Books published by Oldcastle Books Ltd

Having conquered the world's taste buds and established itself as a staple in our daily lives, coffee has mirrored the moods and movements of society for centuries - yet, how much do we know about its history? A Short History of Coffee lifts the lid on the business of coffee, as well as the pleasures that it brings its...

The Art of Wandering is a history of that curious hybrid, the writer as walker. From the Ancient world to the modern day, the role of the walker continues to evolve, from philosopher and pilgrim, vagrant and visionary, to experimentalist and radical. Newly revised and updated edition. ...

Rural West Cork, Ireland, mid-1970's. Two Kids and their struggling, poet father are battling grief and poverty. A glimmer of hope in far away Dublin leads to a road trip of contradictions - dreams and nightmares, promises and disappointments, generosity and meanness, unconditional love and shocking neglect....

People commit treason for many reasons - some seek adventure, some seek reward, some are motivated by political philosophy, while others are sucked into it by their own foolishness. British Traitors provides a fascinating look at the lives and impulses of those who chose to betray their country.

Georges Simenon was the most successful writer of crime fiction in a language other than English in the modern age, and his detective Maigret is rivalled only by Sherlock Holmes; Andre Gide called Simenon 'the greatest French novelist of our times'. Barry Forshaw examines the man's extraordinary life and work on both page and screen....

Throughout history, disease has plagued human civilisations, claiming more lives than natural disasters and warfare combined. In the fourteenth century, the Black Death was responsible for taking the lives of one third of Europe's population. In the modern day, physicians, scientists and historians continue to be challenged by new and...

In this intimate memoir charting his own personal experience of coming to terms with prostate cancer, Graham Sharpe brings humour and a light touch to a serious subject. Combating the shortage of reading material written by anyone with direct personal experience of the disease, this book seeks to educate, raise awareness and dispel...

Few fictional characters have proven to be as enduringly popular as the legendary Count Dracula. In Dracula: The Origins and Influence of the Legendary Vampire Count, author Giles Morgan examines the roots of the vampire myth and the creation of Bram Stoker's masterpiece of horror....

1922 was a year of great turbulence and upheaval. Its events reverberated throughout the rest of the twentieth century and still affect us today, 100 years later. In a sequence of vividly written sketches, Nick Rennison conjures up all the drama and diversity of an extraordinary year....

Sean Martin considers the whole of Tarkovsky's work, from the student film The Steamroller and the Violin to the later stage works, writings, paintings and photographs. Martin also seeks to demystify Tarkovsky as a 'difficult' director and make a case for him as an artist who speaks directly about the most important spiritual issues of our time.

'This debt was not contracted as the price of bread or wine or arms. It was the price of liberty' - Alexander Hamilton Kiah Harmon, a young Virginia lawyer, is just emerging from the most traumatic time of her life when actress Sam van Eyck walks into her office, unannounced, with the case of a lifetime. She asks Kiah...

Shanghai in 1935 is a 20th century Babylon where fortunes are made and lost. Into this cultural melting pot, Rowland Sinclair arrives from Sydney to represent his brother at international wool negotiations. The black sheep of the family, Rowland is under strict instructions to commit to nothing - but a brutal murder makes that...

A Communist agent is murdered on the steps of Parliament House and Rowland finds himself drawn into a dangerous world of politics and assassination. Once again, he stands against the unthinkable with an artist, a poet and brazen sculptress by his side......

When Rowland Sinclair is invited to take his yellow Mercedes onto the Marouba Speedway, popularly known as the Killer Track, he agrees without caution or reserve. But then people start to die......

**NOW A BBC2 DOCUMENTARY: A KILLING IN TIGER BAY** A NOTORIOUS MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE AND THE UK'S BIGGEST-EVER POLICE CORRUPTION TRIAL Bloody Valentine is the story of the murder of a young woman called Lynette White in the Cardiff docklands (aka Tiger Bay) on Valentine's Day 1988....

What happened to UK cinema and TV when swinging London ended? Looking for a New England covers the period 1975 to 1986, from Slade in Flame to Absolute Beginners. A carefully researched exploration of transgressive films, the career of David Bowie, dystopias, the Joan Collins ouevre, black cinema, the origins...

Ghosts and spectres, the eerie and the occult. Why is contemporary culture so preoccupied by the supernatural, so captivated by the revenants of an earlier age, so haunted? The concept of Hauntology has evolved since first emerging in the 1990s, and has now entered the cultural mainstream as a shorthand for our new-found obsession with...

Australian and New Zealand crime and thriller writing - collectively referred to as Southern Cross Crime - is booming globally, with antipodean authors regularly featuring on awards and bestseller lists, such as Eleanor Catton's Booker Prize winning The Luminaries and Jane Harper's big commercial hit, The Dry, winner...

A newly-discovered gun casts light on a family secret long kept... a murder the Sinclairs would prefer stayed unsolved. As old wounds tear open, the dogged loyalty of Rowland's inappropriate companions is all that stands between him and the consequences of a brutal murder... one he simply failed to mention...

After narrowly escaping the terror of Nazi Germany, Rowland Sinclair and his companions land in London, believing they are safe. But they are wrong. A bizzare murder plunges the hapless Australian into a queer world of British aristocracy, Fascist Blackshirts, illicit love, scandal and spies......

Hollywood. Netflix. Amazon. BBC. Producers and audiences are hungrier than ever for stories, and a lot of those stories begin life as a book - but how exactly do you transfer a story from the page to the screen? Do adaptations use the same creative gears as original screenplays? Does a true story give a project more weight than a...

The Korean War of 1950-1953 ended in a frustrating stalemate, the echoes of which reverberate to this day. It was the only conflict of the Cold War in which forces of major nations of the two opposing systems - capitalism and communism - confronted each other on the battlefield. And yet, in the sixty years since it was fought it has...