By Claire Buss, Deputy Editor, Write On!
At Write On! and Pen to Print, we want to help connect authors and readers, playwrights and audiences, so we’ve created a Spotlight page on the last Saturday of the month, showcasing some of the exciting new reads and plays available. The curated list is based on books and plays that you send us, so if you’re an author or a playwright and you’d like your book or play in the spotlight, reach out to us at pentoprint@lbbd.gov.uk. Whether you’re an indie author, with a small press or mainstream publisher, established or brand new playwright, we’d love to hear from you and shine a light on your new work.
Write On! offers other opportunities for writers as well. If you’d like us to feature an extract from your book or a short story, please send the extract, book cover and blurb to pentoprint@lbbd.gov.uk with the subject: Write On! Showcase (ensuring you have your publisher’s permission, of course).
Pen to Print are also looking for short videos from people reading a passage from their favourite book, or authors reading extracts from their own books. These videos will be featured on the Pen to Print YouTube channel and across our social media. Please send in your videos or links to pentoprint@lbbd.gov.uk with the subject: Video Stories.
*****
Dickens Theatre Company Presents: A Christmas Carol, Palace Theatre, 17-19 November
Celebrating their 10th year delighting UK audiences with this unique production, Dickens Theatre Company returns to Southend.
With the rest of the acting cast stuck on a train, the great Charles Dickens himself, aided by his faithful tour manager, George Dolby, takes on the daunting challenge of portraying not just Ebenezer Scrooge, but over 30 other characters in this classic festive tale!
Surely it can’t be done?
*****
Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake
Good girls deserve a treat…
The House is the most exclusive sorority on campus, and all its alumni are beautiful, high-achieving and respected. After a freshman year she would rather forget, sophomore Nina Kaur knows being accepted into The House is the first step to the brightest possible future. The House will surely ease her fears of failure and protect her from those who see a young woman on her own as prey.
Meanwhile, adjunct professor Dr Sloane Hartley is struggling. After 18 months at home with her newborn daughter, Sloane’s clothes don’t fit right, her girl-dad husband isn’t as present as he thinks he is and even the few hours a day she’s apart from her child fill her psyche with paralysing ennui. When invited to be The House’s academic liaison, Sloane enviously drinks in a level of collective perfection she desperately craves.
As Nina and Sloane become drawn deeper into the arcane rituals of the sisterhood, they learn that living well comes with a bloody cost. And when they’re finally invited to the table, they will have to decide just how much they can stomach in the name of solidarity and power.
Available to buy here
Connect with Olivie Blake
Walk Me To The Distance by Percival Everett
David Larson can never go home.
His parents are dead. His sister and her hippie husband, staunchly anti-war, won’t even have the newly-returned Vietnam veteran in the house. So Larson takes his chances on the road, travelling west from Georgia until he breaks down in the nowhere town of Slut’s Hole, Wyoming.
There he finds lodging with Chloë Sixbury, a one-legged sexagenarian widow and her disabled son. Their ersatz family is complete when Larson takes in Butch, a Vietnamese girl abandoned at the highway rest stop where he works, but at the edge of this tableau lingers the unmistakable spectre of violence.
When They Burned The Butterfly by Wen-yi Lee
Singapore, 1972: Newly independent and grappling for power in a fast-modernising world.
Here, gangsters in Chinese secret societies are the last conduits of their ancestors’ migrant gods, and the back alleys where they fight are the last place magic has not been assimilated and legislated away.
Loner schoolgirl Adeline Siow has never needed more company than the flames she can summon at her fingertips. But when her mother dies in a house fire with a butterfly seared onto her skin, Adeline hunts down a girl she saw in a back-alley bar fight – a girl with a butterfly tattoo – only to discover she’s far from alone.
Ang Tian is a Red Butterfly: one of a gang of girls who came from nothing, sworn to a fire goddess and empowered to wreak vengeance on the men that abuse and underestimate them. Adeline’s mother led a double life as their elusive patron, Madam Butterfly. Now she’s dead, Adeline’s bloodline is the sole thing sustaining their link with this goddess. Between her search for her mother’s killer and the gang’s succession crisis, Adeline becomes quickly entangled with the girls’ dangerous world, and even more so with the charismatic Tian.
But no home lasts long around here. Ambitious and paranoid neighbour gangs hunt at the edges of Butterfly territory, and bodies are turning up in the red light district suffused with a strange new magic. Adeline may have found her place, but with the streets changing by the day, it may take everything she is to keep it.
At 14, Julia Z became infamous as the ‘orphan hacker,’ a teenage prodigy who broke the law and captivated a nation.
Now, years later, she’s trying to leave that life behind, hiding in the quiet suburbs of Boston. But her fragile anonymity is shattered when a desperate lawyer bursts into her life, begging for her help to find his wife – a celebrated artist who uses AI to craft shared dreams for thousands of followers and who has been kidnapped by a criminal syndicate.
Against her better judgment, Julia embarks on a harrowing journey across the country, drawn ever deeper into the shadows of the American dream. As she tracks the criminals, she confronts not only their perilous schemes but also the ghosts of her own past. Resourceful, relentless and deeply contemptuous of authority, Julia must dig deep into her unique skillset and fractured psyche to uncover the truth and hold onto hope when everything around her descends into darkness.
The Hong Kong Widow by Kristen Loesch
1953. Mei’s ‘gift’ of speaking to ghosts is one she has endeavoured to bury while fighting to survive as a refugee in post-war, post-revolution Hong Kong.
When former silent film star Holly Zhang invites Mei to the infamous Maidenhair House, the startling summons revives her link to the man who destroyed her life. During six séances over six nights, each night a Medium will be asked to leave until only one remains as the recipient of a staggering reward, but the only prize Mei wants is revenge.
Years later, that shocking night in the labyrinthine mansion has become an urban legend, dismissed by the police at the time as a collective hallucination. Mei must uncover the truth of what really happened and see if the ghosts she’s carried can finally be laid to rest.
Overdue by Stephanie Perkins
Never Ever After by Sue Lynn Tan
Life in the Iron Mountains is harsh and unforgiving.
After the death of her beloved uncle, Yining has only survived as a skilled thief and an even better liar. But when she acquires an enchanted ring that holds the key to a brighter future, it’s stolen by her step-aunt and Yining must venture into the imperial heart of the kingdom to seize it back.
Amid the grandeur of the palace, Yining catches the eye of the ruthless and ambitious prince, who tempts her with a world she’s never imagined. But nothing is as it seems, and soon she’s trapped in a tangle of power, treachery, and greed; her only ally a cunning advisor from a rival court who keeps dangerous secrets of his own.
To break free, Yining must embark on a perilous quest to fight for a future that both frightens and calls to her and choose who to trust when allies can be as deadly as enemies.
Available to buy here
Connect with Sue Lynn Tan
Eden Lowell has plenty to be frustrated about.
In the flooded Marshes of former Miami, each day is about survival. Even her feelings for her best friend Henry are more complicated than they should be. Luckily, Eden knows exactly who to blame: the Cruisers, corporate elite who sail the world on massive ships instead of facing the environmental crimes they’ve committed on land.
When Eden learns that a Cruiser family is hosting a dating competition for their heir, Theo Desjardins, she seizes an opportunity. Aided by a political agitator known as the Ringmaster, she’ll infiltrate the competition, break Theo’s heart, and then steal his money for the Marshes. A perfect plan…
Until she gets to know Theo, who’s not only handsome but surprisingly kind.
As Eden drifts deeper down into the Cruisers’ world, the line separating truth and lies becomes murky. Torn between two identities, two loves, and two futures, will she choose the mission – or her heart?
Available to buy here
Connect with Jill Tew
Till Now by Silviya Vijeyaruban
A poetry chapbook about breaking, mending and becoming.
Till Now is a tender collection tracing the quiet moments between loss and growth. These poems carry the reader through the echoes of childhood, the weight of longing and the fragile beauty of learning how to heal. With an intimate voice and raw honesty, they explore love, resilience and the unspoken ache for self discovery.
From the soft unravelling of memory to the slow rebuilding of hope, Till Now captures what it means to hold pain in one hand and hope in the other. It’s for anyone who has searched for light in the shadows, wrestled with doubt, or discovered that, even in silence, growth is still happening.
A collection for lovers of modern poetry, healing words, and deeply human experiences, Till Now is an offering of reflection, tenderness and survival; reminding us that every step, no matter how heavy, is part of becoming whole.
Available to buy here
Connect with Silviya Vijeyaruban
Remember, if you’re an author and you’d like to see your book in our Saturday Spotlight, email: pentoprint@lbbd.gov.uk and send us the details of your new novel.
For details of Penguin RandomHouse new releases, visit their website here.
For details of Hachette new releases, visit their website here.
For details of HarperCollins new releases, visit their website here.
For details of PanMacmillan new releases, visit their website here.
For details of Simon & Schuster new releases, visit their website here.
Disclaimer: Amazon links are given for ease but please remember there are a number of other online retailers operating, including hive (which helps to support independent book shops), Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play and Nook as well as online stores for bookstores such as Waterstones, Barnes & Noble and WHSmiths.
Issue 25 of Write On! is out now and you can read it online here. Find it in libraries and other outlets. You can find previous editions of our magazines here.
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