Paper Sparrow is a historical novel inspired by real-life events, Australia 1943 to 1955. PEGGY is born to circumstances that deny her opportunities afforded to others. Before her thirteenth birthday, she has no choice but to work as a Nursing Aide in a home for the elderly. Aged fourteen, Peggy is drugged and raped. She travels from Sydney to Melbourne to see out her pregnancy without family or financial support. Her dark journey reveals a massive baby farming industry, untold sufferings, and life-long consequences to thousands of post-WWII victims-single women. Their babies are officially recognised today as The Stolen White Generation. Peggy's core conflict comes from her necessary involvement with a network of welfare officers and medical teams, all fuelled by monetary greed. Torment, near-slavery, and degradation are encouraged through social bigotry. Peggy meets PETER, a man of the cloth, BINEHAM, a master of Chinese psychology and LILY, a welfare officer fighting for social justice. They foster her potential and lighten her journey. Peggy's baby is kidnapped from the birthing table and sold to a couple who have a ruthless plan to forbid Peggy to approach her child legally. This action leads Peggy to incite reform through civil society to end social prejudice against single mothers and their children. Fortune brings work in the fashion industry, and Peggy wins a scholarship which will lead to a career in live theatre. Peggy has a heart-rending meeting with her child aged one year, but the cherished experience loses its worth when he spits at her feet under instruction from his adoptive parents. This action and a sordid society party meant to launch Peggy in the Miss Australia quest destroy her will to live. Yet, she miraculously survives a deep-sea baptism and finds the strength and means to promote benevolence, communication, and beauty.

Blue Sparrow was born on Twitter. It's a compilation of my daily ramblings as a first time novelist encouraging myself and other writers to bite the bullet and do it despite the fear of blank paper, the insecurities, the angst every writer faces when left alone with the story and trying to bleed it out. My Twitter followers asked me to make it. They said they want to carry it around in their pockets and take it out each time they felt stuck, scared, or simply need to smile. Because people tell me my tweets are funny. You be the judge.

The story of a sensitive, gifted African American girl who tells us with mordant humor what it feels like to spend every day wishing so hard that you could fly away from it all Sparrow has always had a difficult time making friends. She would always rather stay home on the weekends with her mother, an affluent IT executive at a Manhattan bank, reading, or watching the birds, than play with other kids. And that's made school a lonely experience for her. It's made LIFE a lonely experience.But when the one teacher who really understood her -- Mrs. Wexler, the school librarian, a woman who let her eat her lunch in the library office rather than hide in a bathroom stall, a woman who shared her passion for novels and knew just the ones she'd love -- is killed in a freak car accident, Sparrow's world unravels and she's found on the roof of her school in an apparent suicide attempt.With the help of an insightful therapist, Sparrow finally reveals the truth of her inner life. And it's here that she discovers an outlet in rock & roll music...

'Reckless Paper Birds' blends raw emotion, acute social observation and sharp wit to capture the gay male experience. The author of the critically acclaimed collections The Frost Fairs and Spacecraft, Brighton-based John McCullough pulls no punches in this latest - and his most powerful - collection. These are poems of skill, joy and quiet musicality that reflect the conflict and complexity of being.