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To Hear The Skylark's Song is a moving story of how Aberfan lived on. Huw Lewis mixes memory with mature reflection to reveal the shadow that fell on his individual existence and the dynamics of a still vibrant community lifted up by the spirited joy of a skylark's song.

Inspired by the author's hometown of Bridgend, Bad Ideas \ Chemicals follows a group of 20-somethings on a bad night out in a depressed, strange little town.

Sebastian has long been haunted by the disappearance of his father, Jack Messenger: celebrated travel writer, potential spy and murder victim, his absent presence and equivocal past continue to cast inescapable shadows over his son, who must also contend with his ageing mother's fragmented memory and his own dereliction of a partner.So who is the stranger that buttonholes Sebastian at an academic conference on the Welsh coast, and reveals lies and transgressions neither outgrown nor comprehended? How does he know Sebastian, and what are his connections to Jack Messenger?Equivocator, in a story that stretches from Egypt to Germany, from Iran's Zagros Mountains to the Gower coastline, is a study of fathers and sons, lovers and betrayers, loss and recovery, and combines dark fable, satire and a love story in its pursuit of the question: can Sebastian find his own salvation, despite the inheritance from his father?

A white-knuckle fiction ride through the South Wales Valleys during the 20th century. Power, sex, money and ambition all twist through the pages as Smith creates a feast of intellectual and physical provocation stories that send a shudder of fearful recognition through to the reader.

The poems in this collection explore what it means to be human: where the mythological meets the modern, where fairytales, family and revenge collide, and a haunting mix of love, loss, desire, fear and revenge that is unafraid to unsettle the reader. This remarkable collection of work finds people at their most vulnerable: Achilles counting to ten outside a psychiatrist's door, a man finding himself in the shrinking bedroom of his mid-life, a lost sister chain-smoking into the breeze or a TB victim hacking her rags of lung softly into a pillow. each one unflichingly reveals the truth about what it means to be real. The people in this book may surprise you, their lives may be startlingly varied, but Natalie ann Holborow's poems are an engaging, unnerving and honest exploration of the human experience in all its beauty and rawness.

Ride the White Stallion is the sequel to Farewell Innocence, charting the trials and travails of Ieuan Morgan at the foundry and in his family life. It is an account of a young man's creative awakening amid the challenges of domestic penury and downright hard graft.

The town of Port Talbot has long been seen (quite literally) as synonymous with the steel industry. Yet it also has another claim to fame as the actors' capital of Wales. It has produced a remarkable number of actors since the inter-war years.

Port Talbot has an undisputed claim to be called the actors' capital of Wales, producing a remarkable number of actors since the inter-war years including Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins and Michael Sheen. This book surveys the careers of 50 actors from Port Talbot and considers what its most famous stars have put back into their community.

Beside a lake in the northern Canadian wilderness, fifteen year old Zachary Tayler lives a lonely and isolated life with his father. His only neighbours are a leech trapper, an eccentric millionaire, and an expert in snow.

'...the greatest account of trench warfare....' --Phil Carradice, BBCArguably the greatest of all published memoirs of the Great War, Old Soldiers Never Die is Private Frank Richards' classic account of the war from the standpoint of the regular soldier, and a moving tribute to the army that died on the Western Front in 1914.In this remarkable tale, Richards recounts life in the trenches as a member of the famous Royal Welch Fusiliers, with all its death and camaraderie, in graphic detail, vividly bringing to life the trials and tribulations faced by the ordinary rank and file.

William Glynne-Jones depicts life in the fictional town of Abermor and especially the daily grind of foundry life, in a workplace fraught with dangers. Farewell Innocence is a heartfelt and affecting account of a young man's rites of passage in hard times.

While recovering from cancer, John Harrison followed in the footsteps of Hernan Cortes - the man responsible for the fall of the Aztec Empire - for four months, exploring ruins which refute the popular image of the Aztecs and their neighbours as bloodthirsty savages, and discovering that the Spanish legacy is far darker than the Aztec one.

Carwyn James treated rugby football as if it was an art form and aesthetics part of the coaching manual. This son of a miner, from Cefneithin in the Gwendraeth Valley, was a cultivated literary scholar, an accomplished linguist, a teacher, and a would-be patriot politician, who also won two caps for Wales. He was the first man to coach any British Lions side to overseas victory, and still the only one to beat the All Blacks in a series in New Zealand. That was in 1971, and it was followed in 1972 by the legendary triumph of his beloved Llanelli against the touring All Blacks at Stradey Park. These were the high-water marks of a life of complexity and contradiction. His subsequent and successful career as broadcaster and journalist and then a return to the game as a coach in Italy never quite settled his restless nature.After his sudden death, alone in an Amsterdam hotel, his close friend, the Pontypridd-born writer, Alun Richards set out through what he called "e;A Personal Memoir"e; to reflect on the enigma that had been Carwyn. The result, a masterpiece of sports writing, is a reflection on the connected yet divergent cultural forces which had shaped both the rugby coach and the author; a dazzling sidestep of an essay in both social and personal interpretation.

Fern's choices in life and in love are an echo of her mother's, as Iris' are an echo of her own mother's. Three women, three generations: one dark secret.Iris keeps a scrapbook of Lawrence, the lover who went missing years earlier. Fern's father. She defines herself by his loss and soothes herself with gin and the fairytale of this one perfect relationship... Fern, once a 'strange and difficult child' who believed that her dead grandmother's soul lived inside her stomach, reluctantly returns home to the island to take care of Iris. She is tasked with finding Lawrence and in the process she has to confront her own past and memories... Ivy, Iris' mother, had her own cache of secrets; spells she took to the grave. Spells that Fern unearths.The Scrapbook is a novel about memory, and the unreliability of memory. It's about the tangled, often dysfunctional, bonds of family. And it's about absence and the power that a void can exert over a person's life.

For around twenty years, Nick Fisk believed that one day he would find a letter on his doormat from Cardiff City FC requesting his services on the football pitch. When he realised it was unlikely he was ever going to be offered the role of groundsman, he decided the next best thing would be to write about the club instead.A former member of the not especially notorious non-hooligan gang, The Sad Crew, Fisk has plenty of experience to draw from, in terms of going to football matches, and coming up with ridiculous chants that nobody ever joins in with.In The Blues Are Back in Town Nick charts the 2014/15 season, following the team and its fans, and trying to rediscover his passion for the recently relegated club, while at the same time, reflecting on the good old days. The blog he kept, The Fisk Report, gave an insight into not just what it's like to be a typical fan, but what supporting The Bluebirds is like through the eyes of a Fisk.It is a funny, enigmatic and personal book about the passion and belief of being a football fan.

It's the summer of 1916 and the Alexandrov family prepare to embark on their annual holiday, accompanied by an army of staff primed to cater to their needs.Teenage, precocious Alyosha Alexandrov has never known anything but a life of privilege. He spends his days avoiding study and pursuing pretty young maids. But Russia is poised on the brink of epochal political upheaval and within a year Alyosha is separated from family, security, and the innocence of youth.Set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, spanning the turbulent years from 1916 to 1924, Petrograd is a vast, ambitious novel from an award-winning writer. The first in a trilogy, and winner of the Wales Book of the Year Award (Welsh Language), it tells the compelling, convincing story of the Alexandrov family as they each struggle to adapt to the ravages of war and revolution.

'Important and highly readable....of interest around the world because it enables the reader to see education reform from a minister's perspective as very few books have done before.' - Sir Michael BarberMinistering to Education is the first book by a former Welsh Government Minister since the creation of the National Assembly in 1999. As Education Minister in the Welsh Government from 2009-2013, Leighton Andrews was twice named Welsh Politician of the Year. This is his enlightening, frank and readable account of the education reforms initiated in the early years of Carwyn Jones's period as First Minister, and the complex challenges that still lie ahead to make the Welsh education system as good as any in the world.Offering the inside story on the reform journey Wales embarked upon, Andrews controversially reveals how he deliberately brought the media into the debate on school ranking. He debates the decision to regrade exam results when English Language GCSE exams came under fire in 2012, and the effect such decisions have had in setting the education systems of England and Wales on diverging paths. Student tuition fees were another area where Andrews led Wales in a different direction from England. Following Michael Gove's departure as Westminster Education Secretary, Andrews questions whether Wales or England has fared better and suggests what should happen next.

The exploits of the people's heroes from Gould to Gareth Edwards are vividly recaptured in some classic prose. So too are the expectations and emotions of the most passionate followers in the world in this selection of world-beating writing on Welsh rugby: The First XV.

A Time to Laugh is set in a coal-mining valley on the eve of the 20th century against a background of industrial unrest and social change.The old certainties of pastoral Rhondda have given way to a new age of capital and steam, and life in the Valley has been transformed by strike, riot and gruelling poverty. Tudor Morris, a young doctor, has returned to the valley where his father has a practice, and is immediately drawn into the tumult and excitement of the fight for fair pay and conditions. He is expected to marry his childhood sweetheart Mildred, the daughter of a local solicitor but he is inexorably drawn to the passionate ideals and charms of Daisy, the sister of one of the leaders of the workers movement. Is Tudor going to follow the conventions of his class or break with tradition or gamble his life and future with the fortunes of the struggle of the people?

Have you been chosen to chair a group or a meeting for the first time?In the Chair is a practical, up-to-date and comprehensive guide to how to become the successful Chair of any body, whether it's the organisation you work for, a community group or charity, or a public or company Board. What qualities and skills do you need? How should you approach your group and its members? How should you prepare for and conduct meetings? How do you arrive at decisions, and cope with difficult situations and people?Inside you will find invaluable advice on chairing formal Boards and working with Chief Executives, as well as how to approach special kinds of meeting, including formal and public meetings, conferences, appointment panels, bilingual meetings and videoconferences.In the Chair will benefit anyone keen to make participating in groups and meetings a productive and enjoyable experience.

In this informal guide to Wales, Griff Rhys Jones rediscovers "the land of his aunties". Born in Cardiff but raised in Essex, Griff is returning home on a mission to explore the real Wales: the one beyond the tourist trail that exists in the beautiful countryside, full of hidden treasures and eccentric characters that makes this country so unique.

Composite novel Dream On is a black comedy, a flashlight noir thriller, and a meditation on the lives and stories that connect up the frayed wires in the business of living: of Digger Davies and his one cap for Wales and ultimately untimely death...and the award-winning photographer whose return home will become a quest for his own forgotten identity and compromised life...the thwarted politician in a hospital bed writing his own obituary...and a beautiful girl caught in time, alive in an old man's memory...

This rich biography tells the remarkable tale of Margaret Haig Thomas who became the Viscountess Rhondda. She was a Welsh suffragette, held important posts during the First World War and survived the sinking of the Lusitania.

Wiltshire 1860: One year after Darwin's explosive publication of The Origin of Species, sisters Anna and Beatrice Pentecost awaken to a world shattered by science, radicalism and the stirrings of feminist rebellion; a world of charismatic religious movements, Spiritualist seances, bitter loss and medical trauma.Fetishist of working women Arthur Munby, irascible antiquary General Pitt Rivers, feminist Barbara Bodichon and other historical figures of the Victorian epoch wander through the backdrop of the novel, as Anna's anomalous love for Lore Ritter and her friendship with freethinking and ambitious Miriam Sala carry her into areas of uncharted desire while Beatrice, forced to choose between her beloved Will Anwyl and the evangelist Christian Ritter, who marked her out as a wife when she was only a child, is pulled between passion and duty. Each is riven by inner contradictions, but who will survive when the sisters fall into a fatal conflict with one another?

I am the laugh of a kookaburra. I am a currawong. I am a galah. I am a lyre because I am a lyrebird. I am a performer and I am superb...Georgia Carys Williams' stories are dark, offbeat, rippling with watery memories and poetic unease. From the bluest Venetian lagoon where a merwoman saves a drowning gondolier to a glass harmonica playing itself along a tideline.Williams is a writer for whom the world is never the safe place: a phantom baby growing older, a granddaughter obsessively peeling tangerines, and a deaf sister conducting music in her sleep are all brought to life in an innovative and perceptive collection from a distinctive new voice.

New York, May, 1950. A warm Spring day and a thirty-five year old Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, pushes through the revolving doors of Harper's Bazaar. There, he meets Miss Pearl Kazin, Fiction Editor, highly-educated and out to make her own mark on New York. One side of their correspondence has survived: six love letters, never before published.

Up ahead, Helen saw the police line harden into a barricade of bodies and shields. Resin batons thudded on Perspex shields; slow, thuggish, brutal. Goosebumps studded her arms and legs. Her pace slowed to the truncheons' beat. Mary halted a yard from the riot shields, raised her megaphone. 'We are women from Ystrad an' from all over Wales,' she said. 'We are here to make peaceful protest. Here in solidarity with the men.' The drumming quickened.Trouble is brewing in Ystrad. It is time to defend jobs, the pits and a way of life that has formed both the life of valley and the nation.The union is squaring up to the Coal Board, the government and the country. Gwyn Pritchard, overman at Blackthorn colliery, believes that the way to save his pit is to keep his men working and production high. His men disagree and when an old collier dies on Gwyn's shift, the men's simmering resentment spills over into open defiance.But Gwyn faces a challenge at home too. His daughter Helen is in love with a fiery young collier, Scrapper Jones. In March 1984, when miners across the country walk out to join what will become a year-long strike, Scrapper throws himself into the struggle and Helen joins the women, preparing food for the soup kitchen and standing with the men on the picket line.Scrapper, Helen and Gwyn must decide which side they are on as the dispute drives the Pritchard family apart and the Jones family to ruin.What matters most: to be right, to be loved or to belong?Until our Blood is Dry is a novel of passion and love, betrayal and decisions in a time and a place when a people were forced to fight for their future.

The Library of Wales' Story anthologies feature the very best of Welsh short fiction, written amid the political, social and economic turbulence of twentieth century Wales.