Salt Publishing

A Perfect Explanation gets to the heart of what it is to be bound by gender, heritage and tradition. In a world of privilege, truth remains the same; there are no heroes and villains. Here, in the pages of this extraordinary book where the unspoken is conveyed with vivid simplicity, lies a story that will leave you reeling.

Summer 1923. The modern world. Orphaned Lucy Marsh climbs into the back of the old army truck and is whisked off to the woods, where the funny men live. If she can only avoid all the hazards on the path, she may just survive into a bright new tomorrow.

Salt is to publish a visceral novel of childhood, memory, and the inheritance of masculine guilt by Andrew Cowan - a Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year and winner of the Betty Trask Award. It is the sixth novel from the celebrated Director of the Creative Writing programme at UEA.

Centred upon the Villa Hibiscus, a guesthouse on the beautiful southern coast of Sri Lanka, this expansive and multi-layered debut traces the life of Padma, her stepfather, Gerhardt, and the lives of the many guests coming to stay, each seeking a better life and independence, free of oppression.

The discovery of the skeleton of a young woman causes Detective Inspector Tim Yates to reopen the macabre case of Dorothy Atkins, who was imprisoned for murdering her mother-in-law more than thirty years before. Was Dorothy wrongfully imprisoned? Exactly how many murders have there been - and how many killers?

After ministering to fallen women in Victorian London, Evelyn has suffered a nervous breakdown and finds herself treated by the Water Doctors in the imposing Wakewater House, a hydropathy sanatorium.

On the surface, his move to the isolated village on the coast makes perfect sense. But the experience is an increasingly unsettling one for Timothy Bucchanan. A dead man no one will discuss. Wasted fish hauled from a contaminated sea. The dream of faceless men. Questions that lead to further questions. What truth are the villagers withholding?

Following a family tragedy, Jessie Noon moved from the Fens to the Midlands and now lives in the Scottish Borders with a cat, a dog and - she is convinced - a ghost in the spare room. Her husband walked out almost a year ago, leaving a note written in steam on the bathroom mirror, and Jessie hasn't seen her son for years.