Originally published in 1960, Stan Barstow's debut novel became a cult classic. A tale of love, lust and loneliness, it tells the story of Vic Brown a young working-class Yorkshireman. Vic is attracted to the beautiful but demanding Ingrid. As their relationship grows and changes he comes to terms, the hard way, with adult life and what it really means to love.  Barstow is the originator of lad-lit and laid the groundwork for contemporary writers such as Tony Parsons and Nick Hornby.

Winner of Wales Book of the Year Award 2011

In every atlas there is a country missing from the maps of South America: the Andean nation. For five months John Harrison journeys through this secret country, walking alone into remote villages where he is the first gringo the locals have ever seen, and where life continues as if Columbus had never sailed. He lives at over 10,000 feet for almost the entire trip, following the great road of the Incas: the Camino Real, or Royal Road. Hand-built over 500 years ago, this road crosses the most difficult and dangerous mountains in all the Americas, diving into sweltering canyons and soaring up into the snows. 1500 miles, half of it on foot, take him from the Equator to Cuzco and the most magical city of all: Machu Picchu. He meets locals and discovers some he can trust – and some he can’t. He struggles with dog attacks, floods, losing his way and even a stubborn donkey, but only when he returns home does he lose what he wants most.

It's the 1920s. Airships, Prohibition, Al Capone, talkies, gramophones, the Empire State building: the world across the pond is bursting with excitement and the future is wide open for two small boys at home on their North Wales farm. Eagerly they follow the progress of their father, famous Welsh tenor Jabez Trevor, as he tours North America with the Welsh Imperial Singers.

"the most acutely and intentionally disagreeable book yet seen in English" Westminster Gazette, 1894

“one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the English language” Stephen King, 2008

Wales' greatest master of the macabre and mystical, Arthur Machen was born Arthur Llewelyn Jones in Caerleon, and grew up to become one of the most influential and original writers of his generation.

"Black Parade (1935) is strong because it includes the many-sided turbulence, the incoherence and contradictions, which the more available stereotypes of the history exclude. It can be properly contrasted with Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley (1939), widely and properly seen as the export version of the Welsh industrial experience." Raymond Williams

A murder mystery of romance, railways, recipes and revolution, in the heart of 1960s India.

Joan D’Silva is the finest fish molu cook in Calcutta. She loves the vibrant city, the bustling coffee houses of Chowringhee Road and the dances at the Grand Hotel. But events take a darker turn when her ten-year-old son Errol stumbles upon the dead body of one of Joan’s former students at a picnic on the banks of the Hooghly river.

The contributors to the anthology Shadow Plays are gathered together from Nova Scotia, Delhi, the English Midlands and two Welsh linguistic traditions.

Shadows – A deceitful interplay of the light and the dark, they appear to be darkest in the brightest of light and they leave you alone in the darkest hour. A cultural outlook – a symbolic depiction of the theme “After Dark” by these writers from all over the world.

Isabel Williams (Is for short) is something of a challenge, even for her best friend Robert.

As a new girl at a 1970s comprehensive she seems vulnerable, but she soon starts putting her teachers in their place with her amazing knowledge of science, bridges and the great Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Winner of Wales Book of the Year 2009

This is no ordinary random collection of short stories. Here each brief narrative stands on its own yet forms part of a continuous and powerful sequence.

Set in the eastern valleys of south Wales from 1970 to the present day, it relates the history of Grace and Tamar, their volatile childhood, disruptive coming-of-age and dubious maturity. The book is part novel, part fantasy, part social history. More than anything it tells dark, universal tales about how utterly strange it is to learn to be human.

Readers who know Deborah Kay Davies’ poetry may be better prepared than most for the shock of her debut collection of stories, Grace Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful, by turns moving, hilarious and terrifying, and often all three at once.