Five Leaves is a small publisher based in Nottingham, publishing 15 or so books a year. Our roots are radical and literary. These days our main areas of interest are fiction and poetry, social history, Jewish secular culture, with side orders of Romani, young adult, Catalan and crime fiction titles. You can find our latest and forthcoming books below, backlist section by section, and order books through a secure site run by Inpress. Our books are also available from bookshops and internet sites including The Book Depository and Amazon. If in London, you will find most of our books in stock at Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, five minutes from Kings Cross.
The first independent bookshop in Nottingham since 2000, Five Leaves Bookshop opened in Central Nottingham on 9th November 2013. Please visit www.fiveleavesbookshop.co.uk for more information.
More than twenty Five Leaves titles are now available as ebooks. A selection of the most recent are shown below, and the complete list can be found in the ebook section.
Several other new ebook titles available in our new eBooks section.
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Five Leaves independent publishing blog also online at:
www.fiveleavespublications.blogspot.com
Most of our books are commissioned and our publishing programme is in place for some years ahead. Please don’t send any unsolicited submissions by post or email as our list is full. Sorry.
Welcome To Five Leaves Publications
Latest Publications:
East of Aleppo Bread, Bombs and Video Clips
by ISBN: 978-1910170465, 36 pages
£5
Available, post free, from Five Leaves Bookshop
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This true story is based on an incident that wasn’t reported by our corporate media. When Daesh roll into a Syrian village east of Aleppo with truckloads of flour from US-AID and take over their bakery without a shot being fired, the locals are naturally concerned about what might follow.
Men from the village currently with rebel forces fighting in the city are called home by their cousins, recent deserters from Assad’s army, to liberate the facility. But they need arms. They have a sponsor in Saudi Arabia, but do they buy from Eastern European gunrunners or climb into bed with U.K. and American forces?
Meanwhile, the eyes in the sky operating from Nevada, Lincolnshire and somewhere in the Middle East are confused about just who is on the ground and where. When the attack finally comes, it is swift, devastating and symptomatic of the dense fog of that particular war.
is a political cartoonist, Hon. Assoc. Professor of Comics at the University of Nottingham and founder of Nottingham Does Comics. His work has consistently appeared in the alternative press in the UK, US and Europe, in publications by NGOs and trade unions, and in outdoor leisure magazines. He is the creator of the graphic novels Depresso and The Curious Case of Leonardo’s Bicycle, and was co-editor of and contributor to the double Eisner Award nominated To End All Wars.
As John Stuart Clark, he has contributed hundreds of articles to adventure magazines and written two prose travel books, several short stories and a radio play. He is a regular at book and comics festivals around the UK.
Mad John’s Walk byISBN: 978-1910170410, 16 pages
£4 Click here to buy via inpress online storeAvailable, post free, from Five Leaves Bookshop
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In the autumn of 2016, poet John Gallas decided to follow the route taken by John Clare when he escaped from Matthew Allen’s High Beach Asylum in Epping Forest and made his way back to his home in Northborough. This pamphlet is a light-hearted account of that eightymile journey in which Gallas reflects on the similarities and differences between Clare’s world and today. A new poem for each day of the walk is included.
is a New Zealand poet who was recently made Fellow of the English Association, and was the 2016 poet-inresidence at the St Magnus Festival, Orkney. He has published eleven books of poetry with Carcanet and several collections with other presses..
Street Haunting: A London AdventureBulwell & A Name Loosely Attached
byISBN: 978-1910170427, 24 pages
£4 Click here to buy via inpress online storeAvailable, post free, from Five Leaves Bookshop
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‘Street Haunting’ describes “...the greatest pleasure of town life in winter – rambling the streets of London.” A cascade of brief impressions encapsulates the people and places Woolf visited on her frequent walks through the capital, and gives an enchanting picture of London in the 1920s.
Stanley Middleton’s equally evocative yet very different pieces describe the suburb of Bulwell as it was in his youth. Although part of Nottingham, Bulwell and its people have always maintained a distinct identity, which is captured in his essay, ‘Bulwell’, and poem, ‘A Name Loosely Attached’.
, one of the foremost modernists of the 20th century, was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group. Her novels include Mrs Dalloway and To The Lighthouse.
was a Nottingham-based author who published 44 novels. His novel Holiday won the 1974 Booker Prize, and he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1998.
Isaac and Iby ISBN: 978-1910170434, 276 pages
£11.99
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Isaac and I: A Life in Poetry Chris Searle Isaac and I is the autobiography of Chris Searle, who braces his own story with the life of his greatest influence, East London poet Isaac Rosenberg. The book tells of East London during the 1970s through the poetry of many of its people, in the spirit of their great predecessors such as Blake and Rosenberg. It is a praisesong to the poetical spirit and talent of people born in ordinary circumstances who, like Rosenberg, through their words create a militant and compassionate beauty from the most unpromising of settings.
"At his best Searle's compassion, anger and sense of historical morality as a storyteller are reminiscent of the early Gorki. I can see no other writer in Britain with whom to compare him." John Berger
began his life of teaching in the Caribbean. He returned to work in Stepney, East London, on the very street where Rosenberg had lived. In 1971 Searle was dismissed when he published a book of his students' poems, Stepney Words, in defiance of the school governing body. The resulting schoolchildren's strikes and protests, including a march to Trafalgar Square, made national headlines and propelled children's poetry into the curriculum of many schools in London and beyond. After a two-year battle the dismissal was overturned. During that time he set up a community publishing initiative and a long- lasting inter-generational poetry project in Cable Street.
Searle writes on cricket, language, jazz, race and social justice. The Forsaken Lover: White Words and Black People won the Martin Luther King Prize. He has been associated with the Institute of Race Relations since the 1970s and writes a weekly column on jazz for the Morning Star.
Downshiftingby ISBN: 978-1910170328, 64 pages
£8.99
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Downshifting celebrates places where the nourishing values of literature survive; places where the technological revolution and celebrity culture fails to intrude upon enduring and deeply felt human values. Though by no means a reactionary tract for the time, it is not afraid to mourn the loss of value and meaning, to lyricise the enduring, to turn away from the default modern poses of irony and fatalism. It also contains several meditations on the writer's childhood, assenting to Auden's dictum on the key shaping of the adult by the things to which one's love is firstly and voluntarily drawn. Above all, Downshifting seeks to sing all its tunes with a light touch, to eschew the po-faced, the solemn, the overwrought and obscure.
has two previous collections from Five Leaves Publications – Contains Mild Peril (2008) and Bed Time Reading (2011). He teaches in the Creative Writing Departments of Derby and Nottingham Universities.
Staring Directly at the Eclipseby ISBN: 978-1910170403, 76 pages
£9.99 Click here to buy via inpress online store
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Better known as co-writer of award- winning TV and film shows such as The Royle Family, The Mrs Merton Show and Coogan’s Run, and producer of, amongst others, Oscar- nominated Philomena, Gavin and Stacey, Moone Boy and Alan Partridge, Henry Normal returns to his first love: poetry.
Staring Directly at the Eclipse is his first collection of poetry for over twenty years. It features poems from his acclaimed BBC Radio 4 program A Normal Family, together with new and selected poetry from his performance work.
As well as his trademark humour, the collection encompasses the subjects of death, loneliness, loss, human frailty and other classic conversation stoppers.
John Clare: The Trespasserby ISBN: 978-1910170298, 90 pages
£6.99 Click here to buy via inpress online store
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John Clare was reputedly a solitary, shy man, at one with nature and the world around him. Although these authors have both published books which indicate otherwise, in this volume they focus on Clare as a difficult and transgressive figure. While he documented and celebrated the country life he valued so highly, he was also a witness to the partial destruction of that life, with the coming of enclosure and increasingly severe penalties for trespass.
John Clare: The Trespasser shows how, in his poetry, autobiography and letters, Clare was no supporter or respecter of property rights, and how he admired and learned from the nomadic gypsies and drovers who loved the land as he did..
has recently retired as Professor of English at Nottingham Trent University. He recently published John Clare and Community. He has written extensively on 18th and 19th century poetry and labouring-class poets, including John Clare, Robert Bloomfield and Thomas Chatterton. R.K.R. Thornton, formerly Professor of English and Head of Department first at Newcastle upon Tyne and then at the University of Birmingham, retired in 2000. He has edited and written on John Clare, Ivor Gurney, Gerard Manley Hopkins and the English 1890s.
Over Land, Over SeaPoems for those seeking refuge
Eds. Kathleen Bell, Emma Lee and Siobhan Logan ISBN: 978-1910170281, 142 pages
£9.99 Click here to buy via inpress online store
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An anthology of 102 poems expressing solidarity with the refugees who are currently receiving so little welcome as they take to boats and rafts to cross the Mediterranean and make their way with difficulty through Europe. Readers are invited to take a view of the situation which is not governed by the fear and hatred whipped up by the language of media and many politicians.
The book has been produced in the East Midlands by an editorial committee, typesetter and publisher working free of charge, and the initial print costs were covered by a crowdfunding campaign. All proceeds from sales of the book will be shared between the charities: Médecins Sans Frontières, Leicester City of Sanctuary and Nottingham Refugee Forum.
Contributors include: , , , , ,, , , , , , , , ,, , , , , , and
pamphlet at the memory exchange was shortlisted for the Saboteur awards. She teaches Creative Writing at De Montfort University. has published three poetry collections: Ghosts in the Desert, Mimicking a Snowdrop and Yellow Torchlight and the Blues. She reviews for The Journal, Sabotage Reviews and London Grip. Firebridge to Skyshore and Mad, Hopeless and Possible have been performed at the Science Museum and Leicester’s National Space Centre. In 2014 she led Writing East Midlands' first-ever digital writing residency
Forthcoming Titles:
Charlie PeaceHis amazing life and astounding legend
by ISBN: 978-1910170304, 300 pages
£14.99 Available June 2017
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Charlie Peace – His Amazing Life and Astounding Legend charts the evolution of a Victorian master burglar and murderer from truth to myth. The book begins with the way his crimes were reported in The Illustrated Police News before examining the growth of the legend in Penny Dreadfuls and ballads, before this criminal was uniquely transformed into a folk hero in popular theatre, waxwork shows, early cinema, music hall song and even comics.
The book will appeal to anyone interested in True Crime, 19th century literature, theatre and film history and popular culture. It contains kaleidoscopic extracts from rare and neglected sources and is heavily illustrated throughout.
is a Nottingham-born playwright and scriptwriter. He is best known for his television docudrama scripts, including Shipman, Why Lockerbie and Shoot to Kill, and for writing the feature film Fellow Traveller (1989), which won best screenplay in the British Film Awards. In recent years, he has become known for stage plays (including a play about Charlie Peace in 2013) and his radio dramas for the BBC
Curious Golders Greenby ISBN: 978-1910170311, 106 pages
£9.95 Available September 2017
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At the dawn of the twentieth century, Golders Green was not much more than a crossroads surrounded by fields. Then the Northern Line arrived in 1907, and everything changed. An idyllic suburb quickly emerged, drawing thousands to its clean air and smart new homes.
Fast-forward a hundred years or so – today Golders Green is a bustling transportation hub, and well-known for its reputation as a significant place of settlement for Jewish Londoners. But it’s also a landscape filled with remarkable stories. Take a tour with Alan Dein as he visits some thirty buildings to unearth many previously untold tales about rock ‘n’ roll, religious orthodoxy and secularism, fishmongers and thespians, ballerinas and Olympians, haunted pubs and modernist buildings and even Golders Green’s very own slum...
is an oral historian and radio broadcaster. He has presented documentary features for BBC Radio for over twenty years, and he has received major radio awards including the Prix Italia and the US Third Coast. He’s a long-standing committee member of the Oral History Society. Alan’s late grandparents were all Jewish East Enders who’d moved to Golders Green – and they never quite understood why he’d decided to head eastwards back to his roots. But they’d be pleased to know that he’s now returned to live in Golders Green...
Exploring Nottinghamshire Writersby ISBN: 978-1910170366, 200 pages
£12.99 Available October 2017
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Exploring Nottinghamshire Writers is a guide-book to the literary landscape of the region – three centuries and more of writers and the places that inspired them. This limited-edition case-bound book celebrates not only the obvious giants like Byron, Lawrence and Sillitoe, but dozens of others who were best-sellers in their day (Muriel Hine and J.C. Snaith, anybody?) and others whose stories had been forgotten.
Here, then, are more than a hundred Nottinghamshire authors – including a representative selection of those writing today – who together contribute to the rich literary heritage which makes Nottingham and her environs so special and ripe for further exploration!
is Nottingham born and bred, descended from lace-makers, actors, artists and second- hand dealers. She is an author, researcher, performer, small publisher and a compulsive “snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.” For this book she has spent five years ransacking the libraries, bookshops, archives and graveyards of Nottinghamshire to uncover some of the more obscure corners of our literary past – and struck gold!
Going Down Slowand other short stories - (Hardback)
by ISBN: 978-1910170441, 112 pages
£12.99 Available November 2017
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Going Down Slow and other stories John Harvey Going Down Slow includes seven short stories, two of which feature Charlie Resnick and three feature Jack Kiley. This limited edition hardback collection, signed by the author, will be welcomed by John Harvey’s worldwide audience.
“... no one in Britain is writing better crime fiction.” The Times
“Immaculately engineered ... fast, fluent and exciting, with a pace and assurance that never lets up.” Literary Review
“Harvey is as good as they come; a writer of consummate elegance and deft characterisation...” Mark Billingham
Novelist, poet, dramatist and sometime publisher, has been a professional writer for some forty years, and his work has been translated into more than twenty languages. The first of his Charlie Resnick series, Lonely Hearts, was named by The Times as one of the 100 most notable crime novels of the last century, and in 2007 he was the recipient of the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Sustained Excellence in Crime Writing. His short story, ‘Fedora’ (included in this collection) won the 2014 CWA Short Story Dagger. He has been awarded Honorary Doctorates by the Universities of both Nottingham and Hertfordshire
Viking Nottinghamshireby Introduction by ISBN: 978-1910170472, 76 pages
£8.99 Available November 2017
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Viking Nottinghamshire describes the county as it was throughout the Viking Age, through the various stages of Scandinavian settlement. It uses a range of historical evidence, including documents, place-names, artefacts and sculpture, to explore the impact and contribution the Scandinavian settlers made to the character and history of Nottinghamshire.
The book examines this era of history in a fresh light, reflecting trends in modern scholarship, focusing on cultural interaction and integration rather than a story of invasion, rape and pillage.
is a researcher for the English Place-name Society. She teaches Old English, Old Norse and Middle English literature, and is a member of the Centre for the Study of the Viking Age at the University of Nottingham.
is Professor of Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham and Director of the Centre for the Study of the Viking Age. She is Chair of the international Runic Advisory Group and President of the English Place-name Society.
