We're pleased to offer the following new books for sale:
Topsham Author Does It Again
Many of our customers will already be familiar with Anne Merrick, Topsham resident and author. In December 2018 we were very pleased to launch two of her latest novels for young adults, Grenewyze and its sequel Beyond, both published by Lily Neal. Grenewyze (pronounced green-wise") follows the fortunes of its young protagonists Flora and Silver in a dysfunctional post-apocalyptic future. Aided by some unusual friends, they try to build a new life based on community and connection in a world where food, fuel, safety and most of the technological advantages we take for granted in the modern Western world no longer exist. Beyond, the much-awaited sequel, introduces the reader to members of the next generation as the now-established Grenewyze community tries, little by little, to spread its influence out into the frightening world beyond its confines. The characters of the unusual collection of individuals who make up Grenewyze - children, adults and even the dog - are a source of delight, and despite the dark threat of the grim world beyond, there is humour, laughter and love in both stories.
Grenewyze ISBN 9780995666122 £10.00 in paperback
Beyond ISBN 9780995666139 £10.00 in paperback
Darren Marsh: Exeter's Royal Clarence Hotel
This book costs £25 new and was finished just prior to the destruction of the hotel in the autumn of 2016.
Anne Merrick:
The House Under the Mountain, By Starlight and Candlelight and Hannah's Ghost.
Anne has a close and proud connection with The Topsham Bookshop. She lives in
Topsham and her most recent two books, The House Under the Mountain and By
Starlight and Candlelight have been edited by Lily Neal, the bookshop’s owner. Both these books are available new from the bookshop.
Anne's first published book, Someone Came Knocking, was Commended for the Carnegie Medal in 1993 then subsequently selected for the International Board on Books for Young People UK Honours Award.
Anne grew up in North Wales and Cheshire
and these locations provide a backdrop for both of her most recent
publications.
Anne has a lifetime’s experience in
education, teaching primary and secondary children and latterly preparing
teachers themselves through the School of Education at the University of
Exeter.
Isobel Davies, Anne’s sister has provided the illustrations for Anne’s books so they are very much a family production. Anne is pictured here (on the right) with Isobel at the launch of The House Under the Mountain.
Anne continues to write and enjoys reading other authors such as William Trevor, Helen Dunmore, Penelope Lively and Ann Patchett.
Talking About Topsham
The late Sara Vernon, long-time Topsham resident and published novelist (under her pen-name of Sara Yeomans), had many talents, one of which was her ability to listen carefully to local people and record faithfully what she had heard. She used that skill to great effect in 1988 in a slim pamphlet entitled Talking About Topsham which was published by Chips Barber's Obelisk Press. Many older residents of Topsham spoke through the pages of that pamphlet of their young lives in Topsham earlier in the twentieth century, and we still occasionally get secondhand copies in the bookshop.
In 2007, when Talking About Topsham had gone out of print and it was obvious that it would never be reprinted by Obelisk (Chips himself had sadly died two years earlier), Lily Neal persuaded Sara to reissue the title in conjunction with another piece she had been working on, Fairy Tales of Topsham by The Brothers Pym. This was a series of reminiscences by brothers Denzil and Ken Pym who had lived in Topsham all their lives and related many interesting - and at times very funny - anecdotes of their childhood and their earlier working lives, when as well as being involved in various enterprises around the town, they also fished for salmon in the River Exe every season. Sara called them "fairy tales" because of their generous stretching of the truth - a trait for which fishermen have been famed for centuries!
Dr. Anne Musson, a keen local historian, lent Sara the money to publish the two titles together as one book and Mike Patrick, another keen local historian, helped to source more and better photographic illustrations for the new book.
The Vacant Chair and other stories of the Amman Valley
Gryff Thomas has lived in Topsham for many years and is known by many as the former Head of History at Exmouth Community College, but as anyone who has met him will immediately discover, he originally hails from South Wales. This book of reminiscences of his childhood and early life, published in 2016, has a very strong Welsh flavour. The stories in it are almost readable as fiction, being in the main delightfully funny and with a splendid cast of eccentric family members, but he assures his readers that he has hardly had to embroider the original events at all.
Although Gryff has self-published several books of satirical verse about erstwhile and current residents in Topsham - and indeed has written many fiction works which have yet to be published - this is probably his best book to date. Sadly, it is now almost out of print, but he is planning a revised second edition for this year.
A charming short novella of Gryff's entitled Out of Their Depth, which came out in 2016 not long before The Vacant Chair, is now completely out of print. It tells the story of two young Welsh miners who discover a little black juvenile devil whilst working very deep underground and attempt to look after the little fellow. Who knows? - perhaps Gryff will be persuaded to re-publish this some time, too.
