Welcome To Five Leaves Publications

Five Leaves is a small publisher based in Nottingham, publishing 15 or so books a year. Our roots are radical and literary. These days our main areas of interest are fiction and poetry, social history, Jewish secular culture, with side orders of Romani, young adult, Catalan and crime fiction titles. You can find our latest and forthcoming books below, backlist section by section, and order books through a secure site run by Inpress. Our books are also available from bookshops and internet sites including The Book Depository and Amazon.

Stop press:Speaking of Lust by American writer Lawrence Block, published by Five Leaves, has been short-listed for the 2009 Crime Writers Association Short Story ‘Dagger’. Block’s book is in the Crime Express series of novellas and comprises four tales of lasciviousness and their fatal aftermath. The series is edited by Nottingham writer David Belbin who met Lawrence Block at a book event in America.

Lawrence Block’s novels range from urban noir to urbane effervescence. He was executive story editor for the TV series TILT. Several of his novels have been filmed. He is a past president of the Private Eye Writers of America and won the Edgar and Shamus awards four times each as well as the Nero Wolfe and Philip Marlowe awards, together with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America.

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Latest Publications:

Minor Key
by John Harvey
ISBN: 978-1905512737, 112 pages


£9.99
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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.

Bows Against the Barons
by Geoffrey Trease, illus. C. Walter Hodges
ISBN: 978-1905512720, 154 pages


£5.00
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A children’s classic, illustrated by a Kate Greenaway award winning illustrator.

“He had killed one of the King’s deer!

A cold sweat started out on his forehead, where his hand left a smear of blood. He stood as though petrified, wondering what to do.

Everything in the forest was sacred to the King. To fell a tree was a crime, even to cut a branch. ... As for shooting one of the deer!... Only in the forest would he be safe. ...Fold said it was full of outlaws, old soldiers who had no work, escaped serfs and men who had broken the law...”


A rousing tale of Robin Hood – the clash of rich and poor in medieval England.

"A seminal work of socialist literature for children… an inspirational read" - Allan Gibbons

Geoffrey Trease wrote more than 90 books, his first, Bows against the Barons, being published in 1934. His books were translated into 20 languages. He was Chair of the Society of Authors and a member of the Royal Society of Literature.

Love lessons
by David Belbin
ISBN: 978-1905512706, 254 pages


£6.99
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"A bold and powerfully written tale." - David Almond

A fifteen year old girl has a crush on her young English teacher. During a production of 'Romeo and Juliet', Rachel and Mike begin a sexual relationship. They think they're in love, but they're really in trouble.

The star-crossed lovers are always afraid of discovery as a school-girl fantasy turns into an X-rated nightmare.

Love Lessons was the first novel for young adults to address the sensitive issue of pupil/teacher relationships.

A gripping novel about one of the last great taboos: a teacher-pupil affair.

"A brave novel…a thoughtful study of young love." - Books for Keeps

Big and clever
by Dan Tunstall
ISBN: 978-1905512683, 288 pages


£6.99
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Tom’s whole life is straight out of CrapTowns. Mum died. Dad’s a waster. School is tough.

Tom and Raks are at the bottom of the pecking order - and it just shouldn’t be that way - but then they befriend ‘ASBO boy’, Ryan, and go to a Letchford Town football game with him.

When it kicks off outside the ground with the Castleton fans, Tom and Raks are ready and up for it - it ain’t football - but Tom is hooked and can’t wait for the next home game!

Suddenly everyone at school notices Tom and Raks: they have an identity, they have power — but at what cost?

"...Ten times better than the usual teenage crap. It's about the lifestyle that wannabes like The Streets and Guy Ritchie can only dream about." - Bali Rai

Dan Tunstall has worked as a gardener, in marketing and in teaching. He lives in Leicester and is a season ticket holder for Leicester City FC.
E1: A Journey Through Whitechapel and Spitalfields
by John Bennett
ISBN: 978-1905512546, 90 pages

£9.99
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After Petticoat Lane, Brick Lane is arguably East London’s most famous street. But whereas Petticoat Lane bursts with life on a Sunday and becomes a redundant, litter-strewn gash down the side of the City most other times, Brick Lane seems to be a street that rarely seems to sleep.

From Mile End to Whitechapel and on to Spitalfields, John Bennett presents the hidden gems and the well known sites of the core of London’s East End.

Through his photographs and essays John Bennett reminds us of the often brutal history of the area – from the squalid slums of the time of William Booth and the Siege of Sidney Street to the violence of the Kray Brothers.

Again and again, however, he explores how streets, parks, pubs, neighbourhoods have developed as new migrants have moved in – the Huguenots, the Irish, Jews, Bangladeshis and now, for the first time, well-off City types.

John Bennett has been photographing the East End for the last thirty years. He works in London as a despatch driver. He is descended from Huguenots and Sephardic Jewish East Enders. He lives in north London.


Drowned
by Claire Tulloch
ISBN: 978-1905512713, 240 pages


£5.99
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Tony Barber finds the body of his best friend, Jimmy, in a river. At the funeral Tony meets Cora, who helps him follow clues, which indicate that Jimmy’s death was no accident.

Tony suspects that Jimmy’s uncle – Tom - holds vital information about the death. But, then Tom is found dead, by Tony and Cora…

When Cora leaves for England, these losses - compounded by guilt around Tom’s death - send Tony to find solace from the ‘Hermit on the Hill’,overlooking his village – Barley Cove.

A terrific novel by a writer unafraid to take on big issues.

A moving story of love and loss set in rural Ireland in the 1970s.

A novel of family secrets and lies for young adult readers.

Claire Tulloch is a graduate from the MA in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. She now works in the NHS. This is her first novel, which draws on her Irish background.

The Sea of Azov
by Anne Joseph
ISBN: 978-1905512607, paperback, 240 pages
ISBN: 978-1905512614, hardback,
240 pages

£9.99 / £14.99
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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
The Chaste Wife
by Elia R. Karmona, translation: Michael Alpert
ISBN: 978-1905512669 , 187 pages


£8.99
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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.
The Dirty Thirty:
Heroes of the Miners' Strike
by David Bell
ISBN: 978-1905512676, 108 pages

£7.99
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The miners’ strike of 1984-85 came to be called the "Great Strike", with good reason. It was the largest, longest trade union struggle in Britain, and the most far reaching in its consequences, since the 1926 General Strike. For a whole year, some 170,000 miners, plus the women of the mining communities, battled against everything the government and the police threw at them.

Only 30 miners out of 2,000 from the Leicestershire coalfield struck against the pit closure programme. They became renowned as The Dirty Thirty and travelled the world for the strike fund selling badges, mugs and vests, making speeches and supporting the other 170,000 strikers in the biggest industrial conflict.

David Bell has interviewed most of the surviving miners and the women’s support group to find out why they struck, and why they held out for so long. The Dirty Thirty is illustrated throughout with period photographs and ephemera.

Published to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike.

The story of the miners, and their wives and families courage, humour and an unbreakable will to win.

Introduction by actor Ricky Tomlinson. The book will be launched at a reunion of the group.

David Bell has written a book a year for Countryside Books for the last twenty years. These include local history titles, tales of mystery and murder and oral history. He is Midlands’ convener of the Crime Writers Association.

Can I Bring My Own Gun?
by Seth Freedman
Published with The Guardian
ISBN: 978-1905512645, 240 pages

£8.99
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Seth Freedman is a writer living in Jerusalem. He grew up in Hampstead Garden Suburb and worked in the City for six years, before moving to Israel.

He served for fifteen months in a combat unit of the IDF, between 2004 and 2006, and has worked as a writer ever since. He writers for Current TV and First Post as well as The Guardian.

"Seth Freedman bring(s) the real lives of the people behind the headlines into sharp focus. Curious and opinionated… prepared to go where no other journalist ventures: into the Israeli settlements where lies the solution (or not) to the conflict." - Linda Grant, Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction

"Seth Freedman's blog from Jerusalem has become an instant must-read for those who follow this most intractable of conflicts. His mixture of close-up, eye-witness reporting and heartfelt polemic is intoxicating. He is one writer to watch." - Jonathan Freedland, Guardian journalist and novelist

Seth Freedman reports from the front line of Israel and Palestine, and behind the lines. As a former Israeli soldier reporting from the West Bank he is unique. From soldier to peace activist, this book follows the author’s journey.

Seth Freedman is a contracted journalist on the Guardian’s Comment is Free, his reports are followed, praised and condemned in equal measure, by tens of thousands of readers.

Italian Angels
by Anita Klein
ISBN: 978-1905512591, 80 pages


£12.99
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A new set of 50 full colour paintings inspired by Tuscany, to tie in with a major exhibition at Bankside Gallery in April 2009.

"Celebrating oases of joy in the quotidian, Anita Klein builds a personal archive, brimming with charisma and wit, that can be identified with by everyone" - Britart.com

"There are no desperate attempts to shock, expose or outrage; simply poignant moments showing the things which you would most miss if they were taken away from you."
- Helen Smithson, Ham & High.

"A blithe demonstration of intimacy" - William Zimmer, New York Times

"At a time when the art world seems to be full of artists attempting to shock and denigrate, Klein’s intimate, life affirming work comes as a welcome breath of fresh air" - Vincent Eames, The Fine Art Partnership

"The pictures, which celebrate the small moments of life which often go unappreciated, are warm, witty and quite delightful"
- Julia Weiner, Jewish Chronicle

"It is nice to have a real humorist recruited to the ranks of gifted painters. She is to be congratulated on livening up our dreary lives."
- Art Review

"Star of the show for me is the spare, knowing, subversive and comic work of a young painter called Anita Klein."
- Godfrey Smith, Sunday Times

About the author: Anita Klein was born in Sydney, Australia and moved to England when she was eleven years old. She studied at Chelsea and the Slade schools of art. She is a fellow and past president of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers and has work in many private and public collections worldwide. Her first book: Anita Klein: Painter Printmaker is available from Five Leaves, Price: £9.99.

No Way To Say Goodbye
by Rod Madocks
ISBN: 978-1905512577, 276 pages


£9.99
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…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.



Forthcoming Titles:

The Night Shift
Edited by Michael Baron, Andy Croft
& Jenny Swann
ISBN: 978-190551258, 160 pages

£9.99
Due Summer 2009, click here to pre-order

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This anthology celebrates the romance of the awake world at night and also draws attention to its more shady and brutal side.

The poems are in three themed sections; the first, ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, focuses on paid workers who ply their trade at night; the second, ‘In the Forests of the Night’ describes the animal kingdom, the world of nature, active under cover of darkness. The third, ‘A Crumpled Duvet’, pans across all those who are alive to the highs and lows of being awake at night – with insomnia, sleepless babies or late night revelry.

Contributors from the past and present likely to include: Chaucer, Wordsworth, Ted Hughes, Paul Muldoon, Elaine Feinstein, Simon Armitage, Fleur Adcock, Coleridge, W H Auden, and Gilbert White.

About the editors: Michael Baron is involved with Words on the Water in the Lake District. He edited the Five Leaves collection On a Bat’s Wing. Andy Croft has edited several collections for Five Leaves. His latest solo work is The Ghost Writer. Jenny Swann is the Poetry Editor at Five Leaves.


Swimmer In The Secret Sea
by William Kotzwinkle
ISBN: 978-1905512508, 96 pages


£5.99
Due September 2009, click here to pre-order

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This novella tells the story of Johnny and Diane Laski, a sculptor and his wife, and their attempt to bring a new life into the world, during a cold Maine winter, deep in the country.

William Kotzwinkle tells the story of the couple’s night drive to the hospital, their long labour, and their ultimately, unsuccessful breech birth. Unafraid of his subject, Kotzwinkle destroys any sentimental illusions about the beauty of childbirth or the distance of birth from death; he reminds us of how closely the two are intertwined, of the frightening power of the life force, and of the unpredictability and uncanniness of death.

And yet, his small book is not without hope.

"A beautiful piece of work... the economy of the writing and the matter-of-fact acceptance make it immensely moving" - The Daily Telegraph

"Swimming in the Secret Sea is a deeply moving book. The textures of its delicately conveyed anguish, simplicity make its grief all the more stunning." - Publishers Weekly

"Swimmer in the Secret Sea reveals a depth of emotion and an immensity of feeling seldom seen in American writers today."
- The San Francisco Review of Books

William Kotzwinkle, well-known for his many enduring children's books such as Trouble in Bugland and his novelisation of the movie E.T. The Extraterrestrial, is equally adept at writing seriously and poetically about life in extremis. He is also well known in the UK for his adult novel Fata Morgana and Dr. Rat.


Holocaust
by Charles Reznikoff
ISBN: 978-1905512638, 96 pages


£8.99
Due Summer 2009, click here to pre-order

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Introduction by George Szirtes, winner of the TS Eliot poetry prize

Reznikoff’s subject is one people’s suffering at the hand of another. His source materials are the U.S. government’s record of the trials of the Nazi criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and the transcripts of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem.

Except for the twelve part titles, none of the words here are Reznikoff’s own: instead he has created, through selection, arrangement, and the rhythms of the testimony set as verse on the page, a poem of witness by the perpetrators and the survivors of the Holocaust themselves. He lets the terrible history unfold – in history’s own words.

"…Reznikoff is the quintessential poet of New York City and one of the key figures in Jewish-American poetry. A writer of astonishing insight and unsurpassable charm, his poems endeavour to make visible much that usually goes unnoticed." - Publisher’s Weekly USA

"When we come to the end of Holocaust we want to find a place to be sick…No poet has ever written a book so nakedly shocking… One marvels at the courage Reznikoff must have drawn upon to write it."
- Anne Stevenson

"His Auschwitz was not… William Styron's "fatal embolism in the bloodstream of mankind," but a real place where men and women lived and died without witnesses, and mourners." - Sylvia Rothchild

Charles Reznikoff was born August, 1894, in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants who fled the pogroms that followed the assassination of Alexander II. He was a blood-and-bone New Yorker, a collector of images and stories who walked the city from Bronx to Battery and breathed the soul of the Jewish immigrant experience into a lifetime of poetry. He died in 1976; one year after this book was first published in the USA.

Jazz Jews
by Mike Gerber
ISBN: 978-0907123248 , 672 pages


£24.99
Due Spring, click here to pre-order

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From the dance bands to the swing era, from the writers of standards to writers of avant garde jazz, Jews have been and are there.

This book concentrates on the performers and writers, explores the role of Jews in breaking the colour bar in American jazz, in using jazz as an instrument against apartheid and against Soviet repression.

This book concentrates on the performers and writers, explores the role of Jews in breaking the colour bar in American jazz, in using jazz as an instrument against apartheid and against Soviet repression. The book debates whether there is such a thing as Jewish jazz, and argues about why there are just so many Jews in jazz music, since that music began and in every country it is played. Mike Gerber has interviewed everyone that matters – Jews and non-Jews, Black and White, and his book includes one of the last interviews by Artie Shaw.

Seven years in the making, this is the final word on Jews in jazz music. o Worldwide coverage – from the mainland of jazz, America, to Eastern Europe, Africa and all stops in between.

A must for all jazz fans – Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Stan Getz, George Melly, Elkie Brooks, Ronnie Scott - all here, even Amy Winehouse gets a mention!

Mike Gerber is a freelance journalist, working for various industrial trade papers. His writing has also appeared in, amongst others, the New Statesman. He lives in London.

From Pogrom to Purge:
Soviet Yiddish Writing 1917-1947

Edited by Joseph Sherman
ISBN: 978-1905512621, 260 pages

£9.99
Due February 2010, click here to pre-order

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The thirty years between the Russian Revolution and Stalin’s destruction of Yiddish culture produced some of the best 20th C writing in Yiddish. Brilliant avant-garde work challenged the best of European modernism during the 1920s. This was stamped out in the 1930s by Stalin’s repressive demand for “socialist realism”. The greatest challenge to Yiddish writing under Stalinism came during World War II when Soviet policy insisted that German atrocities did not single out the Jews for special extermination but applied equally to all Soviet citizens. Jewish writers in the USSR, well aware of the extent of the Holocaust, had to find ways to express their horror and grief without falling foul of the official Soviet censorship. The results were remarkable.

Remarkable stories from the forgotten world of Soviet Yiddish writing during World War II.

Jewish writers in the USSR, aware of the extent of the Holocaust, find ways to express their horror and grief without falling foul of the official Soviet censorship o An important book for anyone interested in Soviet or Jewish literature.

We regret to announce that Joseph Sherman died in March of 2009. His book will now be published in February 2010 with a foreword by Gennady Estraikh.

Joseph Sherman taughts at the Oriental Institute, Oxford. He edited a number of books on Yiddish literature and wrote regularly for the Times Literary Supplement.

The Soviet writers include: David Bergelson, Peretz Markis, and Dovid Hofshteyn.

Killing Mum
by Allan Guthrie
ISBN: 978-1905512690, 96 pages


£4.99
Due June 2009

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Using a tanning salon as a front, Edinburgh-based Carlos Morales runs an operation that arranges contract killings.

Slight snag: his hit man’s in jail and won’t be out for a while. So when an anonymous – and very generous – payment arrives on account, Carlos decides to take the job on himself. He’s a pro. It can’t be that hard. But once the ‘mark’ is revealed, Carlos is forced to re-think his plans.

This is no longer business - it’s personal - because the ‘mark’ is his mother…

"Blacker than a dog’s guts." - Pulp Pusher

"Speedy, dialogue-driven and cleverly structured.” - Sunday Herald

"A dark, perfectly placed journey through psychoses, surreality and the twilight world of noir." - Crime Scene Scotland

"Razor-sharp characterization and an evocative sense of place…dark and splendid" - the Guardian

"Guthrie writes with an urgency, energy, cynical realism and mastery of casual violence that is rarely encountered in British crime writing" - The Times

"Guthrie’s control of this dark material is sheer wizardry." -
the Scotsman.

Allan Guthrie’s previous books include: Two-Way Split: Winner of Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year 2007; Hard Man: Shortlisted for Spinetingler Magazine award; Kiss Her Goodbye: Shortlisted for MWA Edgar,Gumshoe and Anthony awards. Allan lives in Edinburgh where he works as a literaryagent for Jenny Brown Associates.

Three Men on the Metro
by Andy Croft, WN Herbert & Paul Summers
ISBN: 978-1905512843, 72 pages


£7.99
Due December 2009

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Three Men on the Moscow Metro is a journey from the Newcastle Metro to the Moscow Metro. Armed only with a battered copy of Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men on a Boat (a cult classic in the Soviet Union) poets Andy Croft, Bill Herbert and Paul Summers are soon lost underground. Like their predecessors on the Thames, they are completely out of their depth, idealists abroad, adrift in a very foreign medium.

Andy Croft’s many books include Red Letter Days and the poetry collections Ghost Writer and Sticky. He has written forty non-fiction books (mostly about football) and three novels for teenagers. His edited books for Five Leaves include Red Sky at Night and Not Just a Game. He lives in Middlesbrough.

W.N. Herbert’s poetry includes Cabaret McGonagall (short-listed for the Forward Prize), The Big Bumper Book of Troy (long-listed for Scottish Book of the Year) Forked Tongue and Bad Shaman Blues (both shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize). He is Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing in the School of English at the University of Newcastle.

Paul Summers’ poetry publications include Vermeer’s Dark Parlour, Beer & Skittles, The Last Bus, The Rat’s Mirror, Cunawabi and Big Bella’s Dirty Café. He was founding co-editor of the magazines Billy Liar and Liar Republic. He lives in North Shields.

camp Shatila
by Peter Mortimer
ISBN: 978-1905512805, 240 pages


£9.99
Due October 2009

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Travel writer Peter Mortimer reports on Shatila, the Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon – scene of the Shatila massacre of 1982, now home to about 12,000 people living in one square kilometre. The author developed a children’s theatre group in the camp, whose members will be visiting the UK around publication.

Peter Mortimer is a former journalist at the Guardian and the Newcastle Journal. He runs Cloud Nine Theatre Company, and is the editor of Iron Press. His best selling travel book was Broke through Britain, which ran to several editions. This is his sixth book for Five Leaves. He lives in Newcastle.

"Peter Mortimer is the unsung hero of Northern literature" - Newcastle Journal

catalonia (new edition)
by John Payne
ISBN: 978-1905512829 , 340 pages


£10.99
Due October 2009

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Catalonia has been one of the major success stories of the last 30 years. Catalonia brings together an account of Catalan history and culture, and the central, multi-faceted concept of nationhood. John Payne places particular emphasis on the Middle Ages and the modern period, when Catalonia has performed upon the world stage. The book concludes by reviewing the complex ideas around identity and nationhood, and the central role of the Catalan language.

"The book contains several original gems. Payne is particularly original when explaining ecology and nationalism... this thoughtful book is a thorough, loving account of Catalonia and its problems." - Times Literary Supplement

John Payne began his working life as a lecturer in English at the University of Barcelona. He is fluent in Catalan and Spanish. His first book on Catalonia appeared in 1991, the first edition of this book in 2004. He is the author of Journey Up the Thames: William Morris and Modern England. He writes for Tribune, London Magazine, Catalonia Today and other magazines. John Payne lives in Frome, near Bath.

King Dido
by Alexander Baron
ISBN: 978-1905512812, 360 pages


£9.99
Due November 2009

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1911, East London. The police collaborate with racketeers to keep an uneasy peace, periodically broken by vicious street wars. Dido Peach comes to prominence running protection rackets by breaking the unwritten rules of the underworld. His fall is just as spectacular, shaking even the callous and vicious world he lived in.

"Enthralling" - Sunday Times

"Alexander Baron was a skilled traditionalist, a contriver of plotdriven, socially perceptive meditations on place." - Iain Sinclair

Alexander Baron is a major writer of the past. His From the City, From the Plough was a classic of writing about WWII. The re-issue of his The Lowlife is currently on hold pending a film deal, the last publication of which was introduced by Iain Sinclair, long a champion of Alexander Baron’s work.

The Lost Sister
by Russel D McLean
ISBN: 978-1905512799, 240 pages


£7.99
Due October 2009

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Following on from the successful The Good Son, Russel McLean’s Scottish Private Eye J McNee gets drawn into trying to find a missing child, the God-daughter of local hard man David Burns who seems to have some friends on the Dundee police force.

"Dark, well-honed and taut. I crave more McNee." - Jen Jordan for Crimespree Magazine

Russel D McLean writes for The Big Thrill (the newsletter of the International Thriller Writers’ Association), At Central Booking and Crime Scene Scotland. He works for Waterstone’s.

The Insurrectionists
by William J Fishman
ISBN: 978-1905512782, 216 pages


£9.99
Due October 2009

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William Fishman traces the lives and ideology of the leaders of the French Revolution, Marat, Robespierre and Blanqui, their influence on Karl Marx and, finally, their influence on Lenin and the Russian Revolution.

William J Fishman is the author of Streets of East London, East End 1888 and East End Jewish Radicals, all from Five Leaves.

He is a visiting professor at Queen Mary, University of London and still lectures in history.

Villages of Vision
by Gillian Darley
ISBN: 978-0907123507, 340 pages


£14.99
Due October 2009

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All over Britain and Ireland there are planned villages: for aesthetic, philanthropic or political reasons, for convenience and for ideals – the best known being Portmeirion, Port Sunlight, New Lanark and Bournville. Gillian Darley covers many hundreds of these strange and pretty arcadias built by aristocrats, industrialists and visionaries. This revised edition includes a greatly expanded gazetteer, revised bibliography and a new introduction. The gazetteer shows, county by county, where such villages can be seen – not as museums but as evolving, living places.

Villages of Vision was reviewed in the Guardian, Independent, Architects’ Journal, Building Design, The Land – all over the place on first Five Leaves’ publication in 2007

"This delightful and revealing book, now updated, tells the bizarre history of these ‘strange Utopias’ from New Lanark to Poundbury, and supplies a county-by-county guide. On every page, comic delusion vies with inspiring idealism." - Independent

Gillian Darley is a writer, broadcaster and journalist, a former architectural correspondent of the Observer. She is the former Chairman of the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings. Her biographies include Sir John Soane (shortlisted for the James Tate Memorial Prize), John Evelyn and Octavia Hill (all Yale). She has written on architecture and landscape, in publications including the COTTERS AND Financial Times, the Observer, London Review of Books and the TLS.

Illustrated throughout, preface by the Guardian’s David McKie.

"The book is no mean achievement. It spans over 250 years of development…The hare-brained, the magnificent, the withered, the bizarre notions of architectural theorists, as well as the successful, are all here in abundance" - Design Magazine

"Gillian Darley has produced an attractive book on an attractive subject…fascinating and lively" - TLS