Skinback Books: 5 books

The humorous tale of a team of ten year old footballing waifs and strays whose idealistic manager is defiantly unconcerned about winning and happy for them to play simply for the joy of the game. Then his team begin to improve and his Corinthian ethics start to wobble.

It struck him suddenly that they were boats, high-speed inflatables with plumes of water at the front and foaming fountains dragged along behind. They were packed with crouching men, with AK47s, hand grenades, and they were racing straight towards him, across a deep-green sea. He heard an enormous...

1959. Rock and Roll music is reaching across from the USA and starting to take hold in England. Fifteen year old Jimmy Shine wants to dress up, jive around and go with girls, but no-one takes him seriously. Then Freddie Ricoba arrives from New Jersey, America sporting clothes and an attitude that...

The narrator of this small, powerful, erotic book is called J. She is an art student in Liverpool, which is all we ever really know about her. She has a one-room flat in an Edwardian terrace, and the lady she pays her rent to is the madame of a brothel. A small brothel, a select brothel, with only...

My Mate Shofiq is a children’s novel that many people think is too tough for mere children to read. It is about the friendship between two Oldham boys which even they, at first, think is unlikely and unnecessary. Bernard, quite frankly, does not like “Pakis,” which seems fair enough to Shofiq...