Search

'Bad arse. Red Laal. If there did exist a Pakistani Don Corleone, then this was him.' M Y Alam's novel is a compelling tale of survival, honour and family values; it is at once a page-turning thriller and homage to his home city of Bradford. In Kilo and Red Laal, Alam has created characters beyond compare in contemporary British fiction.

Annie Potts is Dead marks the arrival of a brand new voice. Born and raised on inner-city streets, M.Y.Alam tells a story from a Britain we all thought existed, but were never quite sure how. We see events through the eyes of Ammy, a wannabe writer w

Khalil Khan was a good boy. A certain future awaited him until gangsters turned his world upside down. They shattered his safe family life with baseball bats but that's just the beginning. They turned innocent and honest Khalil into someone else: Kilo, a much more unforgiving piece of work.

The superhero of comic books and blockbuster movies might be a State-side phenomenon, with its conservative notions of 'truth, justice and the American way.' But the cultural DNA of the superhero arguably lies in a much older, more progressive, British tradition: the folk heroes of British protest history. In this unique experiment, ten authors have been charged with resurrecting this tradition: to spawn a new generation of present-day British superheroes to bring the fight back to these shores, and to more progressive causes. From the statue-toppling Bristolian with otherworldly powers, to the Essex resident protecting public spaces and parks, these characters prove that it is possible to create a new breed of superhero in ways that capture essential truths about the society we live in.

Millgarth Police Station reverberates with the early adrenalin-rush of a case they won't close for years. A teenage boy trails the city centre bars of the eighties in thrall to his hero - a Leeds United football hooligan. A single woman finds her frustrations with men confirmed speed-dating in a city re-invented as a party capital. Bringing together fiction from some of the city's most celebrated writers, The Book of Leeds traces the unique contours that fifty years of social and economic change can impress on a city. These are stories that take place at oblique angles to the larger events in the city's history, or against wider currents that have shaped the social and cultural landscape of today's Leeds: a modern city with both problems and promise.

Muslims comprise the UK's largest religious minority, and are the object of analysis and concern within various policy arenas and popular debates, including immigration, marriage and partner selection, social cohesion and integration. This study gathered insights, experiences and narratives from a group of young men that shed light on being a Bradfordian of Pakistani and Muslim heritage. It also highlights the policy context surrounding the men's attitudes toward various facets of their lives, including marriage, family, work, the city in general, and the neighbourhood in which they live.