Fiction

BOYHUNT
Author: David Johns
ISBN: 0 9548975 2 8
Price: £6.99
Format: Paperback; 250 pages

It's the 14th century – the age of Chaucer's pilgrims, of the Black Death and social unrest, of the Lollards, Miracle Plays and the Peasants' Revolt – and a young lad is fleeing for his life the length of England.

The evil Baron Fulke has devised a terrible sport. His nephew Ranulph, the rightful heir to his dead father's northern possessions, is to be hunted to death for a trumped-up crime. All that can save him is the discovery of a precious religious relic, a phial of Christ’s blood.

Ranulph journeys south, danger always at his heels, via Lindisfarne, York, Lincoln and Coventry, and with a growing band of colourful companions: Henry, the would-be monk; Christopher, the affectionate idiot boy; Janie, the travelling minstrel; Brother Walt, the ex-hermit, and his bothersome goat; Avelina, the peasant girl with her mysterious potions; and Swinke and Swonken, a pair of Siamese twins.

In London, where he witnesses the death of Wat Tyler at Smithfield, our fast-maturing hero has an agonising decision to make – should he return north to claim his feudal inheritance or choose instead to embrace the excitements and uncertainties of an age still struggling to be born?

CULTIC CYPHERS FROM CELTIC CYPRUS (7,5)
Author: David Arscott
ISBN: 0 9542587 0 3
Price: £6.99
Format: Paperback; 246 pages

Pity an afflicted crossword compiler seduced by the shameless promiscuity of the English language, by the shifting syllables that whirl within his word-choked brain!  Writing the definitive manual for cryptic puzzle solvers, Douglas O’Dale finds himself betrayed by the subtle intricacies of his own verbal sorcery – and forced to confront the horror of what happened on a hot summer night long ago.

Complete with its own grid and set of clues, this remarkable novel moves fluidly between playfulness and anguish – the most elaborate suicide note in literary fiction.

“Too good for modern publishers” – Martin Seymour Smith

MARACAS IN CARACAS
Author: David Arscott
ISBN: 0 9548975 0 1
Price: £6.99
Format: Paperback; 176 pages

Here's evidence that the short story form is alive and kicking.  David Arscott, first published in Ian Hamilton's prestigious New Review back in the 1970s, brings us a collection set in that period and displaying a kaleidoscopic variety of styles, themes, locations and atmospheres.  In these beautifully crafted tales, we meet a hunted revolutionary confronting his fear in a remote jungle hideaway;  a besotted English portrait painter pursuing an elusive subject across two continents;  a resentful Methodist preacher tussling with his faith in the pulpit;  a young Mexican stunt diver dealing with a sexual predator;  two subtly ferocious Oxbridge dons locking horns across wine glasses and canapés;  an American draft-dodger caught up in a wild Venezuelan carnival ...