CHILDREN · FICTION
Rosemary Hayes
Rosemary Hayes has written numerous books for children for a variety of age groups and in a variety of genres including fantasy and historical and contemporary fiction. She has a background in publishing, is a reader for a well known authors’ advisory service and also runs creative writing workshops for both children and adults. For more information visit her website at www.rosemaryhayes.co.uk
Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, stepped out of the doors of the George Inn, just as the watch bells of a myriad of warships and merchant vessels in Portsmouth Harbour began to chime the end of the Morning Watch-Eight Bells, and the start of the Forenoon-in a distant, jangly ting-tinging much like what a rider near London might hear from church bells of a Sunday morning.
— from Troubled waters
Most acclaimed
Troubled waters
Glasgow, 1961. At the age of twenty-one, Alison Craig lives a quiet, unassuming, but boring life. When her father died and her mother became bedridden with arthritis, Alison was forced to drop out of university and start working in a biscuit factory. While her colleagues and friends are all married or getting engaged, Alison still lives at home with her ailing mother while courting her childhood sweetheart, Bob, when she is able to leave the house once a week. But then Michael Boyce, her mother's handsome new English doctor, comes into Alison's life and sweeps her off her feet. New feelings of love and passion excite her, but she should have known that there would be obstacles to overcome before she could be truly happy. Jealousy, insecurity and mistrust plague the young couple, but will they ever be able to see past them and find happiness together at last?
Payback
From the child taunted by her playmates to the office worker who feels stifled in his daily routine, people frequently take out their pain and anger on others, even those who had nothing to do with the original stress. The bullied child may kick her puppy, the stifled worker yells at his children: Payback can be directed anywhere, sometimes at inanimate things, animals, or other people. In this book, the authors, an evolutionary biologist and a psychiatrist, offer a look at this phenomenon, showing how it has evolved, why it occurs, and what we can do about it. Retaliation and revenge are well known to most people. We all know what it is like to want to get even, get justice, or take revenge. What is new in this book is an extended discussion of redirected aggression, which occurs not only in people but other species as well. The authors reveal that it's not just a matter of yelling at your spouse "because" your boss yells at you. Indeed, the phenomenon of redirected aggression, so called to differentiate it from retaliation and revenge, the other main forms of payback, haunts our criminal courts, our streets, our battlefields, our homes, and our hearts. It lurks behind some of the nastiest and seemingly inexplicable things that otherwise decent people do, from road rage to yelling at a crying baby. And it exists across boundaries of every kind, culture, time, geography, and even species. Indeed, it's not just a human phenomenon. Passing pain to others can be seen in birds and horses, fish and primates, in virtually all vertebrates. It turns out that there is robust neurobiological hardware and software promoting redirected aggression, as well as evolutionary underpinnings. Payback may be natural, the authors conclude, but we are capable of rising above it, without sacrificing self-esteem and social status. They show how the various human responses to pain and suffering can be managed mindfully, carefully, and humanely.
Mike
1909
Mike Jackson is the youngest son of a family of excellent cricket players and the most promising batsman of them all. At Wrykyn, the public school his elder brothers once attended, his desire to prove himself as a cricketer is challenged by his apathy for studying and his penchant for mischief. In the second half of the novel, his poor academics result in his being sent to Sedleigh, where he immediately befriends Psmith, an eccentric monocle-wearing student in a similar situation. Together they navigate the social waters of a school that neither one of them wants to attend. Mike was one of P. G. Wodehouse’s earlier novels, and one of his personal favorites. In a preface to a later edition, he stated that the school setting allowed Psmith’s “bland clashings with Authority” to truly shine. The cricket scenes are memorable and exciting, but the meat of the story is in Mike and Psmith’s school escapades. Mike was originally published in The Captain magazine in two parts, Jackson Junior (published in 1953 as Mike at Wrykyn), and The Lost Lambs (also published later as Enter Psmith in 1935 and Mike and Psmith in 1953).