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Find out moreMichael Stewart is a multi-award winning writer, born and brought up in Salford, who moved to Yorkshire in 1995 and is now based in Bradford. He has written several full length stage plays, one of which, Karry Owky, was joint winner of the King's Cross Award for New Writing. His debut novel, King Crow, was published in January 2011. It won the Guardian's Not-the-Booker Award and has been selected as a recommended read for World Book Night. He works as a is senior lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Huddersfield, where he is the director of the Huddersfield Literature Festival.
March 2018 Book of the Month I am William Lee: brute; liar, and graveside thief. But you will know me by another name. A fiery, emphatic and intense glimpse into the missing years of Heathcliff. Leaving Wuthering Heights and naming himself William Lee, Heathcliff travels through the north of England, revenge forming on his mind. If you haven’t read ‘Wuthering Heights’ there is no need to look away, this could be the entrance to that fascinating world. I do feel you need to be aware that obscenities crop up, in fact sometimes litter the pages, and while this may put people off, I would advise looking beyond the surface to what lies beneath. The book opens with anger and deep rooted pain, William’s thoughts flare into being, the searing honesty and heat almost made me flinch. Michael Stewart allows William’s innermost being to spill onto the pages, William is so matter of fact about pain and suffering, about the world around him, the stark reality of the times seared their way onto my soul. And then there are the descriptions, the beautiful, eloquent descriptions of the countryside, the rural life, the old words. While rage, hurt and confusion swirl in a maelstrom of emotion, tenderness, love, and compassion lie waiting, biding their time. Yes ‘Ill Will’ is provocative, it is a disturbing, striking read, yet also strangely beautiful, and personally, I loved it.
Danny Spence plans to stay in Gila Creek for only one night, but then he gets mistaken for a snake named Zeke Tolan, and from then on it is just one damn thing after another. He falls foul of the evil Ma Cole, gets himself on the wrong side of the vicious Hernando Ortiz and his sadistic bodyguard Bracho - and somehow this is all wrapped up with a train full of money that's rolling south of the border, right into the middle of the Mexican revolution.
`An astonishing novel' The Independent I am William Lee: brute; liar, and graveside thief. But you will know me by another name. Heathcliff has left Wuthering Heights, and is travelling across the moors to Liverpool in search of his past. Along the way, he saves Emily, the foul-mouthed daughter of a Highwayman, from a whipping, and the pair journey on together. Roaming from graveyard to graveyard, making a living from Emily's apparent ability to commune with the dead, the pair lie, cheat and scheme their way across the North of England. And towards the terrible misdeeds - and untold riches - that will one day send Heathcliff home to Wuthering Heights.
`An astonishing novel' The Independent I am William Lee: brute; liar, and graveside thief. But you will know me by another name. Heathcliff has left Wuthering Heights, and is travelling across the moors to Liverpool in search of his past. Along the way, he saves Emily, the foul-mouthed daughter of a Highwayman, from a whipping, and the pair journey on together. Roaming from graveyard to graveyard, making a living from Emily's apparent ability to commune with the dead, the pair lie, cheat and scheme their way across the North of England. And towards the terrible misdeeds - and untold riches - that will one day send Heathcliff home to Wuthering Heights.
When a gang of outlaws kill Deputy Jack Tanner's ma and pa, he hunts them down, one by one. The trail leads him deep into the mountains of Mexico, where he encounters the mysterious Queen of Meseta de Plata - boss of the notorious 'thieves' town' - and ultimately confronts the gang's leader, the evil Amos Payne.
'An astonishing novel' The IndependentI am William Lee: brute; liar, and graveside thief.But you will know me by another name.Heathcliff has left Wuthering Heights, and is travelling across the moors to Liverpool in search of his past.Along the way, he saves Emily, the foul-mouthed daughter of a Highwayman, from a whipping, and the pair journey on together.Roaming from graveyard to graveyard, making a living from Emily's apparent ability to commune with the dead, the pair lie, cheat and scheme their way across the North of England.And towards the terrible misdeeds - and untold riches - that will one day send Heathcliff home to Wuthering Heights.
`An astonishing novel' The Independent I am William Lee: brute; liar, and graveside thief. But you will know me by another name. Heathcliff has left Wuthering Heights, and is travelling across the moors to Liverpool in search of his past. Along the way, he saves Emily, the foul-mouthed daughter of a Highwayman, from a whipping, and the pair journey on together. Roaming from graveyard to graveyard, making a living from Emily's apparent ability to commune with the dead, the pair lie, cheat and scheme their way across the North of England. And towards the terrible misdeeds - and untold riches - that will one day send Heathcliff home to Wuthering Heights.
March 2018 Book of the Month I am William Lee: brute; liar, and graveside thief. But you will know me by another name. A fiery, emphatic and intense glimpse into the missing years of Heathcliff. Leaving Wuthering Heights and naming himself William Lee, Heathcliff travels through the north of England, revenge forming on his mind. If you haven’t read ‘Wuthering Heights’ there is no need to look away, this could be the entrance to that fascinating world. I do feel you need to be aware that obscenities crop up, in fact sometimes litter the pages, and while this may put people off, I would advise looking beyond the surface to what lies beneath. The book opens with anger and deep rooted pain, William’s thoughts flare into being, the searing honesty and heat almost made me flinch. Michael Stewart allows William’s innermost being to spill onto the pages, William is so matter of fact about pain and suffering, about the world around him, the stark reality of the times seared their way onto my soul. And then there are the descriptions, the beautiful, eloquent descriptions of the countryside, the rural life, the old words. While rage, hurt and confusion swirl in a maelstrom of emotion, tenderness, love, and compassion lie waiting, biding their time. Yes ‘Ill Will’ is provocative, it is a disturbing, striking read, yet also strangely beautiful, and personally, I loved it.
A new story from our first ever Singles Club author, Michael Stewart, in which, God has some explaining to do. You'd think that a conversation in front of a live audience would be the perfect place to do it. But He thinks otherwise...
The first title in the Galley Beggar Singles range - and a beauty. This is a story so surprising and unsettling and delicately written that even to describe risks spoiling the shock of its ending. Suffice to say that it's about sweets-but is wonderfully sour.
Across Europe, Roma and Gypsies are suffering increasing intolerance and hostility. A new populist politics, that seeks political meaning in collective experiences and values forms of solidarity rooted in town, class, community or nation, finds in the Roma a suitable target population to which 'ordinary citizens fears and frustrations can be attached. This politics draws on a rising tide of xenophobia; a feeling of loss of sovereignity and democratic oversight; disillusionment with political elites; frustrations with the failure of welfare programmes; the presentation of social and political conflicts as cultural issues; and a growing rejection of the ideal of a trans-national European order. The Gypsy 'Menace''s fifteen chapters range geographically from Belfast to Sofia, via Paris, Rome, Prague and Budapest. They show how, in their reactions to the presence of ten million or so Romany persons in their midst, some Europeans are testing the limits of the 'social imaginary' and beginning to flesh out new ways of thinking about the ties that bind and connect citizens in Europe - and those that can be severed. The authors, who include political scientists, sociologists and anthropologists from across the continent, set the rapid shifts in political debate regarding Roma against the background of huge social and economic changes in the past thirty years, the recent, frightening resurgence of populist politics, and a noticeable increase in inter-ethnic violence and hate crimes. This book resets the agenda for thinking about Europe's largest minority, analysing not only the challenges a liberal, tolerant politics confronts but also suggesting ways of acting against the new xenophobia.
Pets! When we're not watching, do they live secret, adventurous lives? Of course they do! When disaster strikes Sky City, and the town's elected leaders can't cope, their own house pets boldly rocket into action - as the Jet Pack Pets! Princess is the Mayor's pampered pooch and leader of the Jet Pack Pets, Bix is the Police Captain's cocky cat, and Rocky is the Fire Chief's wise, tough-skinned turtle. For the first time ever, Slave Labor brings you a collection of the very first Jet Pack Pets stories.
Until 1989 it was official Communist policy in eastern Europe to absorb Gypsies into the ?ruling? working class. Since 1989, the Gypsies have become the scapegoat of postcommunism. More Gypsies have had their houses burned and have been killed in racist attacks in the first six postcommunist years than in all the time since World War II. Today the Gypsies have taken the place of the Jews, feared when poor and isolated in ghettos and hated even more than their skill as traders has brought them unaccustomed wealth and entry to walks of life previously forbidden to them.The Time of the Gypsies is about the refusal of one group of Gypsies?the Rom?to abandon their way of life and accept assimilation into the majority population. It is a story about the sources of cultural diversity in modern industrial society and about the fear and hatred that such social and cultural difference may give rise to. The core of the book, based on the author's eighteen months of observation of daily life in a Gypsy settlement, describes the cultivation, celebration, and reinvention of cultural difference and diversity by a people deemed by their ?social superiors? to be too stupid and uncivilized to have a culture at all.The author, who is the only journalist to have lived in a community of eastern European Gypsies and learned their language, takes the reader on the journey of discovery that he himself made. The answer to seemingly trivial puzzles, such as why the visiting Gypsy woman sits on the author's hat, all become part of the explanation of how this unique people, without a homeland but unlike any other diaspora population with no dream of a homeland, has sustained itself.
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