A historical thriller narrated from two perspectives, in two eras. April 1885, and five babies – all from immigrant families – go missing, snatched from their homes at night. And a doctor begins a sinister experiment, giving each child not a name but a colour: Blue, White, Green, Black and Brown…Twenty-five years after the kidnapping, the children now grown up, suddenly reappear on the doorsteps of their biological parents. Confused by his daughter’s memory loss, one parent hires a journalist to investigate. Will he discover what has happened to his daughter and the other children? And why have they suddenly reappeared after all this time?
A gripping page-turner first published in Argentina.
Out now!
It’s 1986 and 29-year-old Marlo O’Sullivan of London-Irish stock has just found out that his sister is his mother. To steady his life, he moves to Glengarriff, to a cottage he has inherited, in the stunning Beara Peninsula.
When a neighbour dies unexpectedly, Marlo takes over his minibus service to Cork. There is nothing regular about the regulars on the bus - especially Sully, a non-verbal 6 year old, who goes nowhere but does the journey back and forth every day, on his own. Marlo is landed with this a strange but compassionate arrangement, fashioned to give the child’s mother respite from his care. Sully’s obsession with an imaginary friend in the ancient oak forests of Glengarriff slowly unveils its terrible secrets – a 400-hundred-year-old tragedy revels itself.
Coming September 2024
Fifteen-year-old Efraín and his two younger brothers live in a house on the hillside in Monterrey, Northern Mexico. They are left to fend for themselves after their mother is wrongly arrested for theft.
Má has raised her boys to keep out of trouble with the local gangs and to study for their future, but they are viewed by society as good-for-nothings or criminals simply because of where they live. The only people offering any kind of support are the local gang members – but everything comes with a price tag.
Coming October 2024
Travelling between France and Spain, a 16-year-old boy is marooned in the Spanish border town of Irun. Snow is falling, darkness is creeping in, and the next train to Madrid is not due until midnight.
The boy is hungry. And he has eight hours to kill.
‘Hauntingly mysterious… right to the end’
Johanna Calmont, World Kit Lit
Donny and Zoe are back. This time they must get out of Calais before they both end up in jail. This isn’t a holiday. This is a role-swapping, day trip to hell. With football.
'Nicola Garrard’s 29 Locks was one of the best YA novels published in 2021. Her new one, 21 Miles, is every bit as good. Garrard deals with hugely important issues, without ever preaching or compromising the pace and excitement of the narrative. This is committed fiction, but the heavy lifting is done by exciting storytelling and compelling characters. It grips, and forces you to think. And to feel. One of the very best pieces of fiction to come out of the refugee crisis.'
Anthony McGowan, Carnegie Medal Winner
It was the middle of the nineteenth century when Lafanu Brown audaciously decided to become an artist. In the wake of the American Civil War, life was especially tough for Black women, but she didn’t let that stop her. The daughter of a Native American woman and an African-Haitian man, Lafanu had the rare opportunity to study, travel, and follow her dreams, thanks to her indomitable spirit, but not without facing intolerance and violence. Now, in 1887, living in Rome as one of the city’s most established painters, she is ready to tell her fiancé about her difficult life, which began in a poor family forty years earlier.
‘Exciting to see this ambitious novel by one of Italy’s most important writers come out in English… In its reckoning with racism and colonialism, The Colour Line explores the potential for artists to reclaim line and colour in the name of justice.’
Selby Wynn Schwartz, author of After Sappho
After World War Two England was on her knees, so the call went out to the British Empire for volunteers to help rebuild the ‘Mother Country’. Young men and women from different Caribbean islands were quick to respond, paying the considerable sum of Twenty-Eight Pounds Ten Shillings to board HMT Empire Windrush – the ‘ship of dreams’ that would take them to their new lives.
‘A very important book and legacy for the future’
Baroness Floella Benjamin, DBE