New Release Books by Martyn Bedford

When an out-of-work actor discovers his bedsit once belonged to an obscure, suicidal painter, he turns his talents to re-creating the ultimate site-specific performance… As a teenage girl drifts from depression into a permanent state of sleep, she becomes the focus of both scientific interest and an unexpected, cult following... Against a backdrop of hooliganism and hostility, an asylum seeker writes letters home assuring his family how welcoming England is... Many of the characters in Martyn Bedford’s stories find themselves at a point of redefinition, trading in their old identity for something new. Whether it is an act of retreat or escape – fantasising about storming out of a thankless job, or just avoiding a bad-tempered husband for a few moments on Christmas day – they each understand the first step in changing a reality, is to reconstruct it. ‘Martyn Bedford is the genuine article, a writer of unmistakable flair and accomplishment.’ - New York Times ‘Haunting and intimate portraits of vividly different lives that get under your skin and stay there.’ - Jeremy Dyson 'Letters Home further establishes Martyn Bedford as a stand-out writer of highly memorable fiction.’ - Jacob Ross

Whatever happened to British protest? For a nation that brought the world Chartism, the Suffragettes, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, and so many other grassroots social movements, Britain rarely celebrates its long, great tradition of people power. In this timely and evocative collection, twenty authors have assembled to re-imagine key moments of British protest, from the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 to the anti-Iraq War demo of 2003. Written in close consultation with historians, sociologists and eyewitnesses – who also contribute afterwords – these stories follow fictional characters caught up in real-life struggles, offering a streetlevel perspective on the noble art of resistance. In the age of fake news and post-truth politics this book fights fiction with (well researched, historically accurate) fiction. Protests include the Peasants Revolt, Poll Tax Riots, Anti-Iraq War Demo and many more...

Two went on the run. One came back. The day Gloria first met Uman Padeem her life changed. He was the new kid in school with a mysterious past, confidence and charisma, but what attracts Gloria most is the way he sees her deep longing to escape her humdrum life. And so they do. When Gloria returns, she sits with her mother facing a detective. Uman has disappeared; they must find him. As she retells their story, Gloria begins to wonder if it was Uman that took her away, or if she had started to disappear much, much earlier . . . With each question, the mystery surrounding Gloria's disappearance deepens.

The relationship between sleep and storytelling is an ancient one. For centuries, sleep has provided writers with a magical ingredient – a passage of time during which great changes miraculously occur, an Orpheus-like voyage through the subconscious daubed with the fantastic. But over the last ten years, our scientific understanding of sleep has been revolutionised. No longer is sleep viewed as a time of simple rest and recuperation. Instead, it is proving to be an intensely dynamic period of brain activity: a vital stage in the re-wiring of memories, the learning of new skills, and the processing of problems and emotions. How will storytelling respond to this new and emerging science of sleep? Here, 14 authors have been invited to work with key scientists to explore various aspects of sleep research: from the possibilities of ‘sleep engineering’ and ‘overnight therapies’, to future-tech ways of harnessing sleep’s problem-solving powers, to the challenges posed by our increasingly 24-hour lifestyles. Just as new hypotheses are being put forward, old hunches are also being confirmed (there’s now a scientific basis for the time-worn advice ‘to sleep on a problem’). As these responses show, sleep and the spinning of stories are still very much entwined. Featuring scientific contributions from: Prof Russell G. Foster, Isabel Hutchison, Dr. Simon Kyle, Dr. Penny Lewis, Dr. Paul Reading, Stephanie Romiszewski, Prof Robert Stickgold, Prof Manuel Schabus, Prof Ed Watkins, Prof Adam Zeman, Dr. Thomas Wehr. This project was supported by the Wellcome Trust.

Computers are changing. Soon the silicon chip will seem like a clunky antique amid the bounty of more exotic processes on offer. Robots are changing too; material evolution and swarm intelligence are creating a new generation of devices that will diverge and disperse into a balanced ecosystem of humans and ‘robjects’ (robotic objects). Somewhere in between, we humans will have to change also… in the way we interact with technology, the roles we adopt in an increasingly ‘intelligent’ environment, and how we interface with each other. The driving motors behind many of these changes will be artificial life (A-Life) and unconventional computing. How exactly they will impact on our world is still an open question. But in the spirit of collective intelligence, this anthology brings together 38 scientists and authors, working in pairs, to imagine what life (and A-Life) will look like in the year 2070. Every kind of technology is imagined: from lie-detection glasses to military swarmbots, brain-interfacing implants to synthetically ‘grown’ skyscrapers, revolution-inciting computer games to synthetically engineered haute cuisine. All artificial life is here. Featuring scientific contributions from: Martyn Amos, J. Mark Bishop, Seth Bullock, Stephen Dunne, James Dyke, Christian Jantzen, Francesco Mondada, James D. O'Shea, Andrew Philippides, Lenka Pitonakova, Steen Rasmussen, Thomas S. Ray, Micah Rosenkind, James Snowdon, Susan Stepney, Germán Terrazas, Andrew Vardy and Alan Winfield. Supported by TRUCE (Training and Research in Unconventional Computation in Europe).

A suspenseful tragedy laced with romance, Never Ending will take you from the past—a steamy vacation in Greece that’s cut short by the unfathomable—to the present—a lake-side clinic stay—to the truth in between. “What do you deserve, Siobhan?” “I don’t deserve to forget he’s dead. Even for a moment.” “I asked what you do deserve, not what you don’t.” “I deserve not to be forgiven." Shiv's brother Declan, her best friend, is dead. It's been all over the news. Consumed by grief and guilt, she agrees to become an inpatient at the Korsakoff Clinic. There she meets Mikey. Caron. The others. They share a similar torment. And there, subjected to the clinic's unconventional therapy, they must face what they can't bear to see. Shiv is flooded with flashbacks, nightmares, haunting visions of Declan on their last, fateful family vacation in Greece. And with memories of Nikos, the beautiful young man on the tour boat. It started there, with him, beside the glittering sea . . . the beginning of the end. “The characters and the scenery are rendered with such photographic precision that readers will feel as though they’re watching a film.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred “Bedford skillfully pushes and pulls at the reader’s emotions while carefully revealing the details of the backstory and the aftermath until the two converge.” —Booklist, Starred “Part-mystery, part-romance, and part-disturbing portrait of how fragile the human psyche can be, this novel is provocative and not for the faint of heart.” —SLJ From the Hardcover edition.

Millgarth Police Station reverberates with the early adrenalin-rush of a case they won't close for years. A teenage boy trails the city centre bars of the eighties in thrall to his hero - a Leeds United football hooligan. A single woman finds her frustrations with men confirmed speed-dating in a city re-invented as a party capital. Bringing together fiction from some of the city's most celebrated writers, The Book of Leeds traces the unique contours that fifty years of social and economic change can impress on a city. These are stories that take place at oblique angles to the larger events in the city's history, or against wider currents that have shaped the social and cultural landscape of today's Leeds: a modern city with both problems and promise.

A coroner reveals a body's tell-tale clues to his students, as he unwittingly dissects his own relationship. . . A breakdown driver turns his roadside routine into a quite different type of pick-up . . . Two creative writing tutors discuss the merits of hardboiled versus cosy schools of crime writing, while a murderous student points out that it's really procedure that counts . . . The second in this series of anthologies from the CWA picks up the primary scent of any investigation: the modus operandi; the signature that identifies any repeat offender, the how that supersedes the why . From the ex-doctor tenderly administering a final prescription to his victims, the party of finishing school debutantes exacting revenge on their lecherous host... these stories demonstrate that, even with the most despicable of crimes, there s methodology in the madness.

What does it mean to have a soul whose will to live knows no limits? This gripping psychological thriller establishes Martyn Bedford as a hot new literary talent for young adults. Friday, December 14th. Fourteen-year-old Alex rushes home that night to beat his curfew. The next morning, he wakes up in an unfamiliar house, in a different part of the country, and it's the middle of June. Six months seem to have disappeared overnight. The family at the breakfast table? Total strangers. And when Alex looks in the mirror, another boy — called Philip, or Flip — stares back. The race against the clock is on, and unless Alex finds out what's happened and how to get back to his own life, he'll be forever trapped in someone else's body and life.

A fugitive turns up at a young widow's door. Finn is a draft dodger. Afraid of dying and opposed to the war, he could see no way out until a stranger slipped him a calling card from an anti-draft network. Now on the run, he has the promise of a new identity and a new life, but if he is caught, the punishment will be brutal. Then he meets Bryher. Thrown together by war, united in grief, they take a chance on one another- a chance that could make or break them.

When Ethan discovers that Chloe Fortune is a dowser and that her acute sixth sense allows her to locate anything she sets her mind on, they seem made for each other. But as they hunt their quarry, they close in on other truths: about themselves, about each other and about obsession itself.

Fletcher 'Red' Brandon is a conjurer, an illusionist, a master of deception who uses his talents to seduce wild, impulsive Irish rose, Rosa, into his life with a simple sleight of hand. But when Rosa is killed, Red is pitched into a new world where betrayal, exploitation and violence are no act. The deeper Red delves into the life and death of the woman with who he shared one sexy, freewheeling year, the closer he comes to a painful realization: even the trickster can be tricked.

Local newspaper reporter, Constance Amory, becomes embroiled in a battle of wits with a saboteur who has daubed blood on the doors of a shopping complex. Through this, her life is heading for a collision course with that of Thomas Amory, a saw grinder who lived 130 years before her.

"Acts of Revision" plunges the reader into the world of Gregory Lynn--a place at once terrifying and irresistible, where fantasy and reality, guilt and innocence blur beyond recognition. Gregory Lynn is thirty-five years old, a bachelor, and an only child from the age of four-and-a-half. Scarred by childhood trauma, he lives a solitary life, sequestered in his London house, drawing cartoon fantasies to pass the days. In his drawings, he has control; by drawing things, he sometimes makes them happen. But the world has a way of creeping in. Gregory's mother dies. And he discovers, in a dusty box in the attic, the long-forgotten school reports whose words are the unending refrain of a man sentenced to failure at an early age. " Must work. Little progress. Disappointing." Gregory Lynn reads, and remembers: teachers and subjects, names and places. The history teacher who humiliated him. The geography teacher who threatened to expel him. The gym teacher who called him donkey. And on and on until, as methodically as a professor laying out a lesson plan, Gregory Lynn prepares for the cold-blooded acts of revision that will even the score with those who make him the way he is--seven deadly subjects in all.