Bøger udgivet af Old Street Publishing

1979. PUNK IS IN DECLINE. ESPECIALLY THIS PUNK. On the platform at Holyhead I approach a uniformed man with a whistle. 'Is this the 6:55 to Auschwitz?' I ask. 'Enough of your cheek, lad.''Arbeit Macht Frei!''What?''It's Gaelic for thank you.'March, 1979. Sid Vicious is dead, Margaret Thatcher is very much alive, and Barry has just arrived in London. Twenty years old, Irish and angry, he cons his way into a job at Sellafield, home of Britain's military-grade plutonium. It's the start of a hilarious and hallucinatory coming-of-age tale that ranges from sordid coal-bunker squats to the tea room at the Ritz, via the Parisian Left Bank and the blooming poppy fields of Ireland. Here is a portrait of an artist on acid, amphetamines and PCP, who finds himself working at the heart of Britain's nuclear industry. It pulses with stories and stories within stories, eye-watering, sexy, terrifying and poignant. A wild, hellish descent that is also a rush for the stars, A Ton of Malice is the demented love-child of Irvine Welsh, Hunter S. Thompson and Matt Groening. And, if it matters, it's almost all true.

People who take to the Wagner Experience encounter something wonderful, like gazing into a silver mirror which dissolves into a miraculous, self-contained world, glinting with life-changing possibilities. There are others who sense its appeal but find it difficult, and the first aim of this study is to provide an Open Sesame for anyone wanting it.' From the author's introduction In this bicentenary celebration of Wagner and his music, Paul Dawson-Bowling introduces, deepens and enriches the Wagner Experience for the newcomer and the seasoned Wagnerian alike. Expounding in colourful style the stories, the sources and the lessons of Wagner's great dramas, he offers unusual insights into the man, his works and their meaning, while grappling with the music's almost occult power. Before taking us through the ten great dramas themselves, he discusses Wagner's formative experiences, his aspirations and his mentality; also his first wife Minna and her immense but unrecognised impact. This sets up lenses through which the reader may more accurately view not only Wagner the man and his less appealing aspects, but, more importantly, his stage works, since, as Dawson-Bowling insists, the best encounter with Wagner's dramas is the direct one. Uniquely drawing on a lifetime's experience in General Medical Practice, the author brings a wisdom, humanity and psychological understanding to his study of the life and work of Wagner, with especial reference to the thought of Carl Jung. Above all, this book draws out the vital lessons which Wagner's extraordinary, didactic dramas can offer us. It reveals their lessons as life-enhancing: capable of transforming our society, our lives and ourselves. There is no other book about Wagner quite like it.

FIENDISHLY CLEVER AND GRIPPING HISTORICAL THRILLER SET IN THE LAST DAYS OF WW2 1945. The Red Army tears through Europe towards Berlin, exacting vengeance on a biblical scale, while the British and the Americans close in from the west. Victory over Hitler seems certain. But deep inside the Kremlin, Stalin worries about a new enemy. When the war is over, how will the Soviet Union protect itself against the overweening American behemoth? Meanwhile, ever more desperate, Hitler paces up and down his study in the Berchtesgaden. He knows he needs a miracle to avoid unthinkable and humiliating defeat. For both, the atom bomb is the answer. And both are willing to sacrifice their best spies to get it.

Charlie Conti has just come into his inheritance. Young, rich and alone in the world, he decides to leave the echoing luxury of his Manhattan home and head for Los Angeles. He throws wild parties and everyone comes, but he remains on the outside, an isolated figure. Then he meets Ray Celador. Ray has the eyes of a visionary and the rough, gnarled hands of a lumberjack. He deals in drugs, women and philosophy, and before long he's indispensable to Charlie: father-figure, teacher, friend. But who, in the end, is Ray Celador? And who when he finds himself stripped of his home, his money and his identity is Charlie Conti? A thriller with a literary twist, this is the story of Charlie's betrayal, of the theft of his identity and of his attempt to recover what is his. His extraordinary meetings along the way and the magic of America's vast landscapes are captured by a voice that is innocent, wry and thoughtful.

Each night during the civil war in northern Uganda, tens of thousands of children would head for the city centres, hoping to avoid capture by the Lord's Resistance Army - the infamous army led by Joseph Kony, itself composed largely of kidnapped children. The Night Wanderers masterfully evokes the post-war landscape of a country ravaged by decades of violence. It is a country of children who have been abducted from their homes and forced to kill their own family members; children who, even after they have escaped the LRA, carry the weight of their own acts of murder on their young shoulders. Through their stories, the author weaves the wider history of a beautiful but blood-soaked nation, from the end of British overrule through Idi Amin's brutal dictatorship up to today's precarious peace.

George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, John Dos Passos, Felicia Browne, John Cornford, Stephen Spender... These were just some of the talented, committed and adventure-hungry men and women who travelled to Spain to join the struggle against General Franco's fascist rebellion. Through their personal letters, diaries and memoirs, David Boyd Haycock brings the experiences of these remarkable individuals -- as well as many less celebrated but equally compelling figures -- stunningly to life. He describes the mingled excitement and trepidation with which they set out for Spain, and their sheer relief that here at last was a chance to do something against the calamitous threat posed by Fascism. He evokes the glamour and the terror of wartime Barcelona, as Stalin's security forces lethally stifled dissent and imposed Party orthodoxy. And he charts the painful disillusionment of a generation of men and women as they witnessed the triumph of realpolitik over morality, and came to understand their impotence in the face of greater forces. Hemingway described the Spanish Civil War as 'the dress rehearsal for the inevitable European war'. I am Spain is at once a compelling, scrupulously researched account of this pivotal 20th-century conflict, and a moving, psychologically exact portrait of an extraordinary, passionate and gifted group of men and women whose minds and lives were changed by the experience of war.

Rich, successful and married -- with a beautiful mistress on the side -- top Glasgow lawyer Michael Gibson is to all appearances an enviable man. On the inside, his life is falling apart. Philippa, his lover, is demanding a divorce, but his wife refuses to cooperate. Meanwhile, an event from his shady past threatens to resurface and wipe out everything he's achieved. Worst of all, the city's most notorious psychopath, Jack McFarlane a man whom Gibson has good reason to fear is about to be released from prison. When Gibson s wife goes missing, DCI Charlie Anderson has to establish if he's dealing with a case of abduction, suicide or murder. As events unfold against the uneasy streets of modern Glasgow, Anderson finds his renowned analytical skills seriously challenged.

Set in the remote, beautiful region of the American Midwest that gives the novel its title, The Driftless Area tells the story of Pierre Hunter, a young bartender with unfailing optimism, a fondness for coin tricks, and an uncanny capacity for finding trouble.When he falls in love with the mysterious and isolated Stella Rosmarin, Pierre becomes the central player in a revenge drama he must unravel and bring to its shocking conclusion. Along the way he will liberate $77,000 from a murderous thief, summon the resources that have eluded him all his life, and come to question the very meaning of chance and mortality.

In Pacific, Tom Drury revisits the community of Grouse County, the setting of his landmark debut, The End of Vandalism. When fourteen-year-old Micah Darling travels to Los Angeles to reunite with the mother who abandoned him seven years ago, he finds himself out of his league in a land of magical freedom. Back in the Midwest, an ethereal young woman comes to Stone City on a mission that will unsettle the lives of everyone she meets - including Micah's half-sister, Lyris, and his father, Tiny, a petty thief. An investigation into the stranger's identity uncovers a darkly disturbed life, as parallel narratives of the comic and tragic, the mysterious and quotidian, unfold in both the country and the city.

In Hunts in Dreams - a follow-up to his acclaimed debut The End of Vandalism - Tom Drury returns to the Midwest to spend a life-changing autumn weekend in the company of a family whose members all want something without knowing how to get it: for Charles (a.k.a. 'Tiny'), it's an heirloom shotgun; for his wife, Joan, the imaginative life she once knew; for their young son, Micah, a sense of the limits of his world - in search of which he prowls the empty town at night; and for Joan's daughter, Lyris, a stable base from which to begin to grow up.

Welcome to Grouse County, somewhere in the Midwest, where the towns are small but the people, their dreams and their eccentricities come in all sizes. When Sheriff Dan Norman arrests local troublemaker Tiny Darling for vandalising an anti-vandalism dance, he does not expect much in the way of fallout. But unseen wheels have been set in motion, and lives will be changed: Dan finds love, Tiny loses his wife Louise, and all three travel an epic journey of the heart. The End of Vandalism is full of small miracles of observation, compassion and humour, held together by the 'electric deadpan' of Drury's celebrated style. For readers willing to tune in, the experience will be a revelation.

Mike Nicol is one of the brightest thriller writing talents to have emerged in the last decade, and the Mace and Pylon novels are as good as any being written in the field today. This is not just superb genre writing: it is superb writing, period, and proves that the thriller, at its best, can both entertain and provoke, while tackling serious issues with the lightest of touches. Read Mike Nicol now, before everyone else starts telling you how wonderful he is' JOHN CONNOLLY'Mike Nicol is the rapidly rising star of South African crime fiction. His novels have everything I love about the genre in just the right amount: shady characters, twists, turns, murder, mayhem, humour, wonderful dialogue, white-knuckle pace and lots of authentic Cape Town colour.' Deon Meyer'Watch out Elmore Leonard, here comes Mike Nicol, who scores 10/10 for this gritty, fast-paced thriller about revenge ... Payback has it all: murder, sex, drugs, crooked cops, greedy developers and revenge ... Nicol has captured perfectly the dark underbelly of life in Cape Town. Payback is so realistic you can almost taste the dagga and smell the cordite after the bombs explode ... You won't be able to put it down until you've read the last line.' Southern Mail Read of the Week'The dialogue is brilliant, the writing too, and Payback has perhaps the coolest ending one is likely to find anywhere' Mail and Guardian'Exceptional ... Nicol is a talent deserving a wide international recognition' The Weekender'A heady mix, and Nicol stirs it with vigour, inventiveness [and] wit ... Payback is a great read, pacy, cool, hard-bitten and hard-hitting. The laconic, street-smart style is so convincingly laid-back that it may blind readers to the artistry of the writing, which is taut and economical' Sunday Independent'In the top rung of South African fiction writers ... Nicol s clipped dialogue and sparse, high-impact prose recalls that of revered American recluse Cormac McCarthy' The Citizen'South Africa joins the hard-boiled stakes, and in a wondrous dazzling humorous novel. Imagine Elroy joining forces with Chester Himes, Coffin Ed, and Gravedigger, throw in the spectacular landscape of South Africa, and you ll get some sense of this wild and daring novel. One prays this is the first in a series if Tom Sharpe wrote mystery, this would be it.' Ken BruenMore than a decade after the end of Apartheid, ex-gun-runners Mace Bishop and Pylon Buso are trying to settle down to a comfortable Cape existence. But when an old contact calls in a favour, they become embroiled once again in the country's violent underworld of crime and corruption -- and with the lethal Islamist organisation PAGAD. A gripping tale of narcoti, arms-dealing and international intrigue, PAYBACK heralds the arrival of a major new crime-writing talent.

Could you fall in love with the man who killed your family?It is eighteen years since Danni's husband and three-year-old son were killed by an IRA bomb in central Glasgow, and she still can't move on from the tragedy that has blighted her life. As a fresh wave of violence sweeps through Ireland, she decides she needs revenge.A journey into the dark heart of the Belfast underworld brings her face to face with the sinister Pearson and his enigmatic, one-time accomplice Johnny. As Danni struggles to hold onto her sense of purpose in a world where the idealist and the psychopath seem indistinguishable, she is drawn into a battle to save the life of Stella, a young prostitute. But who is Johnny and why is he helping her? Did he plant the bomb that killed her family? And most disturbingly, what exactly are her feelings for him?Fast-paced, emotionally pitch-perfect and with a heart-wrenching ending, Kiss the Bullet is a page-turner as gripping, intelligent and satisfying as they come.

A story of love, nuclear terror and Philip LarkinBorn at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, 'at the very moment when the world looked most as if it were going to blow itself up', Nicholas has spent his life in terror of atomic meltdown. Now, on the eve of his 48th birthday, he is on an overnight coach ride to join an anti-nuclear rally at Faslane in Scotland.His fellow travellers remind him of his younger self at Hull University in the 1980s -- a time he spent under the twin clouds of unrequited love and apocalyptic terror. As the coach rumbles through the night, the floodgates of memory open, and Nicholas begins to scrawl episodes from his past into a notebook. At first these memories -- sometimes poignant, sometimes comic, and often involving Philip Larkin -- appear almost random. But in time a picture emerges: of a thwarted first love, and a fragile mind struggling to keep hold of sanity in a world that seems headed for annihilation.This delightful, eccentric novel and its tragi-comic hero will be relished by mavericks and misfits, rebels and renegades the world over.