A girl loves her dog. Little Sheena so loves her dog Fido that she calls her 'My Aunt Fido'. Against all odds and the opposition of her guardian, transexual 'Uncle Phoebe', we live the pain and the love with Sheena as she battles for her special relationship with 'Aunty Dog'. Basing the parable on a real-life daydream, Ms Philps has achieved a salutary nightmare to warn us all.
Blistered Paintings by Lallie Titmuss
A torrid tale set in an Edwardian Lake District artists' colony. Euphemia Tallentire runs away from her Whitby finishing school to be with the boy of her dreams, Algernon Flestin-Bules, effete protege of artists Hugo and Lily 'Grasmere' Balderstone, only to encounter a claustrophobic hotbed of lust, paranoia, and boredom. The pent-up passions of the creatives are set against the purity of a vividly-painted Lakeland scenery; their precious characters are thrown into satiric relief by the bluff Cumberland wisdom of Jonty Wilson, the slate-miner who works on their garden. 'Superbly ironic imagery' drawled The Macclesfield Succubus & Threnody.
Samphire & Steele by Victoria Leverett
When burnt-out PR Executive Cally McGuinness takes off for a week at St Claver on Sea, she doesn't bargain on meeting the surly beachcomber with the duelling scar who teaches her all about seaweed and whose name is Lewis Steele. Before the week is out she is combing the shingle for bleached driftwood and bladderwrack, just to have something to say to her new obsession. 'Dangerously seductive' croaked The Halifax Farrago.
Tittlebat Tidings by Henrietta Grandle
A tremulous tale of tender romance as two twitchers, Tim Willington and Nancy Gorse, meet on an Essex Marshes birdwatching break. Knee-deep in slime in a wind-blasted hide, the pair share egg-sandwiches and make the most of their 'snipe-snoop' and in no time at all they are walking out to the local Milk Bar for a giggle and a 'noggin and nibble'. Even the ribald comments of Johnny Rosco and his teddy-boy rabble fail to disturb their idyll. And the arrival of a breeding-pair of Norwegian Bustards ushers in a final golden evening. 'I enjoyed looking at its frontispiece and I keep the book on my mantlepiece and perhaps I shall read it one day' says Mrs Munticorn of the Probus WI.
Mr Criddle by Edwina Spone
A touching tale of loneliness and the painful discovery of common-ground between two seemingly-disparate characters. Little Bob Stamner is afraid of the purple-faced, white-whiskered old man at 'The Oastings' who always grunts at him when he delivers the monthly 'Lighthouse-Keeper's Oracle'.
Don Shelley in the Post Office calls old Criddle 'a wierd old buffer', and it is only after Bob is set upon by local bully Perkin Ball and arrives at 'The Oastings' with the 'Oracle' soaked and in tatters after Ball has thrown it into the duck pond, that the ice cracks and melts. Mr Criddle takes in the sobbing paper-boy, and over a fireside feast of muffins and hot chocolate he comforts the wide-eyed youngster with the tale of how he suffered at the hands of Miles Darlington at Thurrock Academy of Lighthousemanship in the late '30s. The cathartic scene in which Criddle helps the trembling boy to overcome his fears by recalling his own ordeal in the Bosun's Chair is truly remarkable: the pair connect in the ruddy glow from the coals as the wind and rain lash the mullions and recall the heavy swells of Criddle's prime. 'Good grief!' sobbed the Ecclefechan Bastinado & Rhombus.
Torque Armada by Giles Poultice
The bracing tale of how feisty accountant, Lucy Davis, licks Arthur Brand's ailing car showroom into shape and helps him win the high street battle with shady dealer Lewis 'Lew' Lewis and his 'school of sharks' team of sharp-suited salesmen. At the start, Arthur's business is on its knees. At the end, it's a rejuvenated 'Fire' Brand who is on his knees asking for Lucy's hand in marriage. From the blazing pen of a scribe dubbed 'The L L Mountjoy of the Quantocks' by those in the know.
Romany Joe's Felt Hat by Polly Barratt
Romany Joe spends his days walking around the duck pond, talking to vegetables and blowing his bugle, all the time wearing that same old blue felt hat. The village children love to gather at his caravan and throw things at him. Easter comes yet again. Mrs Tantamount the vicar's wife crosses the donkey field with a basket of jellies, a sandalwood egg-cup set and a 'Guernica' jig-saw, only to find Joe missing, and his hat in the pond. The stage is set for a 600-page rollercoaster of a mystery that affects a whole community. It is in his absence that Romany Joe is seen to touch the lives of so many. 'As long as Proust and almost as funny' trilled Thimble Collector's Quarterly.
Perdition Catch My Soul by Una Purfleet
Shakespeare is his passion. She would rather watch 'Corrie' and listens to Robbie Williams in the bath. Somehow she finds herself living in a rose-festooned cottage in Upper Middle-Puddleton, working in the village shop, and borrowing extra-virgin olive oil from the bookish, bespectacled batchelor in 'Hathaway House' across the lane. The story of how he helps her roses win the 'Blooming Puddleton' contest and woos her with the magic of the Bard, while she opens his lonely heart and brings dearest life to his dusty bookshelves, is perfect bedtime reading for the insomniac and a boon to the emotionally-stultified.
Best Foot Forward by Lars Grouty
This heart-warming tale of a girl who meets the man of her dreams while buying a ruler is a worthy follow-up to Grouty's last novel, 'Art and Sole', which depicted the fragile relationship between a shoe-shop salesman and a young girl on an art and design course.
River of Passion by Janice Transom
Lola lives in a gorgeous riverside apartment. May 15th is a day of mixed fortunes. Her cat, Tertullion, escapes after playing in her underwear drawer. When her crimson teddy gets caught in the rudder of Guy Cumbersome's wherry, the ensuing legal action awakens a nascent fetish for ermine and corporal punishment that takes Lola to the brink. A new departure for an author whose previous works included a history of the dishcloth and a collection of equestrian poems in Esperanto.
Spool and Negus by Len Blatt
'The headless torso of his hideous underself smothered her mouseveined yearnings in the yawn of the sloping room. Bulbousbacked and ripplethroated the beast was climbing the stair yet again. Let me die.' Blatt conquers the 'white desert of hopeless desires' in this prose-poetic tour de force set amongst 17th century Flemish weavers. Len Blatt is currently embroiled in an autobiographical poem with a working title of 'Briar and Quern: the Unselving Lacuna of Hope'.
Scrimshaw Days by Alice Ellis Wallace
On holiday in Weymouth with her blind Aunt, Topsy escapes each evening to the harbour, where she sits, rapt, at the foot of Old Tasker, a one-legged landlocked mariner whose scrimshaw carvings reveal a better, a more essential, world. Old dry-docked salt and burdened 15 year old make a touching pair in this tale that gives solace to all who would seek love in unlikely places.
The Toby-Dog by Danvers Mouncey
A truly appalling yarn. Mrs Flitters loses Algie, her Jack Russell, at the medieval market, after he chases a weird blue cat. It is 2 hours before she finds the dog with the help of a friendly police-woman. But Algie is not himself. And the Toby-Dog in the Punch & Judy show has a terrible familiarity, despite the garish ruff at its throat. Mrs Flitters knows something has gone horribly wrong, but who will believe a simple old woman distressed in the heat of the crowd? Thus begins a descent into evil no reader can forget. By the author of 'Rapscallion' and 'The Stuffed Greyhound'.
A Lesser Shriving by Jens Lustig
A study in subtlety by the Belgian horologist who has made Gravesend his home and novel-writing a spare-time passion. All is suggestion and shifting nuance in this account of a Norfolk peasant's religious conversion amid sea-mists and the salt-flecked wool of his flock. Is it night or day? Is our hero asleep or awake? Is that a sheep, or a cloud of ocean vapour? At the end, he goes to bed, which is where he is at the start. Lustig takes us full circle. Which is to say, we go nowhere at all.
A Yen for Fame by Gwen Dudder
Ms Dudder believes that Adolf Hitler was a frustrated comedian who was desperate for attention. Craving fame and the response of a crowd, he invented Nazism and organised the Nuremberg Rallies merely as a substitute for treading the boards of the English Music Halls he loved so and called 'these cathedrals of laughter and passion'. The argument reaches its most feverish pitch when the authoress spends a chapter comparing Hitler's fringe and 'comedy moustache' with those of Oliver Hardy. The following chapter comparing the Nazi top brass to a troupe of circus clowns is rather sedate in comparison.
The Caulking and Repair of the Small Freshwater Coracle by Jerome T Vendace
Apparently it is possible to refloat a stoved coracle by using a goatskin patch secured with 'bird glue'. Also, it seems that the smallest of freshwater coracles can easily be carried by mountaineers, in case of an encounter with an upland lake, since these vessels are 'feather-light' and can be repaired 'at the drop of a hat' with 'a poultice of hare and oyster mashings applied with a webbing spoon'. More outré advice from the author of 'The Identification of Norse Footwear' and 'Keeping Bees in an Ethiopian Wicker Bottle'.
Herbs for All Ills by Maud Ross
As if 'The Green Lexicon' and 'White Witchcraft for the Modern Lifestyle' were not enough, Ms Ross lollops back with more 'Super Natural Solutions'. Find out how to apply Dogswort and Chyme to a sore groin. Let Goblin's Finger rid you of hammer toe. Chew on a pungent gruel of Chitter-Leaf, Crawling Horsebladder Vine and Jester's Nape to banish delusions of grandeur. We are spared an index, though the same cannot be said for the author's mysterious drawings. But let me not keep you: I am away to pick Elfin Earlobe, whose application to the relevant area is sure to prevent the formation of distressing pustules. Hurrah.
