Benjamin Myers

Whiteadder, 1973. Fresh from tour, psychedelic folk band Once Upon A Time relocate to a row of dilapidated cottages in the Scottish Borders to ‘get it together in the country’. Among their entourage on the banks of the Whiteadder river is thirteen-year-old Kit, the sole child in a commune of naïve adults pursuing a fading Sixties idyll of self-sufficiency. Then out of the wilderness arrives Jonathan. A darkly charismatic fan of the band whose own history is shrouded in secrecy, he quickly infiltrates the community and upends its established hierarchies. Only Kit can see how dangerous this outsider’s mind games and proclivities really are. As winter draws in and a devastating storm hits, he is forced into drastic measures that will turn him into an adult before his time… Wolfspider, 1974. Forced to flee the commune, Kit runs away to London. He journeys deep into the dark side of the city, from the ‘meat rack’ of Piccadilly Circus and Soho amusement arcades populated by predators to private Bayswater parties and the safety of the squat scene of Ladbroke Grove. But Kit is still haunted by the terrible violence he left buried in the Borders. When Once Upon A Time return to play a chaotic, drug-addled festival high in the hills of Yorkshire, Kit is dragged back into their world. But the dream is over – and he is determined to take control of his life once and for all… Part mindbending puzzle-box, part kaleidoscopic nightmare, Whiteadder/Wolfspider can be read forwards or backwards, upside down or right-side up. A haunting, visionary and exhilarating epic about the death of the Sixties dream, the comedown of the decaying Seventies, music, mythology and failed utopias, it is a triumphant work by one of the most exciting writers at work today.

November, 1971. Berlin, Germany. Opening night. Klaus Kinski, Germany’s most controversial actor, steps into the spotlight to a crowd of thousands. After years of making movies abroad, he has returned to the stage for a much-publicized one-man performance about Jesus Christ. As the crowd turn on him and violence is threatened, it is also very nearly his last. After this week, he will never perform on stage again. Exactly fifty years later, a hypochondriac writer, housebound by winter snowstorms, becomes fixated with video footage of Kinski at his most manic. In this forensic analysis, he strays into the darker corners of modern culture, and finally begins to understand the compulsive urge that drives artists to the edge of sanity in their pursuit of perfection. Jesus Christ Kinski is a novel about a film about a performance about Jesus. It is a daring act of literary ventriloquism, a meditation on censorship, creativity, loneliness – and just how far our tolerance is tested by bad people who make great art.

A bold and brilliant short work by the author of the Goldsmiths Prize-winning CuddyNovember, 1971. Berlin, Germany. Opening night. Klaus Kinski, Germany’s most controversial actor, steps into the spotlight to a crowd of thousands. After years of making movies abroad, he has returned to the stage for a much-publicized one-man performance about Jesus Christ. As the crowd turn on him and violence is threatened, it is also very nearly his last. After this week, he will never perform on stage again. Exactly fifty years later, a hypochondriac writer, housebound by winter snowstorms, becomes fixated with video footage of Kinski at his most manic. In this forensic analysis, he strays into the darker corners of modern culture, and finally begins to understand the compulsive urge that drives artists to the edge of sanity in their pursuit of perfection. Jesus Christ Kinski is a novel about a film about a performance about Jesus. It is a daring act of literary ventriloquism, a meditation on censorship, creativity, loneliness – and just how far our tolerance is tested by bad people who make great art. Praise for Benjamin Myers‘One of our finest, and most deftly imaginative, writers’ i news ‘Radical and gorgeous’ Max Porter‘A writer of extraordinary and incandescent talent’ Alex Preston

A warm, tender and funny story about unlikely friendships, second chances, and the magic of soul music **Selected as a book of 2024 by the Guardian, New Statesman and Good Housekeeping**'A book of rare charm by a writer who understands the magic of music' Ian Rankin'An entertaining tale of grit, fecklessness and Northern Soul' Daily Telegraph'The book you didn't know you need' Bobby Palmer'A tale of soul music and second chances' Guardian'The laureate of friendship, a chronicler of unexpected, transformative connection' Wendy Erskine'A meditation on grief, love, and the redemptive power of music' Observer____________________________________Dinah has always lived in Scarborough. Trapped with her feckless husband and useless son, her one release comes at her town’s Northern Soul nights, where she gets to put on her best and lose herself in the classics. Dinah has an especial hero: Bucky Bronco, who recorded a string of soul gems in the late Sixties and then vanished off the face of the earth. When she manages to contact Bucky she can’t believe her luck. Over in Chicago, Bucky Bronco is down on his luck – and has been since the loss of his beloved wife Maybelle. The best he can hope for is to make ends meet, and try and stay high. But then an unexpected invitation arrives, from someone he’s never met, to come to somewhere he’s never heard of. With nothing to lose – and in need of the cash – Bucky boards a plane. And so Bucky finds himself in rainy Scarborough, where everyone seems to know who is – preparing to play for an audience for the first time in nearly half a century. Over the course of the week, he finds himself striking up new and unexpected friendships; and facing his past, and its losses, for the very first time.'A writer who continues to build a rich and bold body of work on his own terms' Ronán HessionWise, hilarious and profound, Rare Singles is an unforgettable story about the power of music and friendship to bring us back to ourselves.

Dinah has always lived in Scarborough. Trapped with her feckless husband and useless son, her one release comes at her town's Northern Soul nights, where she gets to put on her best and lose herself in the classics. Dinah has an especial hero: Bucky Bronco, who recorded a string of soul gems in the late Sixties and then vanished off the face of the earth. When she manages to contact Bucky she can't believe her luck. Over in Chicago, Bucky Bronco is down on his luck - and has been since the loss of his beloved wife Maybelle. The best he can hope for is to make ends meet, and try and stay high. But then an unexpected invitation arrives, from someone he's never met, to come to somewhere he's never heard of. With nothing to lose - and in need of the cash - Bucky boards a plane. And so Bucky finds himself in rainy Scarborough, where everyone seems to know who is - preparing to play for an audience for the first time in nearly half a century. Over the course of the week, he finds himself striking up new and unexpected friendships; and facing his past, and its losses, for the very first time. Wise, hilarious and profound, Rare Singles is an unforgettable story about the power of music and friendship to bring us back to ourselves.

A warm, tender and funny story about unlikely friendships, second chances, and the magic of soul music **Selected as a book of 2024 by the Guardian, New Statesman and Good Housekeeping**'A book of rare charm by a writer who understands the magic of music' Ian Rankin'An entertaining tale of grit, fecklessness and Northern Soul' Daily Telegraph'The book you didn't know you need' Bobby Palmer'A tale of soul music and second chances' Guardian'The laureate of friendship, a chronicler of unexpected, transformative connection' Wendy Erskine'A meditation on grief, love, and the redemptive power of music' Observer____________________________________Dinah has always lived in Scarborough. Trapped with her feckless husband and useless son, her one release comes at her town’s Northern Soul nights, where she gets to put on her best and lose herself in the classics. Dinah has an especial hero: Bucky Bronco, who recorded a string of soul gems in the late Sixties and then vanished off the face of the earth. When she manages to contact Bucky she can’t believe her luck. Over in Chicago, Bucky Bronco is down on his luck – and has been since the loss of his beloved wife Maybelle. The best he can hope for is to make ends meet, and try and stay high. But then an unexpected invitation arrives, from someone he’s never met, to come to somewhere he’s never heard of. With nothing to lose – and in need of the cash – Bucky boards a plane. And so Bucky finds himself in rainy Scarborough, where everyone seems to know who is – preparing to play for an audience for the first time in nearly half a century. Over the course of the week, he finds himself striking up new and unexpected friendships; and facing his past, and its losses, for the very first time.'A writer who continues to build a rich and bold body of work on his own terms' Ronán HessionWise, hilarious and profound, Rare Singles is an unforgettable story about the power of music and friendship to bring us back to ourselves.

**Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2023****Winner of the Winston Graham Historical Prize****Shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize****Chosen as a book of the year 2023 by The Times, Guardian, Telegraph and New Statesman**‘An epic the north has long deserved’ FINANCIAL TIMES ‘A sensational piece of storytelling … A singular and significant achievement’ GUARDIAN‘Marvellous, artful, enchanted’ DAILY TELEGRAPH'Cements Myers’s standing as one of our finest, and most deftly imaginative, writers' I NEWSThe triumphant new novel from the Walter Scott Prize-winning author of The Gallows Pole and The OffingCuddy is a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patron saint of the North of England. Incorporating poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts to create a novel like no other, Cuddy straddles historical eras - from the first Christian-slaying Viking invaders of the holy island of Lindisfarne in the 8th century to a contemporary England defined by class and austerity. Along the way we meet brewers and masons, archers and academics, monks and labourers, their visionary voices and stories echoing through their ancestors and down the ages. And all the while at the centre sits Durham Cathedral and the lives of those who live and work around this place of pilgrimage – their dreams, desires, connections and communities.

____________________ Soon to be a TV series co-produced by the BBC and A24, directed by Shane Meadows and starring Tom Burke, George MacKay and Thomas Turgoose WINNER OF THE 2018 WALTER SCOTT PRIZE ____________________ ‘Powerful, visceral writing, historical fiction at its best. Benjamin Myers is one to watch’ - Pat Barker ‘Phenomenal’ - Sebastian Barry ‘Superb’ - The Times ____________________ From his remote moorland home, David Hartley assembles a gang of weavers and land-workers to embark upon a criminal enterprise that will capsize the economy and become the biggest fraud in British history. They are the Cragg Vale Coiners and their business is ‘clipping’ – the forging of coins, a treasonous offence punishable by death. When an excise officer vows to bring them down and with the industrial age set to change the face of England forever, Hartley’s empire begins to crumble. Forensically assembled, The Gallows Pole is a true story of resistance and a rarely told alternative history of the North. ____________________ 'One of my books of the year … It’s the best thing Myers has done' - Robert Macfarlane, Big Issue Books of the Year

'In this folksy, magnetic tale, two outsiders seek healing and enlightenment by creating crop formations in a Wiltshire field ... A memorable hymn to beauty' OBSERVER'The pleasures of this bountiful novel are like a glass of cool water on a parched summer day' THE TIMESEngland, 1989. Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men – traumatized Falklands veteran Calvert, and affable, chaotic Redbone – set out nightly in a clapped-out camper van to undertake an extraordinary project. Under cover of darkness, the two men traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns. As the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation – and that an unlikely and beautiful friendship has taken root as the wheat ripens from green to gold.

A BOSTON GLOBE BOOK OF THE YEAR "An epic human tale that feels as if it was ripped from English folklore. One in which questions of friendship, creatiive expression, and the life purpose collde with modern British history. A must-read for every Anglophile."--Roger Bennett, Men in Blazers, author of (Re)Born in the USA Summer 1989, deep in the English countryside -- during a time of mass unemployment, class war, and rebellion . . . . Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men -- Calvert, an ex-soldier traumatized by his experience in the Falklands War, and his affable, off-the-grid friend Redbone -- set out nightly in a decrepit camper van to undertake an extraordinary project, traversing the fields of rural England and creating crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns. And as the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation... Moving and exhilarating, tender and slyly witty, The Perfect Golden Circle is a captivating novel about the futility of war, the descruction of the English countryside, class inequality -- and the power of beauty to heal trauma and fight power.

**Chosen as a book to watch out for in 2023 by The Times, Observer, Guardian, Irish TImes and Scotsman**’An epic the north has long deserved’ FINANCIAL TIMES ’A sensational piece of storytelling ... A singular and significant achievement’ GUARDIAN’Marvellous, artful, enchanted’ DAILY TELEGRAPH’Cements Myers’s standing as one of our finest, and most deftly imaginative, writers’ I NEWSThe triumphant new novel from the Walter Scott Prize-winning author of The Gallows Pole and The Offing. Cuddy is a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patron saint of the North of England. Incorporating poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts to create a novel like no other, Cuddy straddles historical eras - from the first Christian-slaying Viking invaders of the holy island of Lindisfarne in the 8th century to a contemporary England defined by class and austerity. Along the way we meet brewers and masons, archers and academics, monks and labourers, their visionary voices and stories echoing through their ancestors and down the ages. And all the while at the centre sits Durham Cathedral and the lives of those who live and work around this place of pilgrimage - their dreams, desires, connections and communities.

What is the cost of our unchosen obligations? What is the cost of love? How do we pay, and where are the receipts kept? These are poems about love, fear, and hope. These are poems about fatherhood and about the things we bring to it from our own childhood. These poems explore how the past continues to live alongside and inside the present and what that means for who we are and who we will someday be.