Winter Fans the Flame

This is an unusual novel about one man’s discovery of the philosophy of existence. 

The late 1950s and early 60s is a time of rapid change in society in general, but for Jack Smith, brought up within a privileged background by preoccupied parents, early life consists of books and his own contented company. However, this changes on his arrival at boarding school, where he meets a good friend called Ron, with whom he can share his young ideas about ideology, mankind and the other eternal questions of life. 

Jack’s life remains quietly inward during his early working career, but good fortune and happenstance lead to his marriage, and from this he discovers that he has an unexpected ability to be successful in business. 

Now more confident in character and having a settled lifestyle, Jack joins his childhood friend Ron when on holiday in Ebstowe and is introduced to a remarkable old man named Enoch Flint. Flint’s curious philosophy of life, knowledge about metaphysics and odd disassociation with the mundane world around him, rekindles Jack’s own interest in the question of mortality and all the philosophical texts he had studied earlier in his life. 

It is when Jack loses his father and becomes depressed about life that he feels strongly drawn to return to Ebstowe, and this leads to the amazing revelation that there was something genuinely unusual about Enoch Flint and his life-changing concepts of time and space.

ISBN: 9781852001667 

Size: 217x140mm 

Binding: Hardback 

Length: 120pp

In the late 1930s, at the age of just 16, Julia Hayes knows she wants nothing more than to work on the family’s small hilltop farm in Yorkshire: her idea of heaven.

Although fully aware  of the struggle farming had been to her parents, with her father Ernest already older than his years and her mother Margery subject to heart trouble, she will not be deterred, and with her brother Nick has ideas for making Hayes’ Farm an efficient and profitable business.

However the daunting threat of losing everything due to rent arrears, kept secret by Julia’s father, results in an old flame of her mother’s helping out, and Nick being lured away from farming by business opportunities and romance.

As one crisis leads to another Julia is left to struggle on her own: determined to hold on to Hayes’ Farm despite all the anguish and stress. With the outbreak of war her problems escalate, and she is left with heartache following a brief romantic encounter. But Julia becomes bound into that moment of romance and the outcome is beyond anything she could possibly have imagined.

Compelling to the end, this is the story of a woman’s indomitable ability to overcome all life’s conflicts for the promise of her own piece of heaven on earth.

ISBN: 9781852001438 

Size: 217x140mm 

Binding: hardback 

Length: 216pp

A fast moving story of family, business and true romance. 

In August 1939 Michael Bradson is reluctantly sent into Nazi Germany. He hadn’t wanted to go any more than had the other members of the family business, but the matter is important – a production problem with a machine on order with a German firm, which he is able to help solve.

During his short stay in Germany he unexpectedly falls deeply in love with Erna, the attractive daughter of the German company ’s boss, and as she feels the same for him their parting is heart-rending. More devastating though, is the fact that shortly after Michael ’s return to England, and after exchanging letters with Erna, war is declared, bringing about a hopelessly indefinite separation.

Although this love affair is brief, it has not only a profound and lasting effect on Michael through the war years and after, but to an extent on the lives and loves of the family and on the fortunes of the family business.

But through those shafts of time, could there be anything left in the embers of that brief romance? – for Michael and Erna are destined to meet again.

ISBN: 9781852001216 

Size: 217x140mm 

Binding: hardback 

Length: 294pp

A story of love and passion, laced with humour and intrigue.

Stella Ridgeford is a young woman from Devon who already has a feeling that her life is not quite as she would wish it to be.

About to marry John Fairley, a well-set young man who is a partner in his father's firm of auditors and accountants, the fact is she still yearns for more carefree days when she used to help her own father make, grow and renovate things to sell on local market stalls. Not at all the sort of occupation which would be expected within her present social circle.

A short reprieve from her wedding day comes from an unexpected quarter. Her rich Uncle Willis requests her to go to Yorkshire for two months and look after Jane Reeves, a very close acquaintance of his who lives with her nephew on a farm. This seems ridiculous, except for the fact that he offers, in return, to buy Stella and John their first house.

Finally finding herself at Cragside, a farm in the wilderness on the Pennines, Stella gets on well with Jane but not the nephew, Douglas Grant, who seems exceptionally hostile to her. But thrown together as they are, there dawns an uneasy compromise and a smouldering desire which could either lead to the edge of abandon or be snuffed out forever.

Will Stella's future lie on the rugged Yorkshire farm, or within the safety of a new home and marriage in Devon?

ISBN: 9781852001070 

Size: 217x140mm 

Binding: hardback 

Length: 229pp

In the title story Gwendoline looks set to marry Jeremy on her return to Cornwall; while Keith is disenchanted with his role in the successful London advertising agency for which he is the artist and creative hub. 

However, Keith has always loved Gwendoline and despite a very brusque encounter with her on a return visit to Carbis Bay, the couple are destined to unite in a most unexpected way. 

There is human psychology in this story, as there is in all sixteen stories within this second anthology from Geoff Mallinson. With each story thought-provoking and captivating in the author’s own unique style. 

The rather ambiguous title to the lead story could be attributed to many of the others; because we all have doubts at times – don’t we?

ISBN: 9781852000950

Size: 217x140mm 

Binding: hardback 

Length: 207pp