Showing results by publisher "Fourth Estate" in Literature & Fiction

Maggie is 30, pregnant and broke. Faced with moving back to the town she fought to escape, she’s wondering if having a baby with boyfriend Ed will be the last spontaneous act of her life. Ed, meanwhile, is trying to run from his past with Maggie’s best friend Phil and harbouring secret dreams of his own. Phil hates his office job and is living for the weekend, while falling for his housemate, Keith. But there’s a problem: Keith has a boyfriend and there might not be room for three people in the relationship.

An unnamed young trans woman grows up in a working-class suburb that has no place for her. She discovers community and kinship in downtown Madrid, amid a dazzling party scene animated by charming junkies, glamorous pop divas, and fallen angels. With each step she takes forward in the city, she finds herself confronted by an antagonism she does not yet know how to counter. In this thrilling and yet often frightening place each decision can have the highest of stakes and yet she knows that only she can forge a path forward to the life she truly wants to live.

Èkó, the spirit of Lagos, and his loyal minion Tatafo weave trouble through the streets of Lagos and through the lives of the ‘vagabonds’ powering modern Nigeria: the queer, the displaced and the footloose. With Tatafo as our guide we meet these people in the shadows. Among them are a driver for a debauched politician, a lesbian couple whose tender relationship sheds unexpected light on their experience with underground sex work, a mother who attends a secret spiritual gathering that shifts her reality.

Bette loves Mei, but Bette and Mei are on a break, so Bette can catch-up on the decade of dating experiences she missed before she came out. So Bette is (reluctantly) on a dating odyssey: a quest to have lots of casual sex with lots of hot women and come back to Mei more experienced and more certain about what she wants. And now she has new friend Ruth as her queer dating guide, she can't possibly fail. It's just three months, then she'll be back with Mei. It's the perfect plan … isn't it?

Merryn grew up on the wilds of Bodmin moor, raised by her mother and her aunt in an old farmhouse. Here, the locals never leave the village, fear for the future of their farms and cling desperately to the folkloric tales that are woven into their history. Except Merryn, who has escaped to Manchester for university, briefly untethering herself from her past. When Merryn returns home for the memorial service of her ex-girlfriend Claud, she finds her childhood home stranger and more secretive than ever. She’s sure that her mother is hiding something.

Marguerite Demers is 24 when she leaves Paris for the sleepy southern village of Saint-Sulpice, to take up a job as a live-in nurse. Her charge is Jerome Lanvier, once one of the most powerful men in the village, and now dying alone in his large and secluded house, surrounded by rambling gardens. Manipulative and tyrannical, Jerome has scared away all his previous nurses.

An unnamed young trans woman grows up in a working class suburb that has no place for her. She discovers community and kinship in downtown Madrid, amid a lively party scene animated by junkies, pop divas, and fallen angels. But with each step she takes forward, she finds herself confronted by a violence she does not yet know how to counter; in this thrilling and yet often terrifying world each choice can truly be a matter of life and death.

When his grandfather dies, a boy named Jay travels south with his family to the property he left them, a once flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. The trees are diseased, the fields parched from months of drought. Still, Jay’s father, Jack, sends him out to work the land, or whatever land is left. Over the course of these hot, dense days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan, the local son of the farm’s manager, different from him in every way except for one.

The Magic Border is the debut book from Mercury Prize-winning musician and poet Arlo Parks, combining never-before-seen poetry, song lyrics and beautiful, intimate images from collaborator, photographer Daniyel Lowden. Featuring twenty original poems, alongside an exclusive artist’s statement and the complete lyrics from her sophomore album My Soft Machine, this vital collection explores the queer experience, blackness, grief, trauma and love through the eyes of the remarkable young musician.