An "excellent," darkly-told crime novel in the tradition of Tana French and Ian Rankin (Wall Street Journal). Sergeant Alexandra Cupidi is a recent transfer from the London metro police to the rugged Kentish countryside. She's done little to ingratiate herself with her new colleagues, who find her too brash, urban, and -- to make matters worse -- she investigated her first partner, a veteran detective, and had him arrested on murder charges. Now assigned the brash young Constable Jill Ferriter to look after, she's facing another bizarre case: a woman found floating in local marsh land, dead of no apparent cause. The case gets even stranger when the detectives contact the victim's next of kin, her son, a high-powered graphic designer living in London. Adopted at the age of two, he'd never known his mother, he tells the detectives, until a homeless womanknocked on his door, claiming to be his mother, just the night before: at the same time her body was being dredged from the water. Juggling the case, her aging mother, her teenage daughter, and the loneliness of country life, Detective Cupidi must discover who the woman really was, who killed her, and how she managed to reconnect with her long lost son, apparently from beyond the grave.

An "excellent," darkly-told crime novel in the tradition of Tana French and Ian Rankin (Wall Street Journal). Sergeant Alexandra Cupidi is a recent transfer from the London metro police to the rugged Kentish countryside. She's done little to ingratiate herself with her new colleagues, who find her too brash, urban, and -- to make matters worse -- she investigated her first partner, a veteran detective, and had him arrested on murder charges. Now assigned the brash young Constable Jill Ferriter to look after, she's facing another bizarre case: a woman found floating in local marsh land, dead of no apparent cause. The case gets even stranger when the detectives contact the victim's next of kin, her son, a high-powered graphic designer living in London. Adopted at the age of two, he'd never known his mother, he tells the detectives, until a homeless womanknocked on his door, claiming to be his mother, just the night before: at the same time her body was being dredged from the water. Juggling the case, her aging mother, her teenage daughter, and the loneliness of country life, Detective Cupidi must discover who the woman really was, who killed her, and how she managed to reconnect with her long lost son, apparently from beyond the grave.

Compelling and vivid, the stories in Bread and Salt use the metaphor of salvage to consider the reclamation of the natural environment, human relationships, and material objects. The characters in these stories live and travel in Tunisia, India, Indonesia, Italy, Turkey, France, and the United States and consider their individual agency in both local and global contexts. The characters' conflicts reveal how family and friendships are enriched by differences.

In the New Tale of Taira, Shin Heike Monogatari, Eiji Yoshikawa tells the story of Japan's significant transformation from a civilian aristocratic society to a new samurai era at the end of the 12th century. The Taira tribe's master, Tadamori Taira, serves Japan's most powerful person, the retired emperor Toba, as the guard chief. Tadamori has earned the trust of the former emperor through his potent weapons and unique personality. This trust is a significant aspect of their relationship, which one gains slowly. However, despite this, his tribe is poor and discriminated against by the nobles. Tadamori's eldest son, Kiyomori, the novel's hero, is twenty. The oppression of the samurai by Fujiwara's family annoys Kiyomori greatly. Resistance to the nobility slowly germinates in Kiyomori's consciousness. With unwavering patience, he awaits his chance, which is yet to come. The nobles become entangled in intriguing power struggles over the choice of the first lady and the succession to the throne.

This anthology is a collection of works by The Salt Lane Scribes, a group of writers living in and around Salisbury, who gather regularly to encourage and criticise each others' work. Within the pages you will find an eclectic mix of work, including poetry, short stories and extracts from the authors' novels.