Books published by Leopard Publishing Ventures

Is it acceptable to have sex when your husband can't watch? When does neighbourly affection go too far? No matter how charming you are, do you think you can get away with anything? What would you do if you see a monster in the ring? If you are always waiting for the right one, will you wait for ever or sacrifice yourself on the altar of never? Can you keep your dignity when things get out of hand? Is your father always right? Beg, borrow or steal, is it worth it for a deal? When revenge is a dish, is it best served hot or cold? Are you really good at what you do best, or is it time to admit you should be told? - Be wary of those who are led by their stomach… The unexpected, the cruel, the frightening and the absurd, M.T. Sands teases and delights with Ten Naughty Stories that makes us reconsider our human foibles and frailties.

Dreamy tomboy, Laila meets Cyril, a rebellious gnome and passes through a charmed gate into the Wolf Garden. Here, she does battle with the shape-shifter Smarm and his army of wolves. When Smarm captures her gnome friends and steals the magic strawbs, Laila and Cyril help the Mistress Dido win them back.A Cautionary NoteWhen you enter the Garden, inevitably, and perhaps none too surprisingly, you will find that you leave something behind. When you are in the Garden, you may find - to your surprise or indeed unwittingly - something different. That something different you may take out of the Garden if you so please. Some people may be lost in the Garden. And yet some people may find themselves in the Garden. Others may leave the Garden and never come back. Not all people will remember the Garden. Although if they do, they may find they will be curiously, indeed remarkably enriched by having visited it.From Mr. Whizz's Notebook: Concerning the Garden, a thing rarum.***It was a matter of some urgency; a wolf was loose in the woods. And being loose in the woods, he could get into the garden."Whatever you do," said Dad. "Don't go out the gate. You don't want the wolf to eat you.""By the way," said Mum, "don't forget to take your apple."She went out the door, but the wolf was already in the garden.She turned tail and ran."I must reach the Beech House," she told herself. "It won't get me in the Beech House."The wolf snapped at her heels as she scampered up the tree and onto the platform of the Beech House.After a while, the wolf went away. She climbed down from the tree and ran back towards the house, but the wolf was waiting for her."There you are!" he cried. "I was wondering where you got to.""What are you doing here?" she said. "This is my garden.""It may be your garden," said the wolf. "But once I turn you, you'll be in my garden."

"We survive in the confusion of a life reborn beyond reason." - Pier Paolo PasoliniWhat reasons can there be beyond the reasons of love? Now married to successful businessman, Achille Lombardo, Julia appears to have it all until her she embarks on an ill-fated affair with Arturo, and her ex-pat adventure morphs into the crime of passion.Crime Passionnel in Southern ItalyThe second part of the Mezzogiorno Trilogy, Accidental Death of a Terrorist tells the story of Julia and Arturo's forbidden affair as it becomes entwined with the fate of Marco, a naïve Arab medical student they have befriended. Told as a series of flashbacks and vignettes, the novel opens up the shutter on the hidden world of passion and deceit that lurks in the sleepy towns of Southern Italy, and begs the question: can love triumph over circumstance?EXTRACTAn Interview with the author of the Mezzogiorno TrilogyYoung and love in Southern ItalySP: Where is your bowler hat and your Union Jack? they used to say, tongue in cheek Do you like the Beatles? - Can you sing us one of their songs? Badly I said. And there I was quite naked. Without a bowler hat or a Union Jack, and very often with my feebly remembered Beatles lyrics. I would be listening to their songs and their music. And sometimes I didn't get it. Sometimes they didn't get me. And often, because I was burning my arse off on a beach, or in some cove that may or may not have been the place where Aeneas landed when he fled Troy, it really didn't matter, because I was young and in love.The Half DaysSP: I suppose my life was not unlike that of Julia in the book. I was, like her, a language teacher. I did that job for a long time, nearly twenty years. And there is also that undercurrent. I think the feeling that it is described in the books - of being an outsider with some extra knowledge. Like Julia, I could speak Italian pretty well. And I began to get all sorts of cultural things that you can only get if you live in a country for a long time. I could laugh at the impressions of Maurizio Crozza (a kind of Rory Bremner). I could mumble some of the lyrics to Pino Daniele and get all sentimental about Neapolitan love songs. I knew the difference between pasta ascuita as my father-in-law used to call the dry pasta you got in packages and the pasta your mamma rolled out and pinched into little ears that became orrechiette. And yet there was always a part of me that was different. There had been a whole life elsewhere. In London! England! (Laughs) That difference marked me. Not in a bad way. But it gave me a different way of looking at things. That is what I realised when I wrote the first book, The Half Days. I had caught the feel of the south, not as they saw it, but as I saw it - in my position of half-way house. Not as an Italian nor as an Englishman in a bowler hat. That something in between. I suppose it reflected the strangeness of my position.Accidental Death of a TerroristSP: What about the second book, Accidental you ask? That's easy. That was characterised by a particular feeling, that feeling of being on the edge of the known world, and realising one might, like some flat earther, fall off. Sedley Proctor Speaking to M.T. Sands, author of Ten Naughty Stories Sedley is currently working on the third part of the Mezzogiorno Trilogy, Man from the South, which takes up with the story of Julia's ex-husband, Achille Lombardo.

Is it acceptable to run out a team-mate? Should you bet on your Captain's downfall? Would you tamper with a cricket ball to gain an edge? Do you think girls can bat, or would you send down your fastest ball? Have you ever dreamed of hitting the winning run only to have your bails removed and your stumps flattened? Are you a pie chucker, or a natural tail-ender? Are you superstitious? Do you believe in the power of a mystical bat, or essential piece of kit? What would you do if a cricket ball kept landing in your greenhouse? Or someone messed with your box?MT Sands teases and delights with Ten Naughty Cricket Stories that echo with summer laughter and the sound of leather on willow. WHY READ THIS BOOKMe and my Pommie mate, Beef wanted to say a few words about cricket. First off, even if you do not know anything about cricket, we think you should read this book because it tells you about life. To coin a phrase cricket is about life, and life is exactly like the cricket, innit. Secondly, Mary Sands writes like she plays cricket. She has all the best shots. She can hit you for six, or stroke you for four. Not only does she write funnily and well about the cricket, but she gives it all a wicked spin of her own. Finally, there is something magic about a cricket field whether it is a dusty strip in the African veldt, an Indian gulley or Jamaican Beach, the finest lawns of Melbourne or the lovingly trimmed squares of the English shires. We hope these stories will tell something about the magic and the love so many of us feel for this special game.GO WELL,Lance and Beef

"Philippi's Crawley (from C M Printing Services, 20a Jewry Street, Winchester, £1) by I T Henderson is a history of that village - four and a half miles from Winchester - largely in relation to Otto Ernst Philippi, the man who, by 1900, had built the Glasgow firm of J & P Coats (now Coats Patons) into Britain's largest industrial concern. In that year he announced his retirement, bought Crawley Court, a Victorian building which, like the rest of the village, had become almost derelict, and announced his intention to settle there. His fellow directors held his business ability in such respect that they persuaded him to continue to control the company - even from Crawley. He consented to do so: but would go to Glasgow only for the monthly board meetings; and, since he would not have a telephone in the house, he managed the firm by letter and telegram. Indeed, his directions were so constant that one boy had to be employed full time at the village Post Office to maintain the two-way flow. He also found time to reshape Crawley. Born in Prussia, he was a stern, if basically benevolent, despot. He set out to buy most of the houses and cottages in the village, hoping, and often stipulating, that the occupiers who sold to him would continue to live in them for the rest of their lives. So he succeeded in turning the formerly dilapidated into a 'model village' - though one which was described as 'the appearance of a model village almost devoid of a single striking corner or nook, which is neat and seems clean, but none of it is the object of an artist's pilgrimage.' After his death in 1917 his son vested a restricted covenant in the estate s that subsequent residents in the village were able to resist commercial 'development' until, in 1970, the Independent Broadcasting Authority bought the manor, demolished it, built a modern office block on the site and moved into what they described as 'the Queen of Hampshire Villages'. John Arlott, writer, broadcaster and voice of English cricket, writing in Hampshire, The County Magazine, September 1977, Vol.17, No. 11

"As homely as a cottage, but with a garden worthy of a manor." Sir Frederick Treves, great Victorian surgeon and former pupil of William Barnes. Built in the cottage orné style from a plan by the Regency architect John Nash (1752-1835), Old Came Rectory is the historic home of the poet philologist, William Barnes (1801-1886), Thomas Hardy's mentor. Amid gatherings of poets, writers and historical figures, how many discussions around the fire of this homely home have gone on to shape the world we know today?

The Half Days is a collection of comic, tragic and absurd stories about life in Apulia, Southern Italy. Set in the 1990s and early 2000s, the stories shed light on the sundry lives of ex-pat teachers, Patrick and Julia, African street sellers, Cofi and Daniel, theatre impresario, Tony Di Curtis and his long suffering assistant, Katarina. The Half Days is the perfect companion for the short haul flight to Bari and the sunny white towns of the Valle D'Itria, Lecce and the blue seas of the Salento.