Books published by Cinnamon Press

I¿m doing something I¿ve never done before. I¿m hanging upside down in a circus hoop suspended from the beams of a redundant church in Sheffield. I¿m not very far from the floor, but the way I feel I may as well be. What am I scared of? Fear just is. It¿s there in the muscle memory¿ Now, knees gripping the metal hoop I let go with my hands and see the world upside down.Upside Down in a Hoop is memoir about loss and letting go. What is it that keeps us going through the tough times? The joy of dancing as a child? The adventures we dare to take as adults? Through fear and holding on, to freedom.

With bugs in her skin and noise in her head, Riz is real and the rest are fake. What matters to her: Mark Rothko's art. So despite the horror of family time, it's a fine thing that a major Rothko show coincides with the global conference where her so-called Dad is such a big wheel. Holed up with VIPs at a heavily guarded hotel, Riz collides with a sharp-dressed assassin she calls The Man. As she plunges into a world of covert deals and power plays, Riz is befriended and betrayed by Russian and Syrian agents. And emotionally bruised by the leader of a violent anti-capitalist group in town to protest the conference. Told in Riz's breathless, insistent voice, the edgy friendship between the isolated teen and the travelling killer drives a thrill-ride through riot-torn London.

Thrust into a hostile world, and unable to comprehend the language, Heike, an immigrant and ¿enemy¿ child, struggles to understand the English islanders as she adjusts to the new identity demanded of her. Intent on escaping the traumas of growing up in fascist Germany and the horrors of its post-war desolation, Heike¿s mother will marry the charismatic English officer she met during the Allied occupation of Lüneburg. Her daughter, who will be known as ¿Susannä from now on, must be kept innocent of her mother¿s past and grow up to be English. As this memoir of displacement, national character, and misunderstandings unfolds, S M Saunders becomes the detective in her own story, searching for the truth that will reconcile her double identity and conflicting emotions. But this is far from a misery memoir. This is a tale of love¿the narrator¿s intense love for the extraordinary and eccentric English people whose positive influences not only shaped her and her mother, but also lent her the strength to come to terms with both her own identity and with her mother¿s complex, harrowing story. Susanna: the Making of an English Girl explores a childhood that is sad, beautiful, funny, rich in detail and marked, above all, by love.

A Little Switch sees Max Falkland on a new mission, this time posing as a maid of honour at the Queen¿s coronation. Out of her comfort zone with an assignment that reminds her she is the daughter of a viscount, and out of her depth with the silent men in her life, she takes refuge in an archeological expedition, but a chance meeting leads to a trip that will force Max to face the most frightening moments of her career while trying to protect those she loves. The final novel in this Cold War spy trilogy comes to an exciting conclusion to Max Falkland novels following on from Cold Crash and A Running Lie.

In the initial sequence of this pamphlet, and following short lyrics, the writer explores the experience of living with long-term, and severe mental states. There is no safe haven of medical ¿pathology¿ here, but an urgent rite of passage for the damaged and conflicted soul. A form of modern Purgatory¿escaping the grasping jaws of Inferno, to find itself stumbling towards a rarefied, yet earthy, Paradiso.Ian Marriott¿s marvellous poems inhabit rather than observe nature ¿ in fact they do both ¿ but are as much concerned with the human condition. They work in the area of what Hopkins called instress. The voice is calm, contained and precise, as when he watches a Pond Skater, ¿So perilous / this thin meniscus ¿ / six legs spread out¿. The poems too seem to tremble on the water of their vision.¿ George Szirtes

The manifestations and properties of water are excitingly explored in Edward Ragg¿s new collection. Here are living poems where narrative and lyric work together to contemplate the energies implicit in water. The intriguing emphases laid upon the meanings of the word ¿present¿ give a unique edge to the poems. Glass, tears, ice, rivers, wine, salinity, tides: all these elements are woven into the texture of this collection, where the illuminations and fluidities of language are beautifully captured.¿ Penelope Shuttle

Lynn Valentine is a distinctive new voice in Scottish poetry. With hints of fairytale and gothic, she writes precise and poignant poems embracing what is often overlooked or peripheral ¿ a father who drives the snowplough, a childless woman seeking consolation from a Sheela-na-gig. This collection is alive with horses, crows, deer, and as the title suggests, bees; all points north. ¿ Jay Whittaker Enhanced by her apt and confident use of Scots, which glimmers like gold leaf throughout, Lynn Valentine¿s poems weave the ethereal with the everyday, and reveal to us a glimpse of the natural and unnatural world we stride and stumble through. From council workers to prophetic aunts, Mills and Boon to the winter solstice, the poems here are full of making do and doing without, of childhood and childlessness, of the grief of loss and the grief of absence. This is a special collection, and a wonderful debut. ¿ Aoife Lyall Lynn Valentine is a fearless writer who tackles the great unspeakables head-on ¿ bereavement, loss, childlessness, exile; and yet it¿s not death that prevails in these poems, but rather the sovereignty of life and, with all its gifts and with all its heartbreaks, the obstinate beauty of the living world.¿ John Glenday

Justin, a popular Leeds professor, seeks redemption in the ashes of youthful idealism. Holding together his family is already a struggle as his son, Sanjay, is drawn into radical politics by his lover Farida, who joins a Kurdish Women's militia to fight ISIS. With nerves already frayed, Justin's wife, Harpreet, is devastated when revelations of his past as an urban bomber come to light, turning his life upside down. Can love and loyalty prevent this family from imploding? Jane Austin's second novel, Renegade is a compelling story of 70s rebellion, revolution in Rojava and a family in a tailspin; a tale that touches the beating heart of our times.

Ecologically aware, gripping and mesmeric new collection from 'the godmother of prose poetry'.

Exquisite and honed collection that finds the extraordinary in ordinary life.

When artist, Eve, leaves London to live alone where no one knows her in small-town Shipden on the north Norfolk coast, little does she suspect that the next eighteen months will change everything. As she writes to and receives emails from her travelling daughter, Jez, Eve's story unfolds, filtered through her particular perspective, while around her, in the old house converted to flats, strange characters inhabit her new life. People like Hester, the eccentric widow of a once well-known journalist and Amos, a troubled man searching for a wife. But the quiet life is not what it seems. Eve's relationship with a local poet, Choker is disturbed when Leo, an actor from her past, finds her. When ex-military-man, Knox, moves in to the house as others leave, her new sense of home is under question. And even in this secluded place, there are those who know more about Eve than she knows herself, like the two old Russian sculptors who can tell her about her unknown father. Inhabiting this fragile borderline, will Eve be able to make a new life fostering unwanted and troubled children? Will hope win the day in this story of secrets, death, grief, and the bonds that tie mother and daughter? A compelling debut novel from poet and artist, Jenny Morris.

Vivid and absorbing exploration of the phenomenon of Shabtai Zvi of Smyrna

Passionate and varied poetry collection that digs beneath the surface of experience in search of the authentic.

Deeply felt, observational poetry that delves into everyday experience as a way of understanding deeper questions.

Poetry pamphlet from the author of the acclaimed nature diary, Marram.

1900s London. For Patrick Bowley, fresh from rural Galway, a place of mind-expanding encounters with mystics, suffragettes, theosophists and free-thinkers. Drawn into the world of such luminaries as Jiddu Krishnamurti, Annie Besant and W B Yeats, it seems that Patrick is on a quest for meaning that will bear fruit. But a bruising failure in romance leaves him disillusioned with London and its class divisions and, in spiritual crisis, he flees to the familiarity of rural Ireland. But Patrick finds no peace and as Europe slides towards war and Ireland towards rebellion, his longing to shut out the world is challenged by a vocation to preach peace in Ireland that will not be quieted. And so he begins an epic pilgrimage to Dublin, arriving days before the 1916 Easter Rising. It is here that Patrick's journey reaches a gripping climax - one that finally reveals the true nature of the 'pathless country'. Winner of the J G Farrell Award and an Irish Writers' Centre Novel Fair Award, James Harpur's debut novel deftly weaves a story of spiritual awakening with fin de siecle alternative thought, love and political history, exploring how conscience and spiritual quest survive in an atmosphere of war, sectarianism and class hierarchy.

An all-in-old guide to writing utopian fiction.

2121: Wading through a drowned fenland, Jean is searching for a lost village and a hillside church that appears only in dim memories of the world before it was engulfed by rising sea levels, deserts and floods. She is looking for a time capsule buried over 160 years ago, a symbol of hope for a different future.1958: Coming of age in a drab and exhausted post-War London, Ida finds herself questioning the assumptions of her mother and her Uncle Roy. Wanting more from life, she is drawn into circles of political activism, jazz clubs, and life lived on the margins of conformist society - places where there are as many questions as there are possible answers. Separated by decades and a planet turned upside down by climate shifts, the lives of these two women begin to draw together. As Jean closes in on the location of the time capsule and Ida prepares to take part in the first Ban the Bomb march to the nuclear weapons research centre at Aldermaston, their fates dramatically collide.

In a near-future world without privacy or freedom, life is unravelling for Luke, a teenager whose questions and individuality have no place in surveilled society. A virtual encounter with a girl who claims to live beyond the all-controlling grip of E-Government sets him on a quest not only for answers, but for escape. But is Alys real? Why are there echoes of her world in his father, Nazir Malik¿s home, especially since Nazir is a celebrity artist trusted by E-Government? And what role can characters from Celtic Arthurian legend possibly play in saving the future? Most urgently, can Luke overcome the threats that surround him and find the Standing Ground?"A wonderful novel¿ a fresh rendition of the future that draws on technologies that are currently emerging¿ and on Arthurian legend¿ akin to Philip Pullman¿s street-smart, other-worldly creations, complete with convincing, humorous and likeable characters¿ a gripping read."Anna Kiernan

In this prequel to The Standing Ground, we travel back two generations to the origins of the oppressive E-Government state that infiltrates every aspect of people¿s lives in the decade following Brexit and a global pandemic. But, as the darkness overtakes Britain and other areas of Europe, the light of resistance wakes in a community that spans the Celtic outposts of Brittany and North Wales. And in a strange child, Myrddin Emrys, also known as Merlin.Weaving together Arthurian legend and exploratory fiction of the near future, The Roots of the Ground explores the human cost of a monoculture that tramples freedom and privacy and asserts with Carl Jung that:'As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.'

The much anticipated new collection from essayist, poet and blues musician John Barnie.

The latest collection from this well-respected Irish poet finds bitter-sweet joys in even the darkest times.

Follow up poetry collection to Nigel Hutchinson's warmly received debut, The Humble Family Interviews.

Poetry inspired by paintings from Welsh artists from 18th Century onwards.

An inventive, honest and distinctive debut collection, filled with humour and yet sometimes unsettling in the directness of its gaze.