Coming Out as a Bowie Fan in Leeds, Yorkshire, England

Literature & Fiction

McCann, Mick

British & Irish

Armley Press

A fast moving thriller set in the seedy drugs underworld of Leeds 6. Wrapped up the harsh world of armed robbery, beatings and killings is a real life love story, can it survive the love, bullet and revenge of Leeds Yorkshire England? "This bruised and tender account of lives lived on a knife edge hurtles along relentlessly, like a TWOC'ed car tearing round an estate. An unflinching portrayal of the skewed morality of the petty crime underclass, Hot Knife's real triumph is that it strives to understand more and condemn less." Russ Litten, The Yorkshire Post.

Hot Knife

Lake, John

Contemporary

At 7.30am on Wednesday 21st November 2007, six members of Leeds CID arrived at author Mick McCann's house and arrested him and his wife. The house was searched around the children preparing for school, and 14 items were removed. Taken to the Bridewell, the suspects were photographed, fingerprinted and DNA extracted before being released on bail. Neither had a police record, not so much as a parking ticket.   They were arrested under 'suspicion of making malicious phone calls' using a SIM card that Mrs McCann had given away four to five years earlier. This was the third time they had been questioned by the police regarding this SIM card.  In this novel, Mick McCann gives an account of the real events and weaves them through a fiction that is Nailed - Digital Stalking in Leeds, Yorkshire, England.

Nailed - Digital Stalking in Leeds, Yorkshire, England

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Thrillers & Suspense

A funky encyclopaedia of Leeds and its achievements. A compendium of interesting facts about Leeds.

How Leeds Changed the World

History

Europe

The second entry in the Leeds 6 trilogy, Blowback is the stand-alone sequel to Hot Knife - another caper packed with colourful characters, colourful language and black humour. Russ Litten (author of Scream if You Want to Go Faster) described Hot Knife as a 'bruised and tender account of lives lived on a knife edge'. Now, Blowback takes us to a place even sharper and edgier. Thriller, organised crime, Yorkshire/Leeds Noir, guns, drugs, terror, Ukrainians, black market, Soviet-Afghan war, black comedy, West Riding iconoclasts.

Blowback

Speed Bomb

Alan Siddall, a young 68-year-old Black Sabbath fan who wears shades from dusk till dawn, has outstayed his welcome at his local Mental Health Unit. He's about to be shipped off to Willowbeck Gardens to see out the rest of his troubled days. But when he bumps into Cassandra, "the one that got away" years ago before his disastrous marriage to Babs, Alan refuses to go gently into residential care. He wants Cassandra back.  At the heart of this angry, moving and often hilarious novel is the message that, however hard it is to live in this world, hope will always survive.  "Connors is the P.G. Wodehouse of the working class, almost every sentence an elegant expression of comic vulgarity." John Lake (author, Amy and the Fox)  "The characters written by Mark Connors never drop a note." Barrie Sherwood (author, Escape from Amsterdam)  Mark Connors is an award winning writer from Horsforth, Leeds. He has won prizes and received commendations at various Literature Festivals. His poetry and short fiction has been published widely in the UK and overseas. Stickleback is his first novel.   "Though far removed in tone, Stickleback has all the pathos of Emma Healey's Elizabeth is Missing in its first-person-narrative depiction of mental health issues. Alan, the protagonist, "a young 68" and institutionalised, an ardent Black Sabbath fan always clad in shades and a leather jacket, is a rebel from the same mould as McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and his foul-mouthed, ribald protest against the system is packed with great one-liners that had me cackling. But it's his seemingly insurmountable quest to reconnect with Cassandra, "the one that got away", that gives this angry, funny and moving novel its real heart, the message that, however hard it is to live in this world, hope will always survive. Connors is the P.G. Wodehouse of the lower classes, every sentence an elegant expression of comic vulgarity." John Lake (author, Leeds 6 Trilogy, Amy and the Fox)

Stickleback

Connors, Mark

Justice is Served

Leeming, M.W.

The new novel by Birkenhead-born Nathan O'Hagan, author of The World is (Not) a Cold Dead Place, turns the temperature down to absolute zero in a thriller that stalks the darkest corners of the male psyche. On the streets of Liverpool, three lives - a young skateboarder, a steroid-crazed bodybuilder and a family man with a dark, troubled profession - are about to overlap in a dance of frustration, humiliation and murder. This noir journey through bars, gyms, retirement homes, gay clubs and footballers' mansions leaves a trail of suffocating guilt and psychosexual violence that seems all too real. In exploring 'crises of masculinity', O'Hagan trenches psychological depths with a worldly cynicism worthy of Camus, Jim Thompson or Bret Easton Ellis - and transcends the limits of the crime genre as we know it. Praise for The World is (Not) a Cold Dead Place 'Nathan O'Hagan is a very talented writer' Kevin Sampson (author, Awaydays) 'Dark, violent, funny, shitty, moving' James Brown (Journalist, radio presenter and author of Above Head Height) 'A great debut' Russ Litten (author, Kingdom)

Out Of The City

O'Hagan, Nathan

A Bad Winter

Priestley, Samantha

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