Congratulations Robert Minhinnick!

Robert Minhinnick is one of twenty authors long-listed for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award 2012. 'El Aziz: some pages from his notebooks' is the long-listed story from his new collection The Keys of Babylon. The 2012 list includes Diana Athill, Lionel Shriver, Emma Donoghue and Will Cohu. The shortlist will be announced on the 4th March, with each shortlisted author receiving a 1,000 prize. The winner will be announced on the 30th March.

If you are feeling the Rugby Fever and have been enjoying watching Wales, you might be interested in a fantatsic book of images from Wales' Rugby World Cup 2011 in New Zealand. The images capture some of Wales' highs and lows and illustrate why the Wales' Rugby team were one of the most talked about teams during the World Cup. Heads Held High is 16.99 or only 13.59 if you join Seren's free online bookclub.

Regeneration by Meirion Jordan

Regeneration is Welsh poet Meirion Jordans take on the medieval manuscripts known today as Llyfr Coch Hergest and Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch (the Red Book of Hergest and the White Book of Rhydderch ). This collection is not a reinterpretation but a re-imagining, inspired by the source material that include the stories of the Mabinogi (first made famous by the Victorian translations of Lady Charlotte Guest) as well as by Mallorys version of King Arthurs tales. In Red Book we meet characters drawn from the eleven stories of the Mabinogi, like Arawn, lord of Annwn; Rhiannons gossips and Blodeuedd (the woman made of flowers). White Book, gives us a cast of kings, queens, knights and companions of the round table. This long poem treats themes of love, betrayal, friendship, kinship, and the vexed question of leadership, in poems that revolve around the contentious figure of King Arthur.

ISBN: 9781854115553

T he Gospel of Us by Owen Sheers

This novella by Owen Sheers retells the Passion, based on the authors groundbreaking National Theatre of Wales play starring Michael Sheen and performed over three days in Port Talbot Last Easter.

While the town awaits the arrival of the Company Man, a stranger appears in the windswept dunes, singing songs to the sea. This is just the start of three days of unearthly events in Port Talbot that see the Teacher soothe a suicide bomber and the dead rising from the walls of an underpass. In T he Gospel of Us , Owen Sheers reimagines his three day dramatization of the Passion for the National Theatre of Wales, set in the streets and clubs of Port Talbot. The Gospel of Us is also a major motion picture, starring Michael Sheen. It will be screening at cinemas and arts centres throughout England and Wales during April and May. Click here for the premiere and all other listings.

"Owen is one of the finest writers at work today. He always finds the sublime in the everyday and the miracle in the mundane." Michael Sheen, Actor

Publication: April 2012 ISBN:9781854116222 Paperback: 8.99

The Book of Idiots by Christopher Meredith

In The Book of Idiots , tipsy, sick Wil Daniel tells the narrator, Dean, a tale that may be a ghost story or a romance, a farce or a tragedy. Meanwhile we get glimpses of Deans own half-lived life, and those of friends and colleagues. These threads develop into a dark, offbeat and merciless examination of maleness and mortality.

Can Clive regain the triumphs he achieved at the age of nine? Will Jeff stop his swimming trunks from dissolving?

Outstanding in its use of dialogue to reveal character, this superbly written novel develops into a meditation on kinds of suffering that are no less acute for being routine.

You will sail through this hilarious black comedy at one sitting. It is a literary masterpiece a thriller in which we guess who survives rather than who will die next.
Gwen Davies, Western Mail

This is a fine novel hard to put down and an adventure in meaning.
Jeremy Hooker

Christopher Meredith is the author of the award-winning Shifts . His other novels include Griffri and Sidereal Time . He also publishes poetry The Meaning of Flight and Snaring Heaven and translations. The Book of Idiots is his fourth novel.

Publication: March 2012 ISBN: 9781854115652 Paperback: 8.99

John Ormond: Collected Poems by Michael J. Collins

John Ormond (1923-1990) is one of the remarkable generation of poets born in south Wales in the early 1920s which includes Dannie Abse and Leslie Norris. A journalist on Picture Post during its heyday in the 1940s, he was a friend of fellow Swansea writers Dylan Thomas and Vernon Watkins, both of whom were key influences on a poetry of consistently high standards. A significant number of his poems, many of them elegiac, probe his Welsh roots, demonstrating an abiding concern with family and locality. This Collected Poems draws together all of Ormonds work, including unpublished material. It includes an Introduction by the editor, Michael J. Collins, notes and commentary of the poems re: their geneses, backgrounds, allusions and meanings, and a bibliography of Ormonds prose writing, films and writing about him. An index of titles and first lines completes this essential book.

Publication: March 2012 ISBN: 9781854115218 Paperback:12.99

Jack the Ripper: A Hand of a Woman by John Morris

The Jack the Ripper murders of 1888 continue to exert a macabre hold on the imagination over a century later. Among the first serial murders, their brutality and bizarreness, and the seeming impossibility of detection have a terrible fascination. Jack the Ripper: The Hand of a Woman is the result of extensive research by author John Morris and his late father. Starting with the many unresolved questions about the murders they concluded that they could be answered if Jack was in reality a woman. But who could she be? The story of their researches includes many twists and turns as they reach an all too plausible conclusion, naming a suspect and answering the question of why the murders started, and just as suddenly stopped.

Publication: March 2012 ISBN: 9781854115669 Paperback: 9.99