| LONDON BOOKS is an independent publisher which aims to bring old and new fiction together in a tradition that is original in its subject matter, style and social concerns. We believe that the marginalised fiction of the past can be as relevant and exciting today as when it was first published, and our classic reprints will reflect the language and politics of tougher eras, while our new fiction will focus on emerging authors with something to say and a novel way of getting their messages across. |
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| LONDON CLASSICS |
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Phineas Kahn - Simon Blumenfeld
With an introduction by Peter Mason
Simon Blumenfeld’s acclaimed second novel follows the struggles of a Jewish merchant’s son, Phineas Kahn, as he makes his escape from the confines of Tsarist Russia to Vienna and then London in 1900, where he settles to raise a large family in the liberating atmosphere but desperate poverty of the East End. A priceless portrayal – wrapped up in a gripping, warm narrative – of a London now vanished. MORE>> |
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Prelude To A Certain Midnight - Gerald Kersh
With an introduction by Paul Duncan
A sex killer haunts the fog of 1930s London. He is on the prowl, looking for a schoolgirl. This monster, in turn, is being hunted. First published in the aftermath of the Second World War, this is a novel driven by author Gerald Kersh’s fury at the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, reflected here in the rape and murder of a child as the conflict looms. MORE>> |
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It Always Rains On Sunday - Arthur La Bern
With an introduction by Cathi Unsworth
The brains behind the legendary film of the same name starring Googie Withers and Jack Warner, this first novel by Arthur La Bern takes the reader on a ride through the streets and minds of a group of East Enders during the course of a single rain-soaked Sunday. Dreams and reality clash. Sex and death hang heavy in the air. MORE>> |
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There Ain’t No Justice - James Curtis
With an introduction by Martin Knight
Tommy Mutch is a poor boy from Notting Dale. He is also a very good fighter. British boxing is enjoying a golden period in the 1930s and success in the ring offers the likes of Tommy and his family an escape route from poverty. Faced with betrayal and corruption, his honest nature is soon put to the test. MORE>> |
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Doctor Of The Lost - Simon Blumenfeld
With an introduction by Paolo Hewitt
The fictionalised story of Dr Barnardo’s early years in the East End, Doctor Of The Lost shows London at a time of rampant industrialisation, when a few became very wealthy at the expense of the many. And yet it was also a time of great charity, when idealists such as Tom Barnardo were prepared to stand up and be counted. MORE>> |
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Jew Boy - Simon Blumenfeld
With an introduction by Ken Worpole
The founding work of what went on to become the literature of the 20th-century Jewish East End, this is a novel about poverty and politics in a world of boxers, anarchists, communists, actors, poets, gamblers and gangsters. Simon Blumenfeld was born and bred in Whitechapel, and Jew Boy represents a unique time and place now firmly embedded in London’s volatile history. MORE>> |
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The Angel And The Cuckoo - Gerald Kersh
Introduction by Paul Duncan
Released to celebrate the centenary of Gerald Kersh, this Soho-based novel is a sprawling celebration of London and its myriad characters, as seen from a café off Carnaby Street. The Angel And The Cuckoo is Kersh’s last masterpiece, a journey into the absurdities of city life by the British author of stories with a cosmopolitan flavour. MORE>> |
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May Day - John Sommerfield
Introduction by John King
Set over three days in the 1930s, May Day follows the fortunes of a broad range of characters as social unrest bubbles over in the East End and spreads across London. First published in 1936, the events driving this fluent and imaginative novel – mass anger at politicians and big business, speed-ups and wage cuts, social unrest and police violence – could easily describe Britain today. MORE>> |
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They Drive By Night - James Curtis
Introduction by Jonathan Meades
Released from Pentonville Prison on the same day as a man is hanged, Shorty Mathews visits an old girlfriend only to find her strangled. He panics, sure the police will blame him, and goes on the run on the Great North Road. Back in London the real killer is prowling the streets. The hangman hovers. Someone needs to pay the toll. More cult fiction from James Curtis. MORE >>
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Wide Boys Never Work - Robert Westerby
Introduction by Iain Sinclair
Sacked from his job in a car factory, Jim Bankley joins a gang of wide boys. He is soon earning good money, moving between Soho and the White City dog-track. Life is sweet. But when boss Bill Franks is locked up after a fight with the Gisburg mob things start to change. This is a lost gem from Robert Westerby, right up there with the finest London street fiction. MORE >>
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A Start In Life - Alan Sillitoe
Introduction by DJ Taylor
From his first novel Saturday Night And Sunday Morning to his most recent A Man Of His Time, Alan Sillitoe has consistently produced quality fiction and remains one of English literature's greatest talents. A Start In Life, employing the picaresque form to record the adventures of chancer Michael Cullen in the 'lollipop metropolis' of London, is a great example of his talent. This edition includes a preface by the author. MORE>> |
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Night And The City - Gerald Kersh
Introduction by John King
One of the greatest of the so-called London lowlife novels, Night And The City introduces Harry Fabian to the world and with him a prototype for Flash Harrys everywhere. Author Gerald Kersh was a street-wise character and a prolific author, his face a familiar sight around Soho in the Thirties and Forties. This classic text doubles as a social document, capturing as it does the colour and excitement of a vanished London. MORE>> |
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The Gilt Kid - James Curtis
Introduction by Paul Willetts
The debut novel from socialist author James Curtis, The Gilt Kid was first published in 1936 and remains as sharp in its dialogue and use of the vernacular as anything around today. Curtis was a maverick talent, his idealism clearly fuelling his work. This London Classics edition features a special interview with Nicolette Edwards, the author's daughter, conducted by Paul Willetts, biographer of Julian Maclaren-Ross. MORE>> |
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| BRITISH FICTION |
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The Seal Club – Warner, Welsh, King
A three-novella collection, each story written by a different author – Those Darker Sayings by Alan Warner, Atrocity Exhibition by Irvine Welsh, and The Beasts Of Brussels by John King – The Seal Club sees Slorach’s quiz-machine casuals riding the railways of Northern England, an Edinburgh family coming together for their own special Christmas nightmare, and English football supporters and journalists running riot in Belgium. Stories to make you think, stories to make you smile. MORE>> |
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She’s My Witch – Stewart Home
Strange things happen on social media, such as the almost chance encounter between a London born-and-bred fitness instructor and a drug-fuelled Spanish witch. At first Maria Remedios and Martin Cooper share their love for super-dumb two-chord thud in private messages, but when they meet magic happens. A dark romance with an incendiary conclusion written to reflect today's online world, the tragedy of the opioid epidemic and a resurgent interest in the occult and kink. MORE>> |
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Night And The City - Gerald Kersh
Harry Fabian is a cockney wide boy trying to make it big in the Soho underworld of the 1930s. He is a Flash Harry in an expensive suit, a chancer operating in a cosmopolitan corner of the city where villains, spivs, prostitutes and strong-arm men thrive. But his ambition and reckless nature are pushing him towards more and more extreme acts – and a day of reckoning. MORE>> |
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Slaughterhouse Prayer - John King
A boy is shocked to find out that the adults are killing animals and that he has been eating their bodies. A youth tries to believe that words and peaceful protest will end the slaughter. Fast forward and the boy and youth have become a disillusioned man standing at a crossroads in his life. Should he block out the truth and live comfortably, or confront the meat and dairy industries in a new and very direct way? MORE>> |
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Doctor Zipp’s Amazing Octo-Com - Dan Carrier
If a city is its people and their stories, then this collection shows London at its warm-hearted, eccentric best. Meet the likes of Kermit The Hermit and karaoke-barge owner Eddie Roll, and read about the life and death of the enigmatic Doctor Zipp, a marine biologist and inter-species language expert who believed we could learn a lot from the octopus. MORE>> |
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The Liberal Politics Of Adolf Hitler - John King
It is the not-too-distant future and the individual nations of Europe no longer exist. The EU’s mission has reached its final stage in the form of the USE, with power fully centralised. This corporate-driven, closet dictatorship promotes New Democracy, its true nature hidden behind fake smiles, easy debt and empty liberal rhetoric. But across Europe resistance groups fight back. And Britain is no different. MORE>> |
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Barry Desmond Is A Wanker - Martin Knight
Barry Desmond is an only child who becomes an only adult. A sheltered upbringing leaves him ill-equipped to cope with the savagery of the outside world, but unlike his parents he believes that people are essentially decent. Will society repay Barry’s trust? Barry Desmond Is A Wanker is a study in 21st-century isolation and the battle to survive when your face doesn’t fit. MORE>> |
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Malayan Swing - Pete Haynes
Aidan is different. He is small, awkward and often silent, an easy man to ignore, mock or exploit, yet on the inside he is intelligent and thoughtful. He is the narrator of Malayan Swing and speaks to the reader in a way he can’t manage in everyday life, reflecting on the world with great insight and an almost childlike honesty. This is the internal life of an outsider. MORE>> |
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| NON-FICTION |
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The Working Man’s Ballet - Alan Hudson
Alan Hudson was Chelsea’s home-grown boy genius and part of a golden generation in English football. A true maverick, his story is set against the backdrop of The Kings Road – spiritual home of the Swinging Sixties and Seventies. A natural storyteller, and a friend and contemporary of George Best and Bobby Moore, Hudson remains an intriguing London character. MORE>> |
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Justice For Joan - Martin Knight
On the August bank holiday, 1948, Joan Woodhouse left her lodgings in London to visit the family home in Barnsley. She never arrived. Her body was discovered in the grounds of the Duke of Norfolk’s Arundel Castle in Sussex. Joan had been raped and strangled. This book charts the quest for justice. With access to family and police files, Martin Knight attempts to establish whether an innocent suspect was vindicated or a guilty man swerved the gallows. MORE>> |
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Ultraviolet: A Glastonbury Tale - Blueblagger The annual Glastonbury Festival attracts over 150,000 people, among their ranks a punk known only as Blueblagger. He was there at the original Stonehenge gatherings and demands free entry in the older tradition. Seeing a chink in the security set-up, he is soon working the gates and earning good money. But dangers lurks. British tribal music fills the air. Welcome to England at its eccentric best. MORE>> |
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Gypsy Joe - Joe Smith
The story of a gypsy boy who made and kept a promise to his grandfather. Joe Smith was a protégé golfer, but faced with prejudice and rejection lost his way, his life spiralling into violence, crime and alcohol. At his lowest point he remembered his promise – and fought back to become a professional golfer. A moving story of redemption and fulfilled dreams. MORE>>
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The Special Ones - Chelsea by the Fans
The Special Ones covers supporter memories stretching back nearly seventy years and belongs to the people who made Chelsea unique, and is a social document as much as a football book. Individual memories are supplemented by sections on the songs sung over the decades as well as the fanzine movement, opinion and humour expressed in song and print. MORE>> |
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