Showing results by author "Alex Wheatle" in Literature & Fiction

Brenton Brown is 16 years old. A mixed race youth, Brenton has lived in a children's home all his life. Being reunited with his mother is the best thing that has happened to Brenton. But a strange series of events soon push him to the edge...

Set in 1981, the year of the Brixton riots, the novel is a gripping thriller in a society on the edge of explosion. Wheatle focusses on Biscuit and his posse as a way to introduce the whole community. Biscuit lives with his mother, brother and sister. He helps out by hustling on the frontline for the South London badman, Nunchaks. He doesn’t want to be doing this for the rest of his life but it’s difficult to get out of the trap. As the patience of the community breaks and the riots begin to erupt, Biscuit has to make a choice that could change his life forever.

Cornell is having a bad time. Kicked out of secondary school for a fight he didn't start, he finds himself in a Pupil Referral Unit. Here he makes friends with one of the Sinclair family. You don't mess with the Sinclairs, and when Ryan Sinclair demands Cornell comes with him to teach another student some respect, Ryan witnesses something that will change his life. Torn between protecting his family and himself, Cornell has one hell of a decision to make.

She wondered what kind of world she had brought her two daughters into, the tedious cycle of rural Jamaican life. No chance for them to set off upon adventures and see the outside world. But sisters Jenny and Hortense Rodney, do get to see the outside world. Growing up in rural Claremont, working amid the hustle and bustle, lawn parties and houses of joy in Trenchtown, the two sisters take a chance and move to England with their husbands, that far-off land of riches, where they settle down to motherhood among the jazz cafés and bleak streets of Brixton.

Juliet is consumed with guilt knowing that her half-brother, Brenton, grew up in children's homes while she received all her mother's love. She marries Clayton, a successful banker, to please her mother. But secretly Clayton has always suspected that there is something between Juliet and her half-brother. Meanwhile, Juliet and Brenton try to stay away from what they know is a forbidden love...