SOUTH WEST READING PASSPORT World of Darkness SOUTH WEST Meet the World of Horror READING PASSPORT and Evil, If You Dare

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SOUTH WEST READING PASSPORT World of Darkness SOUTH WEST Meet the world of horror READING PASSPORT and evil, if you dare.

Welcome to the South West Reading Passport 2014, the third year of this exciting reading World of Passion adventure. For 2014 we have selected four Inflame your imagination ‘Worlds’ to reflect different genres of literature. with these passionate and The challenge is to read three or more novels affecting novels. from these Worlds before the end of December. Featured writers will be appearing at some libraries in the South West. If you are unable to see them, Lyrical Worlds don’t worry – there are special features about the Discover the engaging writers on our website www.readingpassport.org and brilliant world of poetry. For this year’s competition, pick up the review sheets with this Passport, or enter reviews online. Future Worlds Your local library and the Reading Passport website have even more reading suggestions to What challenges may lie ahead for inspire you, to wax lyrical, be passionate, look Earth? See how different authors to the future and delve into the dark with your envision the world of the future. reading. The Reading Passport is a partnership between Arts Council England, Literature Works, Royal Take a risk – explore new worlds and encounter Literary Fund and libraries across all sectors in the exciting writers. South West. Take this reading adventure and expand your horizons. IIIII www.readingpassport.org Tania Glyde

FEATURED WRITER

Adam Nevill Adam Nevill was born in Birmingham, England, in 1969 and grew up in England and New Zealand. He is the author of the supernatural horror novels Banquet for the Damned, Apartment 16, The Ritual, Last Days, House of Small Shadows, and No One Gets Out Alive. In 2012 The Ritual was the winner of The August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel, and in 2013 Last Days won the same award. The same two novels won the RUSA Reading Lists Award in the Horror Category. Described in The Guardian as “Britain’s answer to Stephen King”, Adam Nevill is now one of our most important and admired horror writers. Adam lives in Devon. www.adamlgnevill.com

IIIII www.readingpassport.org Enter the world of the macabre and unexplained with these excellent writers. They will make you want to sleep with the light on.

Michel Faber has written the highly acclaimed The Crimson Petal and the White, The Fahrenheit Twins and the Whitbread shortlisted novel Under the Skin. The Apple, based on characters in The Crimson Petal and the White, was published in 2006. Born in Holland, brought up in Australia, he now lives in the Scottish Highlands. For a scary and disturbing read try Under the Skin. Brian Lumley is an English horror-fiction writer. Born in County Durham, he joined the British Army’s Royal Military Police and wrote stories in his spare time before retiring and Andrew Taylor is a British author best known becoming a professional writer. Lumley served as for his dark crime novels. These include the president of the Horror Writers Association from Lydmouth series, the Roth Trilogy and historical 1996 to 1997. In March 2010 Lumley was awarded novels such as the best-selling The American the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Boy. His accolades include the Diamond Dagger, Writers Association. He also received a World Britain’s top crime-writing award. Andrew and Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2010. his family have lived for many years in Coleford He lives in Devon. His vampire series, Necroscope, in the Forest of Dean. His books make macabre has been translated into ten languages and sold reading. Try The Anatomy of Ghosts or Bleeding over a million copies worldwide. Heart Square.

All libraries have further booklists. Please ask a member of staff and enjoy your reading adventure. IIIII www.readingpassport.org Or look online at www.readingpassport.org Daniel Hall

FEATURED WRITER

Patrick Gale Patrick Gale was born on the Isle of Wight in 1962, raised in Winchester, where he studied at the Pilgrims choir school and Winchester College, and went on to read English at New College Oxford. He lives on his husband’s farm near Land’s End and is a keen gardener and cellist. He has written fourteen novels, including the bestselling Rough Music and Notes from an Exhibition. His fourteenth novel, A Perfectly Good Man, won a Green Carnation award and was a favourite recommendation among The Guardian readers in the paper’s end of year round-up. His two collections of short stories are Dangerous Pleasures and Gentleman’s Relish. His next novel, A Place Called Winter is published by Tinder Press in March 2015 and he is currently writing a three part original, gay-themed drama called Man in an Orange Shirt for BBC2. www.galewarning.org

IIIII www.readingpassport.org Don’t think of yourself as the passionate type? Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë Think again and take up the challenge to read The Brontë sisters began to write at an early age. some of literature’s most compelling books. They had a volume of poetry published in 1846, and their novels began appearing the following year. Try Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, Emily’s Wuthering Sarah Challis has lived in Scotland and Heights or Anne’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall. California but is now happily settled in a Dorset village with three rescued dogs and three chickens. She is married with four sons. She has written 10 novels including Jumping to Conclusions and That John Fowles Summer Affair. Her latest is called The Lonely Desert. Fowles lived in Lyme Regis, the setting for his most famous novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman, for most of his life. His interest in the town’s local history resulted in his appointment as curator of the Lyme Regis Museum in 1979, a position he filled for a decade. He was named by The Times as one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Other novels include The Collector and The Magus.

Further booklists are available on your library website and on www.readingpassport.org 24/7.

IIIII www.readingpassport.org Caroline Forbes

FEATURED WRITER

Julia Copus Julia Copus is an award-winning poet and children’s writer. Her debut collection, The Shuttered Eye, appeared from Bloodaxe in 1995. In 2012, Faber published her third collection, The World’s Two Smallest Humans, which was shortlisted for both the Costa poetry award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. Other awards include first prize in the National Poetry Competition and the Forward Prize for best single poem (2010). Julia’s radio work includes an afternoon play, Eenie Meenie Macka Racka, which won the BBC’s Alfred Bradley award, and Ghost Lines, a cycle of poems and biographical interludes about the experience of IVF, which was short-listed for the 2012 Ted Hughes award for new work in poetry. She is currently working on a biography of the poet Charlotte Mew. Julia lives in Somerset. www.faber.co.uk/catalog/author/julia-copus

IIIII www.readingpassport.org Benjamin Zephaniah is a Rastafarian writer and dub poet. He is a well-known figure in contemporary English literature and was included in The Times list of Britain’s top 50 post-war writers in 2008. Zephaniah has said his mission is to take poetry everywhere and to popularise poetry by reaching people who do not read books. Try We are Britain.

Seamus Heaney is widely recognised as one Contemporary poetry is one of the most varied of the major poets of the twentieth century. A areas of literature today. Ask at your library native of Northern Ireland, he was raised in County about joining a local poetry group or start one Derry and later for many years lived in Dublin. He of your own. published over 20 volumes of poetry and criticism, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. Carol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL is the first Works include Opened Ground: Selected Poems, female, Poet Laureate in the role’s 400 year history. Electric Light and District and Circle. She has been praised for her combination of tenderness and toughness, humour and lyricism, unconventional attitudes and conventional forms. These have won her a wide audience. Her work There is a dedicated website for the Reading Passport with more poetry suggestions produced as Poet Laureate includes poems on the MPs by the Poet Laureate for Bournemouth, James expenses scandal and the deaths of the last two Manlow. www.readingpassport.org British soldiers to fight in the First World War. Read Rapture published in 2005.

IIIII www.readingpassport.org Becky Powell

FEATURED WRITER

Gareth L Powell Gareth L. Powell is an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author from Bristol. He is the author of five novels, including Ack-Ack Macaque, which won the 2013 BSFA Award for Best Novel. Gareth’s short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, including six in Interzone, and he has received several ‘honourable mentions’ in Gardner Dozois’s Best New SF collections. In 2007, one of his short stories came top of the Interzone annual readers’ poll for best short story of the year. He has also co-written a novelette with Aliette de Bodard, and given guest lectures on creative writing at Bath Spa University. He has written articles for The Irish Times, SFX, SF Signal, Mass Movement Magazine, and Acoustic Magazine, and, in 2012, he achieved a boyhood ambition when he was given the chance to pen a strip for Britain’s long- running sci-fi and fantasy comic, 2000 AD. www.garethlpowell.com

IIIII www.readingpassport.org If you thought Science Fiction was just about spaceships and robots, think again! Travelling through space and time opens up endless reading possibilities – parallel universes, dystopian futures and Brave New Worlds are just waiting to be discovered. Spaceships and robots too, of course... Why not try:

Margaret Atwood Although Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed Oryx and Crake and award-winning The Handmaid’s Tale are often described as sci-fi, the author herself prefers to call them “speculative fiction”, or even Alastair Reynolds “adventure romance”. However you classify them, The Welsh writer has studied physics and these dark visions of the near-future will certainly astronomy and has worked in space research give you plenty to think about. too, using his background to write “hard” science fiction, based firmly on the realities of science as we currently understand them. Scientific realism Iain M Banks is no limit to the imagination though – Reynolds writes epic and dramatic “space opera”. Best-selling novelist Iain Banks leapt from this world to another whole fictional universe, the Culture, simply by slipping an “M” into his name. In the process, as The Guardian noted, he wrote There are loads of exciting sci-fi titles on books which confirm him “as the standard by the shelves of your local library, or see the which the rest of SF is judged”. booklists at www.readingpassport.org for other interesting suggestions. IIIII www.readingpassport.org Win Books! Review at least 3 books drawn from 3 different Worlds online at www.readingpassport.org or take the reviews to your local library to be entered into a prize draw for a £150 book gift card and other prizes.

Your reviews may be displayed in libraries and on the website. Competition closing date 30th December 2014. Terms and Conditions of the competition are at your local library and online. Competition open to library members. Join your local library for free.

The Reading Passport project is supported by the public libraries of the 15 Local Authorities, Read South West, and regional partners and SWRLS members in the South West.