Edition #2 of Novella Express
DECEMBER 2022
Guest Editor Alan Bissett
with:
- The Hardest Winter by Carole Hamilton
- Heaven Burns by Jen McGregor
- Just Like Him to Die by Douglas Bruton
Novella Express is a nine edition book series publishing novellas submitted from around the world, edited and produced in Scotland.
Each of the nine book editions will be available in print form (around 380 pages, including several colour pages) and sold in high street shops through our distributor; available by subscription; and in USA and Canada from a trusted partner in North America; as well as from our website.
In addition, each novella will be produced as an eBook, and distributed through our partners Faber Factory.
Order Novella Express #2 from this website for £15
THE HARDEST WINTER
by Carole Hamilton
Fiona and Drew live and work on a Scottish cattle farm. Beauty contrasts with the never ending chores and muck. Fiona is suffocated by the monotony of the endless tasks both in the farmhouse and outside. The continual preparation of meals, cleaning, feeding calves and helping with farm chores leaves her exhausted.
At other times she is exhilarated by the magic of the changing seasons and landscape. Often she feels trapped in the repetitive, isolated environment that doesn't offer much scope for interaction with others. When she gets the chance to escape the mundane, her melancholy lifts. Birth and death infiltrate her life till the harshest of winters with painful circumstances arrive.
With this adversity there is always hope of a new future just as winter will always turn to spring. The ritual of the farming year, ploughing, planting and harvesting are linked to love, loss and new life. Fiona's life is caught in this exquisite and intricate web.
HEAVEN BURNS
by Jen McGregor
1662. Scotland suffers a scourge of witches. What else could explain the wars, the plagues, the storms?
Runaway housewife Isobel has a duty to do, acting as clerk to John Dixon, the finest witchpricker in the country. She’s sure it’s what God wants her to do. She’s sure she can keep her growing feelings for Dixon in check.
When a stranger appears telling wild tales of stolen names and false identities, Isobel’s loyalty is put to the test. Is the stranger telling her of a great wrong to be put right, or sent from Hell to thwart the witch hunts?
JUST LIKE HIM TO DIE
by Douglas Bruton
In Just Like Him To Die Dylan Thomas remembers episodes from his life and he transmutes these into gentle Under-Milk-Wood-like stories which are full of fun and word-play pyrotechnics and fiction – after all, when we each come to tell the stories of our own lives we turn them into ‘untruths’ in just the same way.
Just Like Him To Die is subtitled ‘a short novel for voices’ which mirrors the subtitle for Under Milk Wood: (a play for voices).