Crash Bang Burn

When Edie, a naive Bible-college dropout from Massachusetts, finds her life derailed in unfamiliar Georgia, she pins her hopes on a sexy Samaritan-a tough, tattooed firefighter named Cross-and follows him deep into the boondocks, where she gets a very different kind of education. All Cross ever wanted was to be a local war hero, but his chance at glory ended in an explosive display of piss-poor judgment. Now, his crumbling marriage to "crazy" Braylee Lewis and his growing pill habit lead Cross to look for an escape-and he finds it in the form of hot little doe-eyed Edie, who is eager to lick his wounds. Braylee's redneck family didn't exactly give her the blueprint for domestic bliss, but she vowed to do better when she married Cross, the All-American soldier. Three kids later, their chemistry feels more like a chemical spill and wedlock like a federal sentence. But if she thinks she can just break free-well, she really must be crazy. Told through the eyes of three lovers, Crash Bang Burn is an anti-romance novel; a postmortem on the bro-country anthems about them pretty little blue-eyed girls that slices open the dark underbelly of sex, marriage, and family in the dirty South.

'An extraordinary and powerful book, full of vitality. Every page celebrates the way traditional skills can shape who we are' Tristan Gooley 'Lyrical, moving and never self-pitying . . . a lovely book' The Times Ben Short has a successful career in advertising, a flat in a trendy part of London, a flashy motorbike. But after years of suffering with anxiety, he's a wreck. A drastic change is needed. For a time, he finds solace working with a forester, then as an apprentice to a Gypsy woodman, setting up home in a dilapidated wagon with just a rescue dog for company. However, it is not until he feels the call of the furnace, a glowing charcoal kiln in the Dorset woods, that he can truly re-forge his thoughts, put the years of suffering behind him, and start afresh by immersing himself in the old ways of woods and fire. Exquisitely written and deeply honest, Burn is a hopeful story of transformation, a celebration of manual work and craft, and a love letter to the English countryside. 'Beautifully written . . . reading it leaves you feeling ruffled but alive' Mail on Sunday

Just when Nola O'Grady thinks she has it all... Nola's the new head of the San Francisco branch of the Agency, the psychic organization so secret that even the CIA doesn't know it exists. What's more, for some mysterious reason, Interpol has assigned her lover, Israeli secret agent Ari Nathan, to her new bureau as her permanent "bodyguard." But everywhere she looks she sees a Chaos manifestation spying on her. Inexplicable "rogue waves" are sweeping innocents to a watery death befreo she can save them. She has two increasingly dangerous searches on hand, for Rob Ezekiel, the supposedly dead prophet from Ari's past, and for the mysterious "Brother Belial," head of the Chaos cult they had managed to take down. To top it off, her brother Michael is dragging Nola and Ari into his attempt to rescue his girlfriend from a radioactive alternate dimension. How is Nola supposed to serve the forces of Harmony and maintain the balance between Chaos and Order when she can't even keep her own family under control?