Resnick, Nottingham and all that jazz…

John Harvey uses his 101st book to explain his attachment to jazz, his once adopted city and the Polish detective that made his name.

This book contains four Resnick short stories, a Soho based jazz story which gives the book its title and a smattering of jazz poetry.

Minor Key celebrates John Harvey’s 70th birthday with a limited edition signed hardback, sure to be a collectors’ item.

Uncollected crime stories with a jazz touch by one of Britain’s best selling crime writers.

"John Harvey’s roll continues; no-one in Britain is writing better crime fiction." - The Times

John Harvey has written a sequence of ten Charlie Resnick novels, the first of which was named by the Times as one of the 100 Best Crime Novels of the (last) century. He holds the Crime Writers Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for his career achievements.

Hardback signed edition limited to 500 copies only.

A rare translation from a forgotten language and culture

Ladino is a Romantic language derived from Old Spanish. As a Jewish language, it is influenced heavily by Hebrew and Aramaic, and other languages where Sephardic expellees settled around the world, primarily throughout the Ottoman Empire. The Ladino novel was a new form of literature for the Ladino-speaking populations of the Balkans, Greece, Turkey and Palestine, which appeared towards the end of the 19th century and died out towards 1930 as its reading public declined.

Elia Karmona’s La Mujer Onesta (The Chaste or Faithful Wife), published in Constantinople in 1925 is one of roughly a dozen Ladino novels in the British Library’s collection. La Mujer Onesta is superior in literary worth to the average Ladino novel, many of which were translations and adaptations of foreign romantic works.

A bilingual edition in Ladino and English. There is a renewed interest in Ladino with its music and history being performed and studied.

Ladino literature has rarely been republished in accessible editions, originals being difficult to find and existing in archives

Elia Karmona was a typographer, journalist and editor of the comic paper El Djugueton (Constantinople). He wrote around 60 novelettes and novels, published in Cairo, Jerusalem and Constantinople. Michael Alpert is the author of Secret Judaism and the Spanish Inquisition, also published by Five Leaves. Price: £14.99.

New fiction by Ali Smith, Jon McGregor, Tamar Yellin, Richard Zimler, Amy Bloom, Nicole Krauss, Karen Maitland, Etgar Keret, Eshkol Nevo, Michelene Wandor, Tania Hershman, Jonathan Wilson, Zvi Jagendorf, Shaun Levin, Ellen Galford.

Stories of betrayal and fear, desire and satisfaction, love, grief and revenge.

“And so I read these stories certain that I would find connections between them and there are plenty. Whispers and shadows abound. The dark menace lurking in the best fairy tales is never far from the surface in most of these stories, too. All the contributors, whatever differences in age, gender or geographical location, are trying to make sense of the brutal century from which we have emerged and the uncertain one into which we are still tentatively trespassing, not ready to claim ownership. Some seem to have sought connections to dead relatives who live on in memory or genetic inheritance.” - From the introduction by Anne Sebba, author of Jennie Churchill: Winston’s American Mother.

"The dark menace lurking in the best fairy tales is never far from the surface in most of these stories." - Anne Sebba

Anne Joseph is a freelance feature writer and editor. She previously worked for several years as submissions editor for Haus Publishing. Her book, From the Edge of the World (2003, Vallentine Mitchell), is a collection of letters and stories written by Jewish refugees. The Sea of Azov was the birthplace of Chekhov – the master of the short story

…He was a doctor for God’s sake. I was told to strip and they tossed my clothes away saying, ‘You won’t need these here either,’ and I was handed a blue boiler suit to wear. I began to protest but got a slam in the mouth and lost my front teeth. They then pushed me into the pool, to disinfect me, they said. And that was my start in the hospital. I was there eighteen years. They took everything away.
Patient R. Recounted to the author 1997.

Dr Jack Shade’s long time girlfriend vanishes, presumed dead. Through his professional contacts Shade moves to work within the secure hospital system – to try to understand, and take revenge on those who might be responsible.

During his time in the hospital he realises he is as much a prisoner as those he works with.

Shade observes, gets involved with, hurts but ultimately comes to understand his clients. Meantime his own dissolute life of drugs and affairs takes its toll.

Like WG Sebald, the author includes photos to help tell the story - are they real or is this all fiction?

Rod Madocks has spent ten years writing this unforgettable novel, drawing on his experience of secure units. He is a policy officer in Mental Health Commissioning in Nottinghamshire.

Mark Trace shows a remarkable talent for literary forgery. A gap year in Paris sees his skill exploited by a manuscript dealer. Mark fetches up in London, working at one of the UK's oldest literary magazines. That's when the trouble really starts. Hemingway and Graham Greene are only the beginning. What starts as a prank soon becomes deadly serious. In this literary thriller David Belbin writes about originality, desire and literary ambition, in the voice of a character with the capacity to deceive everyone, including himself.

David Belbin is the author of more than thirty novels for young adults, including Denial and Festival. His short stories for adults have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. He runs the MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. He currently edits the Crime Express series for Five Leaves.

Sharp, bittersweet tales of middle-aged American men, in hot water with their women, with their sweet or streetwise kids, with their own consciences.

This is about the American husband and father: well meaning but caught out, horny but going to seed, adrift on dreams and fancies and looking for a break. Men in trouble.


"Entertaining… Taut and funny" - The Boston Globe

"Sublime… it might be considered a companion volume to the movie 'Sideways'" - Seattle Weekly

"Tantalising… his writing engages on every page with disarming intelligence and imagination." - Elle

Jonathan Wilson is the author of the biography 'Marc Chagal'l, two novels, 'A Palestine Affair' and 'The Hiding Room', two collections of stories, 'Schoom' and 'An Ambulance is on the Way: Stories of Men in Trouble', and two critical studies of the fiction of Saul Bellow. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Best American Short Stories, among other publications, and he is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

He is a professor of English at Tufts University and lives with his family in Newton, Massachusetts.

The Hiding Room moves between Cairo and British Mandate Palestine in 1941, and Israel of 1991. In 1941 a reserved English officer falls for a waiflike Viennese Jew trying to flee to Palestine. He betrays her, then tries to save her from the consequences of his action. He too has to flee, at risk both from his fellow British soldiers and the Zionist underground. 50 years on, at the height of the Intifada, the son of this brief partnership comes to Israel and Palestine to trace what happened to his father.

The Hiding Room is a tense historical thriller. Published in the USA by Penguin, this is the first UK paperback publication of The Hiding Room.

"...this story of love, betrayal and redemption is a significant achievement" - Publishers Weekly (USA)

Jonathan Wilson is the author of the biography 'Marc Chagal'l, two novels, 'A Palestine Affair' and 'The Hiding Room', two collections of stories, 'Schoom' and 'An Ambulance is on the Way: Stories of Men in Trouble', and two critical studies of the fiction of Saul Bellow. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Best American Short Stories, among other publications, and he is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

He is a professor of English at Tufts University and lives with his family in Newton, Massachusetts.

It is summer... a heat wave... tense uneasy days in the city. A classic of women's and dystopian writing

"A successful and upsetting novel" - Sunday Times

"Intelligent and energetic book... (which) works persuasively" - Observer

Crime short stories by Catherine Arnold, David Belbin, Robert Cordell. Michael Eaton, Raymond Flynn, John Harvey, HRF Keating, Robert McMinn, Stanlet Middleton, Peter Mortimer, Brendan Murphy, Julie Myerson, Frank Palmer, Alan Sillitoe and Keith Wright - all from the crime-writing city of Nottingham.

"...there's a lot more than simple villainy in this thoroughly varied but uniformly atmospheric collection" - Mail on Sunday

"...sure to be a collector's item" - Crime Time

Also by David Belbin: Dead Guilty, Dead Teachers Don't Talk

Michelene Wandor’s new collection of short stories ranges from Biblical to modern, from Renaissance Italy to present day Israel, and from the power of music to its dangers. Her poetic and dramatic skills infuse her stories with vivid voices and haunting characters. Henry VIII and Isabella d’Este enjoy a clandestine encounter; a modern retelling of the Book of Esther liberates the voice of Queen Vashti; today’s musicians encounter the old myths of Orpheus; and the dilemmas of being Jewish are poignantly traced through the European diaspora into the cross-cultural crises of the Middle East.

Michelene Wandor is a poet, playwright, musician and critic, as well as a prolific writer of short stories. Her dramatisation of Eugene Sue’s The Wandering Jew was staged at the National Theatre. She won an International Emmy for her adaptation of The Belle of Amherst for Thames TV. She teaches creative writing at London Metropolitan University. Her selected poems, Gardens of Eden Revisited, are published by Five Leaves.


Five Leaves Short Stories by Women.

A multi-layered story of marriage, death, seduction and separation - a novel about lives in crisis.

WINNER of the Booker Prize For Fiction.

"He writes like God's spy, and he notices the precise things that define people beyond their own opinions of themselves"
- The Guardian

"As good as any novelist writing" - Daily Telegraph

Also available from Five Leaves is Stanley Middleton at Eighty, edited by David Belbin and John Lucas.

Zoë Fairbairns’ stories, set mainly in London and its more-or-less fashionable suburbs, occupy the spaces between words and actions, beliefs and realities. A 40-year-old woman who has never had children and never wanted to, revisits her decision; a little girl wonders why she attends a school run by a religion that neither she nor her parents belong to; 50-something lefties discover things that they might have preferred not to know about their pensions; a woman goes to meet her partner’s new love, and tries to be friendly. The collection also includes an autobiographical piece reviewing the author’s membership of a 1970s women’s writing group.


Zoë Fairbairns’ novels include Benefits (a feminist classic, re-published by Five Leaves), Closing, Here Today, Stand We At Last, Other Names and Daddy’s Girls. Her short stories have appeared in many anthologies and have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She lives in London and works for a TV facilities company, subtitling programmes for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers.


Five Leaves Short Stories by Women

Magnolia Street was an instant success on its first publication in 1932, running to many editions. Available again for a new generation.

Magnolia Street is a novel on a grand scale, reminiscent of Arnold Bennett in its invocation of place and time.

The book describes “the crowded years” between 1910 and 1930, and the difficult relations between immigrant Jews and their English neighbours.

Themes of conflict and assimilation facing migrant and host are still current.

Louis Golding was one of Britain’s best selling writers in the 30s and 40s and was popular into the 1950s. He wrote over 40 books of fiction and non-fiction, including on boxing, haute cuisine and politics.

Magnolia Street became a play and was later made into a TV film.

Introduced by Hugh Cecil, author of Imperial Marriage, Clever Hearts and several other biographies and works on WW1.

Valerie Miner’s stories consider the fluctuating definitions of family and friendship, with wit, compassion and literary grace, paying attention to geographical place and historical moment. In a small New England town a gay man and his lesbian friend explore varieties of sexual intimacy; a brother and sister reunite in Seattle to conduct an idiosyncratic memorial service for their father; a woman contemplates the family farm, located in the middle of contemporary San Francisco.

"Miner is a writer of reach, audacity, range, uniquely important to understanding our time... She gives us the beat of everyday urban life" - Tillie Olsen

"Her exploration of the dynamics between friends is subtle, profoundly moving, and true." - Lisa Alther

Valerie Miner has written ten previous books published by literary, academic and women’s presses in the USA and the UK. Several of these stories have been broadcast on Radio 4, others published in The Berkeley Fiction Review, Gargoyle and other journals. This is her first book for Five Leaves.

Five Leaves Short Stories by Women

In British-occupied Palestine after World War 1, a beleaguered London painter and his American wife witness the murder of an Orthodox Jew. She is drawn into an affair with the British investigating officer, while he seeks solace in painting. Each had come to Palestine to escape grief, and had to confront the political and person issues they had left behind.

Reviews of the American edition:

"Wilson is a talented writer with a gift for story, scene and character." - The Boston Globe

"A Palestine Affair is hard to put down. .. (it) echoes its modernist predecessors: Foster’s A Passage to India, Conrad's The Secret Agent..." - San Francisco Chronicle

"A story that tautens the sinuous strands of (the) period into a lethal knot." - New York Times Book Review

"Worth reading? You bet it is!" - Saul Bellow

" A swift little mystery-romance… Crisply written… Wonderfully rich in period detail and atmosphere…" - Seattle Weekly

Jonathan Wilson was born in London but has lived in the USA since 1976. His previous two books, Schoom and The Hiding Room were published by Secker and Penguin.

Jonathan Wilson writes regularly for the New Yorker and the New York Times Book Review. He has a Guggenheim Fellowship.

A Palestine Affair was published in the USA by Pantheon/Anchor, a division of Random House.

There I discovered the mirror. It was sitting on top of a dusty seventeenth century Portugese dresser in the twisted-and-turned style made popular following Vasco da Gama's first trip to India and it caught my attention because it was shaped like a lyre...

From the haunting title story by Richard Zimler onwards, this book reflects the diversity of modern Jewish life and the self-confidence of Jewish writing. The contributors include Carol Bergman, Tony Dinner, Moris Farhi, Rachel Castell Farhi, Elaine Feinstein, Ellen Galford, Jack Gratus, Dan Jacobson, Zvi Jaggendorf, Gabriel Josipovici, Robert Lasson, Shaun Levin, Deena Linett, Marci Lopez-Levi, Carole Malkin, Rozanne Rabinowitz, Nessa Rapoport, Frederic Raphael, Stephen Walker, Michelene Wandor, Shelley Weiner, Jonathan Wilson, Tamar Yellin and Richard Zimler.

Published in association with the European Jewish Publication Society.

"The co-editors are to be congratulated on putting together a diverse and interesting collection" - Babel Guide to Jewish Fiction

"I found the sheer diversity of this collection both impressive and also reassuring because it certainly suggests that there need be nothing particularly confining about identifying oneself as a Jewish writer"
- Edinburgh Star

Sunday Night and Monday Morning features new short stories by 16 writers born or living in Nottinghamshire. All contributors are published by mainstream publishers and have national reputations. Most of the stories were written specially for this book. Settings range from the American Deep South to Lithuania, inner city Nottingham to medieval battlefields.

Contributors:

David Belbin – author of Love Lessons
Stephen Booth – author of The Dead Place
Clare Brown – author of The Creation Myths
Elizabeth Chadwick – author of Shadows and Strongholds
Stephan Collishaw – author of Amber
Tom Cox – author of Educating Peter
Matt Haig – author of The Last Family in England
Robert Harris – author of Fatherland
John Harvey – author of Ash and Bone
Clare Littleford – author of Death Duty
Jon McGregor – author of If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
Eve Makis – author of Eat, Drink and Be Married
Julie Myerson – author of Home
Kat Pomfret – author of Paradise Jazz
and introducing Nicola Monaghan whose first novel appears from Chatto & Windus in 2006

"This play on words from arguably Nottingham's most famous recent contributor to literature heralds a collection of short stories to mark the tenth anniversary of Five Leaves Press, a small independent Nottingham publishing house. The 16 stories collected here make you realise what a wealth of talented writers either live or were born in the County... this is an exciting and diverse collection with something for everyone." - Nottingham Evening Post

James Urquhart reviews fiction for the Daily Telegraph, the Independent and the Financial Times.

In the end she was forced to take her chances on the open ocean and there, off the coast of Scotland, she drowned him because she thought he deserved it. He probably did.

"...a dreamy novel, pulled along by a thread of emotion."
- Los Angeles Times

Victoria Nelson’s stories, set in her native California, and New Zealand, link vivid natural settings with characters caught up in events not of their making. A San Francisco poet is kidnapped by the Russian Mafia; an American visiting a provincial New Zealand town is gradually caught up in her host’s immersion in Maori culture; a hapless stockbroker is pursued by a woman living in an abandoned school bus; a Halloween party on a Sausalito houseboat takes on an unexpected dimension.

Victoria Nelson’s stories, set in her native California, and New Zealand, link vivid natural settings with characters caught up in events not of their making. A San Francisco poet is kidnapped by the Russian Mafia; an American visiting a provincial New Zealand town is gradually caught up in her host’s immersion in Maori culture; a hapless stockbroker is pursued by a woman living in an abandoned school bus; a Halloween party on a Sausalito houseboat takes on an unexpected dimension.


Five Leaves Short Stories by Women

A Year of Two Summers comprises a – roughly chronological – series of short stories starting with adolescent sex in South Africa, to suppressed emotions in South Africa, to gay life in London.

This collection introduces an array of interesting characters: a young man experimenting with cross-dressing, a new recruit in the Israeli army fantasising about a fellow soldier and trying to live as fully human during the invasion of Lebanon, a South African woman and her Syrian boyfriend tiptoeing around each other in their London flat – unsure how to relate to each other after the birth of their child.

"Like (the German writer WG) Sebald, Levin pays meticulous attention to small, everyday details - smells, tastes, body definitions, even the design of shoes - and uses them as hooks upon which to hang troubled, fractured memories. These deceptively simple, poetic stories invite any number of readings under post-colonial, gay, Jewish theories of literature. By turns enlightening and frustrating, Levin amplifies big themes by way of personal, tiny moments." - GCN

"Shaun Levin’s prose is so taut, his images so vivid, that it feels as if he’s talking right to you, and even shouting sometimes. This is a collection where, at last, sex is given its rightful place as both a celebration and a comfort. Many of the stories benefit from the writer’s own journeying as a gay man through South Africa, Israel, America and the UK, although Levin manages to write equally convincingly about that disjointed time when a nursing mother wonders who her body belongs to. For all their themes of dislocation, conflict, identity, home in all its meanings, at the heart of these stories (like those of Chekhov, a writer Levin plays tribute to) is the one thing that matters. Love." - Pulp Net

Praise for Shaun Levin’s previous novella Seven Sweet Things:

"In every chapter there is a moment to take your breath away with its simplicity, its originality, its honesty" - Time Out

"... a rewarding and thoughtful read as well as one of admirable craftsmanship and delicacy." - Lamda Book Review

Shaun Levin's gay and Jewish stories have appeared in magazines in Britain and America, and, in Hebrew, in Israel, including: Modern South African Stories; Gay Times Book of Short Stories and The Slow Mirror: new fiction by Jewish Writers. He is the recipient of an Arts Council Writers Award and editor of the gay and lesbian literary journal Chroma. He is a South African writer, now living in London. He has taught creative writing and is a playwright.