fiction

Finding Clara
Graham Hitchcock

Published: May 2025
Hardback: 414 pages
Price: £14.99
ISBN: 978-1-915972-79-8
Available from
Amazon
and
The Geat British Bookshop
Finding Clara
The Revenant, the Heretic and the Occultist
by Graham Hitchcock

Demoralized academic Tobias Jackson, encounters an enigmatic young woman on snowbound train in the Highlands of Scotland, in the winter of 2011. From that moment onwards, a sequence of unnerving experiences forces him to doubt his core beliefs.

Tobias is supported by Medieval History graduate and former lover Emma Andersson. Emma makes a shattering discovery as she tries to locate the woman on the train. In an attempt to find out the true identity of this woman and achieve some resolution, they embark upon a dangerous and frightening journey into the past of Clair Sinclair.

Travelling in the footsteps of Clair, the journey takes them from Caithness, to the Isle of Mull and Iona, where an unsolved Scottish mystery engulfs Emma. Continuing onto Cathar Country in the Languedoc France, as they encounter people who knew Clair, they try to piece together fragmented clues. Coming face to face with evidence of terrible tragedies, they accept that Clair Sinclair believed she had been here before, as someone called Clara, remorselessly leading them to an unknown endpoint.

Returning to Scotland, Emma begins to unravel a tale of love and faith in a time of medieval inquisition and a remarkable escape story that turns historical orthodoxy on its head. As lost manuscripts and documents, buried history, religious and historical controversies emerge amidst a cast of unforgettable characters, a revenant, a heretic and an occultist collide.

Can Emma Andersson write the story of Clair Sinclair?

history

Shakespeare’s Cryptic Sonnets
John M. Glauser

Published: 9th June 2025
Hardback: 343 pages
Price: £25.00
ISBN: 978-1-914424-45-8
Available from
The Great British Bookshop
and
Amazon
Shakespeare’s Cryptic Sonnets
An interpretation
by John M. Glauser

In this fascinating and meticulous exploration of the language used in Shakespeare’s more mysterious Sonnets, John M. Glauser illuminates hitherto misunderstood areas of the poet’s work and suggests solutions to some of the most enduring linguistic puzzles.

To this end, the author extends his research beyond the Sonnets to Shakespeare’s other works – his longer poetical works and plays – and to his relationships with the most important people in his life, particularly his young patron, the 3rd Earl of Southampton, but not excluding the mysterious Dark Lady and other key figures.

The result is an intriguing and convincing new portrayal of Shakespeare’s complex, multi-layered writing and the often hidden religious and political meanings it contains – evidence of the poet’s dangerously unpopular opinions in the brutal world of the late sixteenth century.


Shakespeare’s Cryptic Sonnets is the product of over thirty-five years’ dedicated research.
Childrens

Meg’s Final Journey
T. A. Marshall
Published: May 2025
Paperback: 96 pages
Price: £8.00
ISBN: 978-1-915972-77-4
Available from
The Great British Bookshop
and
Amazon
Meg's Final Journey
by T. A. Marshall

Meg Larkin is in shock.

She has been given a terminal diagnosis by her doctor and she is expected to accept the inevitable without challenge - but she’s never been one to give up without a fight.

She plain refuses to accept the diagnosis and to let it define her fate and returns home disconsolate and angry. But good things can happen at any time.

There, on the doormat, is an invitation to join a luxury cruise, an escape from life’s problems.
It’s almost too good to be true.

Packing a small bag and with a careful choice of clothes, she goes on one ultimate journey.

And once on board, battling through the harsh realities of her illness, she finds unexpected strength and an ardent passion for the life that she is determined to hold on to.

What will become of her? Sometimes the hardest battles can lead to the most peaceful victories.

 
Tracey was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
She is married and has two children who are both just entering their forties and lives in the lovely village of Thorpe Hesley.
A qualified tutor, she has a degree in teaching and has worked in the education sector for over 20 years.
Her work background is in the health and social care sector.
At seven years old, while at primary school, she won a book as prize for the best written account of a school trip and her vivid imagination stays with her.
News

Publishing and Self-Publishing Seminar, 11 July

Join on our seminar on 11 July to learn about getting published and all aspects of self-publishing, from completing your manuscript to decisions about design and layout, through to the final print-ready files and publication.

Enterprise House, Bishop’s Castle, Friday 11 July, 10.00 am – 4.00 pm
£75 per person, please contact newbooks@youcaxton.co.uk

Programme

Morning
1) Welcome and introduction to self-publishing, Bob Fowke, Managing Editor YouCaxton.
Relationship between print technologies, publishing and self-publishing historically; the new print-on-demand and digital technologies and how they are affecting publishing today.

2) First thoughts: what is the readership?
* What is a niche?
* How will readers find out about the book?
* What title and subtitle?
* Discussion

Coffee

3) Preparing the manuscript
* Types of editing: structural, copy-editing, proof-reading.
* Use of Word: ‘track changes’ etc.
* Indexes, endnotes etc.
* Discussion

4) Agents
* What they do and how to find one.
* Straplines, synopses, first chapters.
* Back-cover blurb
* Discussion

Lunch break (45 minutes)

Afternoon

5) The Design Process
* Software used
* Fonts, margins, preliminary pages, contents lists, cost constraints
* Book covers, spines, ISBNs, barcodes
* PDF proofs
* Uploading print-ready files to printers.
* Discussion

 6) Production
*Print-on-demand and digital printing
* Litho and traditional print runs
* Production costs in relation to design, pagination, types of paper, colour etc.
* What can go wrong?
* Discussion

7) Marketing
* Pricing
* Publicity
* Time frame
* Launches
* Social media
* Reviews
* Discussion

8) Distribution
Amazon, wholesalers, bookshops

9) Final discussion

fiction

White Wolf
Nick Gosman

Published: May 2025
Paperback: 281 pages
Price: £12.99
ISBN: 978-1-915972-76-7
Available from
The Great British Bookshop
and
Amazon
White Wolf
by Nick Gosman

In a story that pays homage to the latter-day frontier world of Jack London, WHITE WOLF recounts a lone woman’s struggle to survive in the arctic wastes of a forgotten land far from the world that most of us know or could imagine.

Here, in a purest space of bitter cold and uncompromising hardship, Migla is reborn. Forced to discover herself anew, her experience fosters a second catharsis and she becomes a different person.

Delving into her being to find the strength to survive, Migla comes to terms with her new life and falls in love with the animals and plants she encounters there. At times mystical and enchanting and at others deeply disturbing, WHITE WOLF is a treatise on the transcendence of the human spirit and the redeeming power of nature.

“All that is left of me is my robe and my spirit. Now I’m dying, I gave everything away. I don’t have anything to give you anymore. Only my robe and my spirit are in your hands. Now my tears come”

Wallace Black Elk



Nick Gosman gained an insight into what it takes to survive in the wilderness during his formative years climbing and mountaineering in Scotland and Continental Europe.

Since his early years wondering the world’s empty spaces with family and friends, wild nature has come to hold a deep spiritual resonance with the author, which he attempts to bring to his story-telling.
fiction

The Man on the Mountain
A babyboomer love story

Michael McCarthy won the 2023 Creative Writing Award of the Association for The Study of Literature and the Environment, the body which represents teachers and scholars of environmental writing and eco-criticism.


 The Man on the Mountain
A babyboomer love story
by Michael McCarthy

This is the account of an improbable and ultimately tragic love affair, between an arrogant and cynical drugs baron and an idealistic young policewoman. In fact, it was more than improbable, it was impossible. It could not have a happy ending. It was doomed before it began. Yet when in the end it happened, it was a true union of two hearts.

The remarkable love story of Gideon Horrocks and WPC Clare Sowerby is centred around a major drugs conspiracy, a multi-million-pound plot to flood all Europe with LSD. Set in a gritty and grimy location – the industrial Lancashire of the 1980s, in the early years of Thatcher’s Britain, with unemployment rapidly rising – it brings together two people each with great unhappiness in their pasts, who find, wholly unexpectedly, the possibility of a happy future together. Yet even as they do so, events are closing in on them, and an explosive climax is coming…

Told with remorseless pace, The Man On The Mountain combines two gripping and interlocking narratives – one about the fate of the most controversial of generations, the babyboomers, and the other about the power of love to reopen even the most tightly-closed of human hearts. And together they form a tragedy that is as unforgettable as it is extraordinary.
Published: May 2025
Paperback: 323 pages
Price: £12.99
ISBN: 9781915972729
Available from Amazon

Michael McCarthy has won numerous awards for his environmental journalism as the former Environment Correspondent of The Times and the longstanding Environment Editor of The Independent. His book The Moth Snowstorm – Nature and Joy (2015) was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize, Britain’s principal nature writing award, and also for the Richard Jefferies prize. His novel Fergus The Silent (2021) won the 2023 Creative Writing Prize of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, with the chairman of the judges describing it as “wonderful.” This is his second novel.

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livesinprint

Front-line Policing: Can, Worms, Open
P.C. Andy Vince

Published: May 2025
Paperback: 184 pages
Price: £9.99
ISBN: 978-1-915972-74-3
Available soon from
The Great British Bookshop
and
Amazon
Front-line Policing: Can, Worms, Open
The problem(s) with Response Policing
by P.C. Andy Vince

Now retired, PC Vince writes about his experiences from a career in the Police spent entirely in uniform on the front line – ‘Response’ as it is known. During that time he attended incidents from cycling matters to murders, and everything in between.

He explains procedures and shows how the Police evolved during his career, and not for the better.

He takes the reader through the gates of a police station, behind the wheel of a police car, and into the 999 world, giving opinions and his own personal feelings about the development of what was, once, a very efficient service, and now is full of nonsense.

Response bobbies will love their side of things being shown – the bosses and government, not so much



PC Vince joined the Police following time in the forces and other jobs. He spent his entire Police career on the front line in a smaller than average Police force. He is now happily retired.
livesinprint

Come and meet the Doctor
Hugh Thomson

Published: May 2024
Paperback: 110 pages
Price: £6.99
ISBN: 978-1-915972-86-6
Available from
The Great British Bookshop
and
Amazon
Come and Meet the Doctor
by Hugh J Thomson

Childhood in the north of Scotland was full of entertaining, and sometimes shocking events, and medical school in Aberdeen was a riot of fun and pranks as well as learning to be a doctor.

Frequent trips with my friends to the far north- west of Scotland opened the door to a number of adventures, and it was during my time as a medical student that I became a Christian, which was to change the direction of my life in years to come.

After four years in Aberdeen, I worked a further six years in Edinburgh before becoming second in command to transplant pioneer, Sir Roy Calne, in Cambridge. A year in the USA exposed some highly amusing differences in culture and language, and three months at the Chinese University Hospital in Hong Kong were a delight.

Finally, I became a consultant surgeon in Birmingham, only to step out of medicine to plant a church near the city centre, and teach the bible each year in Zambia and Uganda.

My midlife crisis was taking up boxing, and I fought in a number of tournaments before retiring to pursuits more appropriate to my age.



Hugh Thomson was born and brought up in Aberdeen, and graduated from medical school there in 1977. He subsequently worked as a doctor in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Cambridge, North Carolina and Hong Kong before being appointed as a consultant surgeon at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham in 1994.

He was one of the founding elders of City Church in Birmingham in 1999, and stepped out of medical practice to work full time for the church in 2002.

He is now retired and living in Birmingham.

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