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fiction

The Conspiracy behind the Shropshire Hills Vanishings
Carl Lafferty

9781911175933 A mysterious light appears in the sky over the south Shropshire hills; four teachers from a nearby school inexplicably disappear; a West-Midlands MI5 outpost is closed without notice; its boss - the beautiful Julia Anderson, mysteriously vanishes without trace. It seems that Julia's former colleague, misogynistic ex-policeman Brian Humphries, is the only person interested in discovering the whole truth. But is Brian quite the person he seems to be? And can he save Julia and expose the conspiracy of silence which surrounds the disappearances before The Service gets to him? Or will his efforts instead be thwarted by Julia’s ex-flatmate, recovered paranoid schizophrenic Peter Williams? With every twist and turn, the intricacies of this intriguing and darkly humorous thriller take the reader further and further into the murky depths of Peter’s mental illness and MI5’s determination to keep their secret – whatever the collateral damage to those who stand in their way. Other books by Carl Lafferty... The Darkness That Lies Beneath
Published: 1st Dec 2017
Paperback: 336 pages
Price: £12.50
ISBN: 9-781911-175933
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Carl was born in 1960 in a Welsh Marches market town. Having studied at a West Country university, he spent a brief period teaching in a Berkshire state school, before returning to his home town to pursue a career in international education. Carl gave up his business interests in 2014 to focus more fully on his writing; Collateral Nuclear Damage is his first full-length novel. He continues to work from home, supported by his wife and three university-based children.
Reader Reviews...  
Childrens

Freddy’s Flying adventures
Henry G Sampson

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Published:Dec 2016
Paperback:30 pages
Price:£7.99
ISBN:9-781911-175346


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author
Henry G Sampson
Born in 1951, Henry Sampson has been a farmer for most of his life, starting on his Dad’s dairy farm in Staffordshire, where he grew up amongst the animals and learned the skills of farming. Later in life, he acquired his own farm in Cheshire in 1979 with his wife Deidre and they went on to win many awards for the quality of their milk and their prize winning dairy herd.
In recent years, health problems have obliged Henry to sell his prize-winning herd. his emotional creative side became inspired, but he kept his writing a secret from the rest of the family. He had always had a passion for flying and from this passion produced his first book, Freddy’s Flying Adventure. The reveal of Freddy’s Flying Adventure was a great surprise. 		illustrator
Allie Pottinger
Allie is an artist specialising in watercolour paintings depicting her love of nature, cottage gardens, countryside scenes, portraits and her dog. Allie also organizes watercolour workshops and classes. She was born in Cheshire on bonfire night 1965 in the heart of the beautiful rolling countryside which would later become her inspiration for art. Allie graduated with a degree in graphic design, specialising in Illustration. She set up an illustration art-studio in Covent Garden, however, five years later she found herself drawn back to Cheshire.
Allie met Henry through the local commissioning of work for his family but later worked with Henry to bring his text alive through her illustrations.


Reader Reviews...

Suzi

This is such a magical story with the most beautiful illustrations. My little boy just loves it. An instant classic.

Laura

I have just read your dads amazing book to William and Indi. William now wants to go and build his own plane. They loved it.

Sarah

I bought this book for Christmas for a couple of friend's children. The book is beautifully illustrated and is such a lovely story. It was a perfect gift.

Ian

This is a magical story and my Children love me reading it to them over and over again. The illustrations are beautiful.

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Reader’s Copies for Writers

Reader’s Copies  – a special YouCaxton service for writers.

Reader’s copies are plain, white paperback books designed for circulation among friendly critics at an early stage. Critical readers can be an enormous benefit to authors because their feedback is likely to come from different perspectives – style, structure, story-line, grammar, continuity, factual accuracy – and once a book is in a bound, printed form it is far easier for them (and you) to view it objectively as a finished product.

What is a Reader’s Copy?

A reader’s copy is a pre-publication version of your book.
The purpose is to see your manuscript in book-format and to have the book criticised at an early stage by friends and colleagues who can give you constructive feedback.
The reader’s copy will also help you to consider some of the design aspects of your book such as book-size, number of pages, type-size, typeface and margins.
Reader’s copies can also be useful as low-cost, archive copies of texts that you choose not to bring to publication.
There are three standard sizes: 6 x 9 inches, 5.5 x 8.5 inches and 5.25 x 8 inches

How does it work?

1. Send us your manuscript in Word format.
2. We check it and let you know if we’re able to produce a Reader’s Copy from it.
3. We convert the Word file to a print-ready PDF.
4. We add page-numbers and standard front-matter including title pages and contents.
5. We produce a standard white cover, printed with your book-title, subtitle and author-name.
6. We produce as many copies as you need.
The whole process takes about three weeks.

How much does it cost?

Preparation of print-ready files and printer-upload fee: £50
Note that if you subsequently decide to publish your book with YouCaxton,
the £50 fee can be credited against the cost of typesetting the finished book.

The cost of printing is 70p plus 1p per page

Example print cost for a book of 200 pages
Preparation and Upload fee: £50
+ £2.70 per copy (200 pages at 1p per page plus 70p for the cover)
+ Delivery/postage at cost

Note that subsequent orders can be placed for additional books but there is an admin fee of £10 per order

Optional extras

Add an image to the front cover – supplied by the Author: £15
Add back cover Blurb – supplied by the Author: £15

Professional services

Layout and typesetting of interior: £175
Full cover design and layout: £175
Proof reading: £8 per 1000 words
Copy-editing: £8 per 1000 words

Can I get Reader’s Copies if my book is in colour or large format?

Yes – but we would need to work out a special price for you.

How do I get started?

Just contact us by email at newbooks@youcaxton.co.uk

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Front Page, history

History of medieval Weymouth and its evolution as a trading port.
James Crump

9781909644809 Weymouth is usually thought of as a ‘Georgian’ town, but this book shows how much of the physical appearance of the town was determined many years before the arrival of George III himself. It examines the parallel histories of the twin towns of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis from the eleventh century to the end of the sixteenth, charting their rise and subsequent decline. It explains how their early growth was based on the great medieval trades of wool and wine and how growth was influenced by their connections with France which developed particularly in the years of the Angevin Empire. Their later decline was caused by the disruption of these trades and by the ravages of war in the Channel, part of the great conflict with France known as the ‘Hundred Years’ War’. In the midst of this the population was overwhelmed by the catastrophe of the Black Death.
Published:7th July 2015
Paperback:112 pages
Price:£6.99
ISBN:9-781909-644717
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James Crump read modern history at the University of Oxford and taught school students, undergraduates and extramural classes for many years. Before moving to Dorset he has written on social and industrial history subjects mainly in northern contexts. He has been researching Dorset history for many years and is especially interested in the early history of towns.

Reviews...

livesinprint

Playing The Grey Man – A memoir of police corruption, bullying, incompetence and nepotism
Robert Moon

RM-PTG-407 CS Cov 2c.indd When the rest of us run away, it’s the police officers up and down the country who run into danger and into some of the messiest and most tragic events imaginable. But there’s a price to pay. Robert Moon’s vivid description of how he left the SAS for a life in the Scottish police gives a shocking insight into the toll that police life can take on even the toughest individuals. At times funny, at other times almost unbearably sad, and often both at the same time, this heart-rending account will leave you with awed respect for the ordinary police men and women, the cops on the front line – and not a little concern about some of those higher up the ranks. When Robert Moon joined the police he was enthusiastic and idealistic; when he resigned and refused his long service medal, he was disillusioned and broken by a job that betrayed the public and had been betrayed by the managers who seemed to have forgotten how to look after the people who really keep us safe.

Other books by the same author...
The Grey Lodge
Published:Nov 2016
Paperback:290 pages
Price:£10.99
ISBN:9-781911-175407


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Available from Amazon
Robert Joined 23 SAS, became “Sabre”, and a squadron member for four years before accidentally joining the police.
He then walked, drove and ate ice cream in one of the toughest areas in Scotland for eight years before being exiled to the middle of nowhere. As the police changed from serving the public to serving statistics, he started to see a dark side to police-service and finally left the job, fed up of the corruption, nepotism and bullying, and after refusing his long-service medal. He now travels the world and complains a lot.
Reader Reviews...

Douglas Walker - The Sun Newspaper

Robert Moon has lived a full life. As part of the SAS he put his life at risk serving around the world.
After packing it in, he moved to the 'teuchter' branch of the Scots police expecting a simple life. Instead he was met by bent coppers and corruption dripping through the ranks from the highest echelons of the force.
Written with gallows humour, Moon is left deeply traumatised by what he experienced.
His description of front-line policing is too shocking to believe.
Just as well Playing the Grey Man is purely fictional ...

belief, Front Page, history

The story of Father Ignatius’s community at New Llanthony Abbey
Hugh Allen

9781911175230 To the diarist Francis Kilvert, his near neighbour Father Ignatius (born Joseph Leycester Lyne in 1837) seemed ‘entirely possessed by the one idea’ of introducing his distinctive version of the monastic life into the mid-Victorian Anglican Church. Rejecting any suggestion that he should temper his grand ambition by meeting comfortably protestant Britain half way, Ignatius endured ridicule, harassment and regular episcopal embargo, but persevered until his dying day with what he believed was his individually God-given mission. Ignatius’s enduring memorial is ‘New Llanthony Abbey’, an eccentric, now partly ruined Gothic extravaganza at Capel-y-ffin, a remote upland hamlet on the Welsh border. Monks and nuns came and went – some evidently pursuing a genuine religious vocation but failing to find it there; others apparently from less worthy motives.
Published:July 2016
Paperback:504 pages
Price:£18.50
ISBN:9-781911-175230
Available from Amazon
Hugh Allen tells the story of Ignatius’s community from its origins in early 1860s East Anglia to its migration to Wales in 1870, its history through the following four decades (including the controversial 1880 Apparitions), and its demise after the founder’s death in 1908. He also describes the later history of the former monastery, home in the 1920s to the sculptor and typographer Eric Gill and for many years to the family of his eldest daughter, and brings the story up to date with information about the Father Ignatius Memorial Trust and the continuing appeal of New Llanthony as a place of pilgrimage. The author is a longstanding member of the Father Ignatius Memorial Trust.
Reader Reviews...

The Church Times
In the midst of the burgeoning religious fervour of 19th-century Britain, the tragic-comic figure of Joseph Leycester Lyne [Fr Ignatius] must surely represent the epitome of … the “virtuoso religion” of some of its more enthusiastic and eccentric characters. As such, a book like Hugh Allen’s has been lacking for a long time….. The whole work is forensically researched, meticulously referenced, and fluently written – a winning combination that makes it as enjoyable as it is useful – and the footnotes are often as interesting and informative as the main body of the text. Lyne was either a faithful thwarted prophet or a volatile pious lunatic. Perhaps he was a heady combination of both; but Allen leaves that judgement to the reader, and does so in a masterly fashion. This book has been well worth the wait.

William Davage, New Directions, December 2016
‘An enjoyable, constructive, detailed and compelling study … This is a substantial and significant book, well-researched, rooted in thorough archival sources and attractively, if weightily, presented … comprehensive in its scope, measured and considered in its judgements.'

News Letter of the Anglo Catholic History Society, Autumn 2016
Much meticulous research has gone into this substantial book … Hugh Allen has utilised a wide range of archive relating to Ignatius himself and the community and its associates across the whole the chequered range of its history … All in all this book is a fascinating compendium of information about a bizarre and ambiguous monastic experiment.

fiction

Josie
Catherine Trimby

9781911175308 Josie, a quiet and timid thirty-two-year-old, lives alone. It is a boring and predictable life but overall it suits her - until she meets Mike. His unexpected and unwanted advances cause her to panic and the result is a devastating accident. Josie is prosecuted and receives a prison sentence of twelve months. Finding herself serving her time in a women’s prison in the Midlands, she is initially terrified of the other inmates and tries to keep her head down, but things don’t work out as planned. To her surprise she makes friends but she is also subjected to further trauma. While dealing with the aftermath of a hostage incident she has to face up, for the first time, to events in her own past. The resulting self-knowledge empowers her. She approaches the end of her sentence and begins to look at life differently, envisaging a new and rewarding future.
Published:July 2016
Paperback:196 pages
Price:£10.00
ISBN:9-781911-175308
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Catherine Trimby was born in Shropshire. She spent five years at boarding school in Surrey and then trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. She worked for several years in repertory theatre before joining the BBC Television Drama Department. She has three grown-up children and lives with her husband in Shropshire.
Reader Reviews...

Shropshire Star 22 September 2016
In more than thirty years as a magistrate in Shrewsbury Catherine Trimby faced many difficult decisions, some of the most agonising of which were whether or not to send a female offender to prison ... Josie is not based on anybody but is an amalgam of 100,000 true-life events, drawing on thirty-four years in court.

fiction

The Shropshire Stalker
Nick Jones

9781909644380 A tense psychological thriller… Mild-mannered book dealer Anthony Metcalf, and his actress wife Barbara, are receiving unwarranted attention from a sinister source: a witch. Their supernatural visitor is not the conventional hag with a black pointed hat, but the stunningly-glamorous millionairess Eva Carlssen. And her broomstick is a silver German sports racing car. Initially dismissing her claims of magical powers as bombast, Anthony begins to take them more seriously when he witnesses a tragic accident at a local motor race meeting. He is convinced it has been caused through Eva’s spectral interference. With the stability of his marriage undermined by Eva’s relentless pursuit, intrusive text messages and phone calls, Anthony Metcalf’s life is suddenly shattered with a late-night visit from the local police ...
Published:July 2016
Paperback:180 pages
Price:£8.99
ISBN:9-781909-644380
Available from Amazon
Nick Jones has spent his life connected with buildings. Initially working as a surveying assistant on a major tunnelling project under the City of London, he moved into architectural journalism, working for a publishing group which was part of Express Newspapers. He first edited specialist supplements for the weekly newspaper Building Design then later became Editor of the conservation monthly Building Refurbishment. He has contributed to many other architectural publications. His debut novel ‘King’s Cross’ was published in August 2015. The writer now lives in Herefordshire. Contact the author at www.ampersandworld.co.uk
Reader Reviews...