Other books that might interest you

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  Red or Dead

  David Peace

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  'That's all I ask from anyone. That we try to make the people happy.'
  Bill Shankly had one aim: to make Liverpool Football Club invincible.
  As its manager from 1959, he secured the team promotion, the First Division title, the FA Cup and success in Europe. For fifteen years, he defined what it was to be a Liverpool fan, and demanded total loyalty from his players and coaches. A loyalty that Bill hoped would be repaid when he retired...
  David Peace's iconic novel Red or Dead is the fictionalised story of a game, a life, and a man of two halves. This stage version was adapted and directed by Phillip Breen, and first performed at Liverpool's Royal Court in 2025, with a cast including Peter Mullan as Bill Shankly.
  The novel was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and has been widely acclaimed:
  'David Peace brings perfect pitch to this ode to Bill Shankly's Liverpool reign' Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Observer
  'A love letter to a great manager, an elegy to the beautiful game' Independent
  'So hypnotic that even the football-averse might enjoy it' Guardian

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  I Daniel Blake

  Dave Johns

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  'I, Daniel Blake, am a citizen, nothing more, nothing less.'
  Dan is a carpenter. A Geordie through and through. He had a heart attack recently, but he's on the mend now.
  Katie has just arrived from London. She's finally got a council flat, somewhere for her and her daughter, Daisy. A fresh start.
  In adversity, people come together. But when the system is stacked against you, how does anyone get by? With 14.5 million people (Joseph Rowntree Foundation 2022 Poverty Report) living in poverty in the UK, this is not fiction. It is reality.
  I, Daniel Blake was originally a film – directed by Ken Loach, written by Paul Laverty and produced by Rebecca O'Brien for Sixteen Films – which won the 2016 Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. This touching and vital stage adaptation by Dave Johns, who played Dan in the film, toured the UK in 2023, co-produced by tiny dragon Productions, Northern Stage, Birmingham Rep and ETT, in association with Cardboard Citizens.
  'A gut-wrenching tragicomic drama… Paul Laverty's brilliantly insightful script finds much that is moving (and often surprisingly funny) in the unbreakable social bonds of so-called "broken Britain".'Guardian on Ken Loach's film

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  One Caribbean Odyssey: Dreams...

  Narayan Sankar

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  A soul-stirring poetry audiobook that captures the spirit of the Caribbean—and the depth of the human journey. 
  Step into a world of vivid landscapes, introspective moments, and lyrical beauty. One Caribbean Odyssey is more than a poetry collection—it’s a personal voyage through dreams, identity, and self-discovery. From sunlit islands to quiet inner awakenings, each poem pulses with rhythm, emotion, and a search for meaning. 
  Perfect for lovers of Caribbean literature, spiritual poetry, and travel-inspired reflection, this audiobook invites you to slow down, listen deeply, and reconnect—with nature, with memory, and with yourself. 
  If you enjoy the works of Rupi Kaur, Derek Walcott, or Nayyirah Waheed, this poetic odyssey belongs in your headphones.

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  Speed

  Mohamed-Zain Dada

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  'I don't get angry, people get angry at me. In fact, I've only ever sworn once in a car… in English.'
  In a hotel basement somewhere in Birmingham, three people – a nurse, a delivery driver and an entrepreneur – are attending a speed-awareness course to address their aggressive driving.
  Abz, a leading expert on road safety and the most in-demand course facilitator north of the M25, presents them with a choice: change your ways, or lose your licence. But the training course quickly veers into a tumultuous group-therapy session as they are forced to confront the real question: why are we all so angry?
  Mohamed-Zain Dada's play Speed is a breakneck journey through the daily annoyances and deep-buried secrets that leave us spinning. Wickedly comic and darkly thrilling, it was first performed at the Bush Theatre, London, in 2025, directed by Milli Bhatia.

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  No Sweet Without Brine - Poems

  Cynthia Manick

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  Cynthia Manick’s poetry collection personifies love of self and culture through fresh observations and bitter truths voiced with breathtaking lyricism. 
  No Sweet Without Brine is both a soulful and celebratory collection that summons sticky sweet memories with an acrid aftertaste of deep thought. Satisfying moments are captured in odes to Idris Elba’s dulcet tones on a meditation app and the satisfaction of half-priced Entenmann’s poundcake; in childlike observations of parental Black love, the coveted female form on Jet Magazine covers, and the desire for Zamunda to be a real place full of Black joy. The sour taps into an analysis of reclusiveness, silencing catcalls from men on the street, and detailed recipes and advice to the Black girls forced to endow themselves with armor against the world. 
  Cynthia Manick’s latest is a playlist of everyday life, introverted thoughts, familial bonds, and social commentary. In piercing language, she traces the circle of life for a narrator who dares to exist between youthful remembrances and adulthood realities. Each poem in No Sweet Without Brine is a reminder that a hint of sorrow makes the celebration and recognition of the glory of Blackness in all ways, and through all people, that much sweeter. 
  Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

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  The Ruins of Nostalgia

  Donna Stonecipher

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  What is it to feel nostalgia, to be skeptical of it yet cleave intently to the complex truths of feeling and thought? In a series of 64 gorgeous, ramifying, unsettling prose poems addressing late-twentieth- and twenty-first century experience and its discontents, The Ruins of Nostalgia offers a strikingly original exploration of the misunderstood phenomenon of nostalgia as both feeling-state and historical phenomenon. Each poem, also titled The Ruins of Nostalgia, is a kind of lyrical mini-essay, playful, passionate, analytic. Some poems take a location, memory, conceit, or object as their theme. Throughout the series, the poems recognize and celebrate the nostalgias they ironize, which are in turn celebrated and then ironized again. Written often in the fictional persona of the first-person plural, The Ruins of Nostalgia explores the rich territory where individual response meets a collective phenomenon.[sample poem]The Ruins of Nostalgia 13Where once there had been a low-end stationery store minded by an elderly beauty queen, there was now a store for high-end espresso machines minded by nobody. Where once there had been an illegal beer garden in a weedy lot, there was now a complex of luxury lofts with Parisian-style ivory façades. Where once there had been a bookstore and a bike shop and a bakery, there was now a wax museum for tourists. Where once there had been an empty lot there was now a building. Where once there had been an empty lot there was now a building. Where once there had been an empty lot there was now a building. Where once there had been an empty lot there was now a building. Where once there had been farms there were now subdivisions. Where once there had been subdivisions there were now sub-subdivisions. We lived in a sub-subdivision of a subdivision. We ourselves had become subdivided—where once we had merely been of two minds. * Where once there had been a river there was now a road. A vocal local group had started a movement to break up the road and "daylight" the river, which still flowed, in the dark, underneath the road. * Could we daylight the farms, the empty lots, the stationery store, the elderly beauty queen, the city we moved to? Was it still flowing somewhere, under the luxury lofts, deliquescing in the dark, inhabited by our luxury selves, not yet subdivided, because not yet whole? * Could we daylight the ruins of nostalgia?

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