More success for our alumni authors including Amanda FitzRoy (MA Creative Writing, 2017) who has recently published her first novel Savage Beauty.

Dec 2021 - Celebrating our Alumni authors

Massive congratulations to our alumni authors who have had their books published.

Take a look at the latest books available from our alumni authors:

Amanda Davey (Geography, 1983) has recently published Meet the Team: the roles played by 'our gang'.

Aimed at adult children who have never grown up, this is a fun book for laughter and would make an ideal Christmas present. In our world our Team is our supportive gang of cuddly toys and this is a celebration of the supportive roles they play for us.

This book is available to purchase online.

Amanda FitzRoy (MA Creative Writing, 2017) has recently published her first novel Savage Beauty.

In 1996 Rosie walks out and leaves her father passed out drunk on his favourite green easy chair, and embarks on a journey of self-discovery that takes her from the poverty of a bed-sit in Plymouth to travelling in Israel. Rosie yearns to see the Dead Sea, the last place left that she and her mother were together.

This book is available to purchase online.

Caroline Gill (PGCE Secondary, Religious Studies with Classical Studies and English, 1983) has published her first full collection of poems: Driftwood by Starlight.

"The beautifully-crafted poems in Caroline Gill's debut full-length collection more than live up to the appeal of its Cornish cove cover and title. With elegance and finesse, she masters a range of traditional forms, all of which beg to be read aloud so their musicality can be fully relished. In several poems, joy and wonder in the natural world co-exist with a deep, questioning concern for threatened species from the puffin to the fen raft spider, while Gill's imagery, particularly where birdlife's concerned – 'the curlew's bill of boomerang design', 'white/grenades explode as gannets pierce the sea' – surprises and delights in equal measure." -Susan Richardson, author of Words the Turtle Taught Me (Cinnamon Press, 2018), shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award

This book is available to purchase online.

Dr John Goodman (PhD Arab and Islamic Studies, 2020) has published a version of his thesis as a book: The Minority Muslim Experience in Mainland Southeast Asia - A Different Path.

This book examines the lives of the Malay and Cham Muslims in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam and examines how they co-exist and live in societies that are dominated by an alternative consensus and are illiberal and non-democratic in nature.

This book is available to purchase online.

Milly Johnson (Education and Drama, 1986) is a commercial fiction writer and has recenlty published her 19th book: The Woman in the Middle.

Shay Bastable is the woman in the middle. She is part of the sandwich generation – caring for her parents and her children, supporting her husband Bruce, holding them all together and caring for them as best she can. Then the arrival of a large orange skip on her mother’s estate sets in motion a cataclysmic series of events which leads to the collapse of Shay’s world. She is forced to put herself first for a change. But in order to move forward with her present, Shay needs to make sense of her past. And so she returns to the little village she grew up in, to uncover the truth about what happened to her when she was younger. And in doing so, she discovers that sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to find the only way is up.

This book is available to purchase online.

Shan Lu (MSc Human Resources Management, 2014) has published Job Hunting Manual for Dreamcatchers -- Hiring Secrets by Experienced HR. 

This book is a 360 degree manual around job hunting, especially on interview strategies and skills. It aims to help Chinese graduates and entry-level juniors land a job offer. Story telling and vivid cases are used in order to unlock career planning and job hunting skills. As another highlight, a broad pool of practice is provided to help them clarify career dreams, anchor personal positioning among the market, build a mature mentality and image in the workplace, and easily get ideal job opportunities.

This book is available to purchase via this Chinese e-shopping platform.

Brian Murdoch (German, 1965) is due to publish The Fortunes of Everyman in Twentieth Century German Drama in January 2022.

Death still comes to Everyman, but this study of three twentieth-century German plays shows the harder challenge of living without salvation in an age of war and unprecedented mass destruction.

This book is available to pre-order online.

Wanjiru Njoya (Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice PCAP, 2019) has recently published Economic Freedom and Social Justice: The Classical Ideal of Equality in Contexts of Racial Diversity.

This book helps resolve ongoing debates about the inconsistencies between freedom goals and equality in advancing social justice, explains how recent social justice debates have shaped the regulation of racial discrimination in employment and reasserts the importance of individual liberty in framing antidiscrimination law and promoting wider participation.

This book is available to purchase online.

Caroline Repton (French and German, 1982) is due to publish her debut non-fiction book Lotus-Eating Days: From Surrey to Singapore in February 2022.

Christopher is the eldest of seven in a middle-class English family. Theresa is the thirteenth child of Chinese immigrants in the British colony of Singapore. This is the story of how they met after the war, having grown up on opposite sides of the world. Real-life characters, from sardonic ex-POWs to affectionate siblings and cousins in the armed forces, eccentric spinster aunts, hilarious ex-girlfriends and ebullient colonial types leap off the page as they tell the story in their own words, collected in this memoir through letters and diaries dating from the 1930s to 1959, interspersed with Theresa's tape-recordings about her life made in 2000.

This book is available to pre-order online.

Quentin Russell (Combined Hons BA Sociology and Geography, 1972), has published Mediterranean Naval Battles That Changed the World.

Focusing on seven decisive naval engagements from the Greek defeat of the Persians at Salamis in the fifth century BC to the Siege of Malta during the Second World War, this book tells the story of the Mediterranean as a theatre of war at sea. Each of these fiercely fought battles were to change the balance of power and shape the course of history.

This book is available to purchase online.

Dr Julie Smith's (Psychology, 2004) book ‘Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?’ will be published in January 2022.

Drawing on years of experience as a clinical psychologist, online sensation Dr Julie Smith shares all the skills you need to get through life's ups and downs. Filled with secrets from a therapist's toolkit, this is a must-have handbook for optimising your mental health. Dr Julie's simple but expert advice and powerful coping techniques will help you stay resilient no matter what life throws your way.

This book is available to pre-order online.

Date: 21 September 2021