentimental picture of Merthyr life as his home town reels headlong into the twentieth century.

An artist at heart, Trystan Morgan grows up in his grandmother's valley mining cottage, duty-bound by her deep wish for him to be a preacher. He comes from farming stock and longs to paint the Welsh countryside of his people. But he agrees to study at the city university although his adolescent mind revolts at the social posturing around him. Trystan's journey through the conflicting cultural, social and political values of his country in the mid-twentieth century is bewildering but finally liberating. And through the glittering, crowded, kaleidoscopic images of this bravura novel, the author creates a rich impression of people and place; a Wales which is a landscape of the mind.

Despite talk of bulls, bears and stock-market crashes, the depression meant little to young brothers Alun and Arthur as they carved their initials into the sycamore tree below Hope Mountain. They longed to see the great ships that would bring their father home. Eagerly they follow the progress of their father, famous Welsh tenor Jabez Trevor.

The Hill of Dreams is the story of a young man's quest for beauty through literature, love and, finally, the spiritual alchemy of drugs and dreams. It is widely regarded as Arthur Machen's finest work.

Presents the story of an Anglo Indian community in 1960s Calcutta who are coming to terms with India taking its first few faltering steps towards democracy. This book includes a list of recipes and a glossary of Anglo Indian words. It is suitable for those interested in stories of South Asia, and the cross-over of English and Indian.

John Tripp (1927-1986) was one of the leading literary figures in Wales. Poet, short story writer, and journalist, he was an outspoken and often controversial writer whose passion and vigour often spilled over. This book features a collection of his writings.

Winner of the Media Wales Readers' Prize 2011shortlisted for The Guardian's Not the Booker Prize 2011Four friends. One intensely hot summer that will change their lives forever.When a group of hedonistic teenagers save a woman from drowning they become unlikely local heroes, but their celebrity becomes the focus for first envy, then harassment.Fireball takes us through their last summer together, and one that will come to define their future: a summer of sex, chemical experimentation, shifting loyalties and disillusionment.

In 1976, Niall's family emigrated to Australia, as part of the GBP10 Pom scheme. He lived there for 3 years, moving from Brisbane to Perth in a souped-up station wagon. 30 years later, he returned to retrace his steps; this is a memoir, travelogue, rant, paean, elegy, and perhaps the closest thing to an autoibiography that Niall will ever write.

Tai and the Troll are mates. Tai lives in Tremorfa and the Troll lives at the bottom of Mrs Griffiths' garden. The Troll likes fishing, apples and his old car which only starts when Tai kicks the tyres. The Troll has to visit his Aunt Senni who lives under a bridge in Brecon and he's asked Tai to come with him on a day trip.

Offers the underlying meaning of South Wales' history. This title, with its plural narration, presents a choric commentary on human illusion and knowledge, on power and its attendant deprivation, on dreams and their destruction. It is History as Carnival and a comic vision of humanity that recognises no geographical boundaries.

Presents the story of Michael Caradock, a writer whose life has ended violently on an isolated Welsh island. This book follows his protected Welsh childhood, his crucial first encounters with sex, his literary success in London and his final withdrawal to Wales.

In Love and Other Possibilities, Lewis Davies embarks on a journey that takes us into Sri Lanka, Wales, Spain, India, Morocco and the lives and minds of his characters. His spare prose has an inexplicable magic that metamorphoses the exotic into the familiar and vice versa, creating a sense of mild disorientation and unreality that makes you begin to see the world in a different way.

A Rope of Vines - Journal from a Greek Island is a beautiful and personal account of the time spent by Brenda Chamberlain on the Greek Island of Ydra in the early 1960's. Sea and harbour, mountain and monastery, her neighbours and friends are unforgettably pictured; these were the reality outside herself while within there was a conflict of emotion and warring desires. Joy and woe are woven fine in this record: the delight of a multitude of fresh experiences thronging to the senses, the suffering from which she emerges with new understanding of herself and human existence. Both in the intensity and force of the writing and the eloquent island drawings, A Rope of Vines - Journal from a Greek Island is a distinguished achievement.

A happiness drug is found to be intolerable to society. This book describes the process by which its disseminators are hounded to death.

Presents a compilation of short stories from fourteen of best Basque writers. This title provides an insight into modern Basque society and literature.

Robert Mitchum was a Hollywood bad-boy and one of the greatest screen actors of the twentieth century. But his pre-fame life is cloaked in mystery, the truth hidden within conflicting tales of time spent as a Depression-era hobo, prizefighter, escaped felon - and secret poet. This book provides a personification of Film Noir, Robert Mitchum.

Through his letters home and six short stories, Alun Lewis paints a vibrant picture of life in India as a British serviceman during World War II. Intimate, vivid, observational, and always filled with emotion, this is a rare literary example of one Welshman's experience of empire and war.

Tells the story of Amy Evans' bold play for happiness, and her dangerous success.

Set in a rural mining village in South Wales in the years leading up to the Second World War, this book recreates a magical but alive world that will resonate with our memories, real and imagined, of childhood.

A story of a group of friends as they edge towards adulthood in the sunshine and shadow of Llandudno during the years of the Second World War.

An engaging novel set in Kenya during the 1990s.Kenya in 1996, Griff takes a job teaching at a small struggling school in Nairobi. How does a naive and privileged mzungu fit in? El Nino floods, bulldozed slums, street justice and widespread corruption, it is nearly impossible to work out what the hell is going on...

Hannah Ellis is 35, unmarried, and still living at Y Glyn, the family farm in Wales where she has been brought up by her mother and step-father--a forbidding man with a powerful hold on the neighborhood. Loving her country yet resenting the egotism of her family, she yearns for the return of her long-banished brother Philip, believing that he will rescue her from this bleak existence. Little does Hannah realize that Philip's arrival is imminent and will herald enormous changes as he unwittingly ignites the passions and strengths of an unusually intertwined community.

Exploring a boy's childhood in Barcelona during the Franco dictatorship, this work is based on the autobiographical experience of prize-winning Catalan author Jordi Coca.

Using a rich array of material from Raymond Williams' hitherto unused personal papers, diaries, letters, unpublished novels and stories, notebooks, work drafts and fragments, this title takes us through the formative years on the Welsh Border as the son of a railway signalman and his wife, on to Cambridge in 1939 and War service in Normandy.

Illustrated by a Welsh International Sportswoman, this is the first in a trilogy of "Troll" books. It is suitable for little boys with pockets full of shells, pebbles and elastic bands.

The Withered Root recounts the troubled life of Reuben Daniels, reared in a south Wales industrial valley, in the bosom of the Nonconformist culture. Therein lies his downfall and that of his people, for The Withered Root is as thoroughly opposed to Welsh Nonconformity as My People (Caradoc Evans), though for different reasons. Revivalist passions constitute nothing but a perverse outlet for an all too human sexuality which chapel culture has otherwise repressed. Nonconformity has withered the root of natural sexual well-being in the Welsh, and then feeds off the twisted fruits.

A collection of poems.

Sport is one of our consuming passions, and its literature is rich and extensive. This anthology brings together writing on Welsh sport by some of our acclaimed authors - novelists, short-story writers, journalists, historians and poets.

Illustrated by a Welsh International Sportswoman, this is the first in a trilogy of "Troll" books. It is suitable for little boys with pockets full of shells, pebbles and elastic bands.