Ceri Shaw


 

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Seren Gifts for Christmas

user image 2013-12-03
By: Ceri Shaw
Posted in:

ITS CHRISTMAS! (Well nearly) If you havent found the perfect gift for that special someone yet, have no fear! Seren published a great range of titles this year, with something to suit everyone. Remember to claim your 20% off when you join our online book club .

Books for Everyone

New Stories From the Mabinogion Box Set - 80
Save 16 with our online book club discount

Serens New Stories From the Mabinogion box set contains ten terrific tales by top authors, which means theres one for all readers. Ten Welsh authors have taken the ancient Mabinogion Myth cycle and re-worked them in to modern day tales, taking us to places weird and wonderful along the way.We have reached the orbit of Mars, the Tower of London and the edges of India, travelled in time to WW2 and forward to the near future, seen Iraq in drug-addled dreams, and viewed Wales aslant, from its countryside to its council estates. We have touched on nation-building and personal tragedy, bravery and betrayal. Want to make it extra special? Get the signed set here .

Paperback ISBN:9781781721520

Coffee Table Books

These beautifully presented books feature glorious full colour photographs and will take pride of place on any coffee table.

The Rivalry of Flowers by Shani Rhys James - 29.99 - Save 6 when you buy online

A book of 52 stunning new paintings and works by Shani Rhys James, one of Britains leading and most distinctive artists. Her latest work has developed a lighter palette to deal with new subjects of flowers and colourful patterned wallpaper backgrounds. Rhys Jamess paintings continue her exploration of the position of women in society, and in particular how women can be imprisoned by consumerism and the domestic environment.

Hardback ISBN: 9781781720615

The Harp in Wales by Bruce Cardwell - 29.99 - Save 6 when you buy online

Bruce Cardwells latest book of photography is a celebration of the harp in Wales, an instrument as symbolically key to Welsh identity as the flag itself.The book provides a history of the harp in Wales, including how it grew to prominence, its evolving role in Welsh culture, how it became a central symbol of Welshness, how it has developed as a musical instrument and the booming harp business today.

Hardback ISBN: 9781781720806

Borderlands by Phil Cope - 19.99 -Save 4 when you buy online

New Photographs and old tales of the sacred springs, holy wells and spas populating the disputed lands of the Welsh-English border.Richly illustrated in colour throughout the wells from Cheshire to Monmouthshire, from the Dee to the Severn are here displayed in all their glory, be they in remote countryside or city centre.

Hardback ISBN:9781781720608

Books for The Poetry Lover

The Claims Office by Dai George - 8.99 -Save 1.80 when you buy online

Dai George is primarily an urban poet, he's drawn to socio-political themes and is fascinated by history and how this effects character, both his own in the 21st century, this is evident within his poetry. There are lively pieces about London and New York: Metroland and New York on a Shoestring; skewed loves poems: Plans with the Unmet Wife. 'His method is mostly straightforward narrative but the textures and imagery are often elaborate and strange. This rich surface is undercut by an interesting attitude: a mix of rebellious energy and unflinching satire.

Paperback ISBN:9781781720905

R.S Thomas:Poems to Elsi , ed. Damien Walford Davies - 9.99
Save 2 when you buy online

Share the love with these 52 poems (two previously unpublished) by Thomas to his wife, the distinguished artist Mildred E Eldridge - known as Elsi - from early meditations on their relationship to the elegies following her death.This revelatory collection dramatises the changing dynamics of a complex and vitally creative relationship. Poems on marriage, cohabitation, birthdays, anniversaries, family and bereavement offer a candid portrait of emotional intimacy, desire, the painful process of ageing, and of loss.

Paperback ISBN:9781781721117

In Reality: Selected Poems by Jean Portante - 9.99 -Save 2 when you buy online

In Reality is the first English translation of the poetry of Jean Portante,a lyric poet, and also one who has something to say to an international audience. As a Francophone Luxemburger of Italian descent, his poetry works at the spaces between European cultures and is concerned with themes of identity, politics, language, Europe, the divide between politics and everyday life. This dual language edition collects work from the last 20 years, including poems from his 2013 collection, Aprs le tremblement . Translated by Zo Skoulding,

Paperback ISBN:9781781720653.

The Visitations by Kathryn Simmonds - 8.99 - Save 1.80 when you buy online

The Visitations is the follow-up to Kathryn Simmonds Forward Prize-winning debut, Sunday at the Skin Launderette . An appealing voice masks darker themes and worlds unseen with subtle shifts of language and perspective. The tone is often simultaneously satirical and elegiac and the collection abounds with sudden moments of strange illumination: a lime tree strikes up a conversation; a life coach finds an old passport; an infant teeters on the brink of speech. The Visitations is a meeting place for the physical and metaphysical, questions of new motherhood are set against those of faith, and the larger conundrum of how to live.

Paperback ISBN:9781781721162

Books for the Explorer

Cant afford a round the world ticket? Give the gift of travel and let your loved one explore the world from the comfort of their armchair.

Island of Lightning by Robert Minhinnick - 9.99 -Save 2 when you buy online

Travel around south Wales, Argentina, China, Finland, Iraq, Tuscany, Piemonte, New York, Zagreb, Lithuania and the lightning island of Malta with Robert Minhinnicks latest book of travel essays. Attractions include the annual Elvis convention in Porthcawl, Neolithic sculptures, the cruelties of late twentieth century communism and its aftermath, rugby union, the Argentinian writer Alfonsina Storni, poets playing football, the body of a saint and the definition of cool. His themes are big ones: the relationship of man and landscape, man and time, man and nature, immigration and war, in one sense ultimately humankind itself.

Paperback ISBN:9781781721292

Edging the Estuary byPeter Finch - 9.99 -Save 2 when you buy online

Peter Finch sets out to explore his heritage, walking both sides of the Severn Estuary.On his journey he sees the estuary as border, a highway for trade and ideas, an industrial zone, and a place for people to spend their leisure.Finch takes in villages and cities, power stations and fishermen, castles and caravans, leg-aching walks and deckchairs on the beach, exploring both busy tourst attractions and secret havens along some of the most beautiful coastline in Britain.

Paperback ISBN:9781781720844

Everything I Have Always Forgotten by Owain Hughes - 9.99 -Save 2 when you buy online

Everything I Have Always Forgotten is the story of Owain Hughes childhood.His parents, novelist Richard Hughes and artist Frances Bazley, intended to encourage independence and self-reliance through a policy of benign neglect, allowing for quixotic childhood adventures. His enchanting stories of boating, horse-riding and walking include a three day hike through Snowdonia by the 12 year old Owain and cumulate in him being marooned for two weeks on Bardsey Island, off the north Wales coast, with no way of contacting home.

Paperback ISBN:9781781720998

Metropoetica , ed. ZoSkoulding- 9.99 -Save 2 when you buy online

Explore Europes capital cities through poetry with Metropoetica . What does writing poetry have in common with walking in the city? What lost paths, dark alleys and chance connections are encountered? How do these change the maps by which cities are known and by which new poetries may be discovered? Metropoetica is a collaboration of women writing and walking in different cities across Europe in response to these questions. The contributing poets and translators include Ingmara Balode (Riga, Latvia), Julia Fiedorczuk (Warsaw, Poland), Sanna Karlstrm (Helsinki, Finland), Ana Pepelnik (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Zo Skoulding (Bangor, Wales), Sigurbjrg Thrastardottir (Reykjavik, Iceland), and Elzbieta Wjcik-Leese (Krakw, Poland).

Paperback ISBN:9781781721285

Books for the Crime Addict

Send a shiver down their spine with our true crime books.

The Pembrokeshire Murders: Catching the Bullseye Killer by Steve Wilkins with Jonathan Hill
9.99 - Save 2 when you buy online

The Pembrokeshire Murders , tells the true story of Operation Ottawa, the cold case investigation of the notorious unsolved Pembrokeshire Murders. Detective Chief Superintendent Steve Wilkins tells how cutting edge forensic techniques, fibres from a glove and an unlikely appearance on the ITV program, Bullseye , lead to the conviction of John Cooper.The dramatic timeline involves psychological profiling, intimidation by Cooper, the relationship between police and media in the arrest and the predicament of the victims' families during the long years when the cases remained unsolved.

Paperback ISBN:9781781728000

Disturbance by Ivy Alvarez - 9.99 -Save 2 when you buy online

Disturbance is an imaginative retelling of and a response to actual events. It chronicles a brutal multiple-homicide, a case of domestic violence that ends in tragedy, an entire family gunned down by its patriarch.The book features a kaleidoscope of voices. Each poem is a piece of evidence, We hear from the family and witness how the fathers possessive attitude escalates into psychosis and eventually violence. Then we experience the chaotic aftermath: the should of, would of, could of of the authorities, police and neighbours, who all might have acted to prevent this tragedy.

Paperback ISBN:9781781720875

Books for the Fiction Fanatic

Get lost in someone elses world this Christmas with one of our fantastic fiction titles.

The Rice Paper Diaries by Francesca Rhydderch - 8.99 -Save 1.80 when you buy online

It is spring 1940, and newly wed Elsa Jones is finding her way in Hong Kongs ex-pat society. Lonely and homesick, she finds an ally in her amah Lin, who has travelled downriver from her native village in Canton, but their friendship is clouded by Lins own longing to be reunited with her young sister and the simpler life of her childhood.When Hong Kong falls to the Japanese, Elsa and her husband Tommy are captured and interned in a makeshift camp on the southern side of the island. Along with the rest of Hong Kongs European elite, they have to knuckle down to the task of survival in hostile surroundings.

Paperback ISBN:9781781720516

Ibrahim & Reenie by David Llewellyn - 8.99 -Save 1.80 when you buy online

Ibrahim is a young Muslim guy walking from Cardiff to London. He has his own reasons, and his own mental and physical struggles to deal with along the way. What he hadnt counted on was a chance meeting with 75-year-old East Londoner Reenie before hes hardly started. With her lifes luggage in a shopping trolley, complete with an orange tent and her pet cockatiel, Reenie is also walking the M4, and not for charity. As they share a journey their paths stretch out before and behind them into the personal and political turns of European history in ways neither could have foreseen.

Paperback ISBN:9781781720813

The Colour of Dawn by Yanick Lahens - 8.99 -Save 1.80 when you buy online
Port au Prince, Haiti. The police roam the streets and no-one is safe. Fignol, musician, political radical is missing. His sisters Joyeuse and Angelique search for their young brother amid the colourful bustle, urban deprivation and political tension of the city. Eventually they will find him, but in the process they will also have found more about themselves than they wanted to know. The Colour of Dawn is the story of one day and three lives in a city where love is hard to find, life is cheap and death is all too familiar. It is the tense, passionate and vividly told story of small victories of hope in the face of a seemingly impossible fight against a monolithic regime. Translated by Alison Layland.

Paperback ISBN:9781781720578

Books for the Coffee Break

These books are made up of collections of short stories, making perfect reading for a spare 15 minutes.

The Scattering by Jaki McCarrick - 8.99 -Save 1.80 when you buy online

A collection of nineteen stories, exploring states of liminality: life on the Irish border, dual identities, emigration, being between states - certainty and doubt, codependency and freedom. Some explore themes of catastrophe and constraint. All explore what it means to be alive in a fraught and ever-changing world. The Visit won the Wasafiri Prize for new fiction, and many have been published to much acclaim in literary magazines.

Paperback ISBN:9781781720325

All the Souls by Mary Ann Constantine -8.99-Save 1.80 when you buy online

Two doctors and a folklorist meet in northern Brittany in 1898, determined to prove that leprosy still exists. But their ardour for collecting evidence draws them into a dark, watchful landscape where superstition is rife. Many of the stories in All the Souls hover round themes of collecting and recovering the past. From poignant and dangerous obsessions with the iconic (a Romano-British figurine; a carved wooden Christ-child; a bronze angel) to direct, often puzzled conversations with ghosts, the characters in this book all strive to make contact with the impossible.

Paperback ISBN:9781781720622

Award Worthy

These books have all won or been nominated for major prizes this year

Clueless Dogs by Rhian Edwards - 8.99 -Save 1.80 when you buy online

Winner of Wales Book of the Year 2013
Clueless Dogs is the debut collection by Rhian Edwards. Poems like The Welshman Who Couldnt Sing chronicle a fraught childhood in Bridgend, south Wales, where the sensitive child escapes through imaginative games of Playing Dead and Broken Lifeboat. Full of verve and humour, with a spiky syntax featuring hard-edged consonants, her language has a winning honesty and intensity. Later poems chronicle teenage lusts, student rivalries, damaged peers and tense situations. Although the author doesnt flinch from ruthless depictions in which we are often implicated by her use of the second person You, there is an underlying sweetness, an elegiac thread most evident in the poems of maturity, like Back to Bed, Safe, The Wrong Season.

Paperback ISBN:9781854115737

She Inserts the Key by Marianne Burton - 8.99 -Save 1.80 when you buy online

Shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Forward Prize for Best First Collection
Marianne Burtons vivid debut poetry collection evokes the personal as well as the historical and political. These poems draw you in with a look at this! urgency. This is a collection of voices: dodos and wallpaper chant obsessively, a cheese weeps for the calf whose milk it stole, a woman turned into soap dreams of her apotheosis as she washes into the sea. Uneasy yet fruitful juxtapositions abound: poems of war are set against poems of the natural world, a glimpse of a sparrowhawk is offset by a wider vision of the River flowing under the Bank of England. The series, Meditations on the Hours, that highlight the domestic and the personal, is at the core of this group of lyrical poems. The poets language is both keen and voluptuous, contemplative and passionate.

Paperback ISBN:9781781720387

Burying the Wren by Deryn Rees Jones - 8.99 -Save 1.80 when you buy online

In Burying the Wren Deryn Rees-Jones returns to familiar preoccupations but with a new clarity and maturity of vision. With intense lyricism she calls on the Roethkean 'small things' of the universe -- truffles, slugs, trilobites, birds, stones, feathers, flowers, eggs -- which, mysterious, and magical as well as ordinary -- she sets up against loss. Her sequence of 'Dogwoman' poems, which draws on the work of artist Paula Rego, is an extended elegy to her late husband, the poet and critic Michael Murphy. Above all these are poems of the body, ...the blue heartstopping pulse at the wrist, which are alive to the world and the transformative qualities of love.

Paperback ISBN:9781854115768