INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS SHOWCASE
9. BARBICAN PRESS
Delighted to bring you the ninth in the series of Independent Publishers Showcase. This week I am pleased to welcome Barbican Press to the weekly showcase.
Barbican Press was founded by Martin Goodman and Martin became a publisher with the intention of publishing “impressive portfolio of beautifully crafted and utterly transgressive fiction” to quote from The Morning Star but have a look at their re-launched website and they also boast quite a selection of poetry, drama, non-fiction as well as books for children.
Barbican Press was set up in the city of Plymouth hence the name ‘Barbican’. They also offer a mentoring service to writers that has three packages available. 1. The Fresh Start (12-month package. 2. The Clean Run (12-month package) 3. The Full Commitment (15 to 24-month package).
With Christmas in mind, if you are looking for a gift, it is worth having a look at their website (details below)
Keep an eye on their Twitter feed @BarbicanPress1or visit their website: Barbican Press On their website you can make purchases in time for Christmas.
A selection of the fiction titles currently released and soon to be released through Barbican Press:
Red Hands by Colin W. Sargent
Published: 6th August 2020
Summary:
The remarkable fictionalised life of Iordana Ceausescu, who married Nicolae Ceausescu s eldest son, Valentin and became the mother of the Ceausescu s only grandson. A true-life tale that spins readers into the pleasures, excesses and horrors of late twentieth-century Europe. Drawn from eight hundred hours of unique interviews. Iordana is a normal girl, brought up with all the perks of Romania’s corrupt communist regime. Then she falls in love and marries the eldest son of her parents arch-rival, Romania’s monstrous dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. They become the in-laws from hell, but she brings them their only grandson. And then there’s the 1989 revolution, when crowds will kill anyone with the Ceausescu name. In all the blood and chaos, can Iordana keep her little son alive?
Notes from a Mountain Village by James Thornton (Poetry)
Published: 24th September 2020
Summary:
The Irish-American poet James Thornton returns to the same French Pyrenean village every Spring. Over 25 years he has settled at his desk, the flanks of hillsides beyond his window, and captured in verse the life and nature of this mountain community. James’s poetry conjures the lives of villagers, snakes, turtles, fish, birds, flowers, crops, insects, and hogs who make this valley their home.
Virgin & Child by Maggie Hamand
Release Date: 2nd April 2020
Summary:
A tale told ‘so humanely, so movingly and with such authorial depth and deftness that the reader would have to be a saint not to read it through in one enormous sitting.’ – The Morning Star
‘Virgin and Child cleverly merge crime with Catholicism and piety with a dangerous love.’ Mary Flanagan
A genre-busting, gender-bending Vatican thriller. What happens when everything you know is thrown into doubt?
And you’re the Pope?
The recently elected Irish Pope Patrick has plans for his future Church. Then he is attacked in St Peter’s Square. Cardinals turn against him. Shocking revelations threaten his traditional status and his faith.
In this novel where nothing is as it seems, Catholicism and modern morality are held in tension. Pope Patrick has to face challenges and make choices he could never have imagined.
Pansy Boy (Illustrated) by Paul Harfleet
Release Date: 23rd August 2017
Summary:
SHORTLISTED FOR THE POLARI PRIZE 2018! Pansy Boy is a stunningly beautiful book for children. It takes on the issue of bullying and lets a child feel proud for being different. As a beloved extra, it gives children their first field guides to bird s and flowers. Out in the natural world, a boy is in love with its beauty. Birds in flight amaze him. School squats at the end of summer. Bullies attack him. How can he defend himself? In a rhyming poem, the story comes to life in vivid graphic art. The boy takes strength from the flowers he loves. Where bullies pinned his life with their hate, he plants a pansy. The power of his actions empowers his school to value what is delicate and different.
The Luckiest Thirteen: The Forgotten Men of St. Finbarr- A Trawler’s Crew battle in the Arctic by Brian W. Lavery
Release Date: 9th November 2017
Summary:
A true-life drama of an intense battle for survival on the high seas. The Luckiest Thirteen is the story of an incredible two-day battle to save the super trawler St Finbarr, and of those who tried to rescue her heroic crew in surging, frozen seas. It was also a backdrop for the powerful stories of families ashore, dumbstruck by fear and grief, as well as a love story of a teenage deckhand and his girl that ended with a heart-rending twist. From her hi-tech hold to her modern wheelhouse she was every inch the super ship the great hope for the future built to save the fleet at a record-breaking price but a heart-breaking cost. On the thirteenth trip after her maiden voyage, the St Finbarr met with catastrophe off the Newfoundland coast. On Christmas Day 1966, twenty-five families in the northern English fishing port of Hull were thrown into a dreadful suspense not knowing if their loved ones were dead or alive after the disaster that befell The Perfect Trawler. Complete with 16 pages of dramatic and poignant photographs from the period.
For further information on the publications from Barbican Press please visit their website: Barbican Press
You can also find them on Twitter: @BarbicanPress1 and also their Instagram feed @barbicanpress and also Facebook: @BarbicanPress
If you have enjoyed this week’s showcase, please look out for my next Independent Publishers Showcase next week. If you are an indie publisher and would like to add your name to the showcase, you can contact me via Twitter: @TheLastWord1962
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