Cinnamon Press: 50 books

Strange, evocative and darkly fairytale, the seventeen short pieces in A wild animal ate a person in the woods dip into metaphor, explore our fears and probe the shadows of human consciousness. Are the monsters outside or inside? How many people can one person be? Is there somewhere better? How do...

Jan Fortune’s novelised sequence of prose poems reveal the essence of an institutionalised world that is outwardly safe, yet constantly on the edge of danger. There is a dark, subtle wit at work in this finely written and highly innovative exposé of ecclesiastical power turned inwards against itself.

Singing a Man to Death, a collection of short stories, is notable for its range, sophistication, and readability. The fictions cover a range of milieus from England to Pacific islands to semimythical territories; ages from the contemporary to early medieval; and a range of ‘realisms’ from the...

Seventeen short fables that take us to the heart of human interaction; the connections and the gaps. From finely observed character to the melancholy ache of hope; from the surreal to the lyrical, these deft, sometimes strange and always poignant pieces will delight and inspire.

In 1844, at 94 years of age, Caroline Herschel was in the midst of a frustrated attempt at writing her memoirs. She sent the writings and many letters to her niece Arabella, suggesting the girl ‘twist it into a Novel entitled The Life and Adventures of Miss Caroline Herschel’. Arabella never wrote the proposed novel, but Caroline’s story is brought to life in Double the Stars.

When Hedda Brandt and other members of Kurt Jooss’s dance company flee Germany in 1933, Hedda imagines she is going to a place free from the prejudice, but these are dangerous times and as Nazi Occupation changes all their lives. Hedda is drawn towards resistance, but with her life more and more...

Mark Jonnson’s life is a mess. He’s been cheating on his wife, fears his marriage is over, but can’t bear to leave his boisterous 7yearold daughter, Matilda. Just when he thinks things can’t get worse, his mother is killed in a road accident. Shocked and grieving, he decamps to her house,...

In the mountains of France the seasonal movement of livestock from one region to another acts as a metaphor for transition and transformation in the human the human world, whilst ‘humance’ relates us to the natural world; to the animals we rely on, to the seasons affecting our behaviours, our...

Grief stricken, a sailor blames a sentient sea for the death of his wife… An orphan girl searches Europe for the secret of Alchemy… Illicit lovers try to alter time… And, in a strange land, a bizarre ritual culminates in the Kiss… Side-slipping genre as easily as it bends the rules of common...

For archaeologist Maxine 'Max' Falkland, life in early-50s London is difficult enough as she tries to move on from the death of her brother, an RAF pilot shot down over Korea. But, when she meets John Knox things get more complicated, before they get outright dangerous. Flying her light plane to Scotland,...

My name is Marilyn, like Marilyn Monroe. I was left for dead at a bus stop on Christmas Eve…’ So begins the story of Jane, a learning disabled young woman, who is also known as Marilyn, after her heroine Marilyn Monroe.

Family is all-important to Isabel. Her parents have an idyllic marriage, and she has tried hard to make her own the same. But all pretence is shattered when her husband leaves her, soon followed by the death of her father. Then her mother confides in her: behind her parents’ apparently happy marriage...

Compassionately imagined – Liar Dice is an engaging exploration of memory and identity.

Fierce, poignant and funny, Washing the Dead is a collection of interlinked short stories, where a minor character in one story becomes the main one in another. A central theme throughout is the breakdown of the family unit: there are abortions, secrets and lies, selfdeceptions and moments of revelation....