Parthian Books: 86 books

On a frozen winter’s day, Mary Bicknor, the companion of a wealthy old woman, marries Easter Probert, whose child she is expecting. She cries bitterly throughout the service, which has been engineered by the vicar. Easter has no wedding ring for her, and though he lends her a silver ring of his...

‘But what if we are all fictioneers? What if we all continually make up the stories of our lives? (…) Our life-stories are ours to construct as we wish, within or even against the constraints imposed by the real world…’ J.M. COETZEE A writer in her late thirties retreats to Landes in...

An inspiring travelogue, this memoir follows a man who goes to the end of the world, beyond Patagonia, to Tierra del Fuego. In search of lost tribes, he pushes himself to the limits, sailing the waters of Coleridge's albatross and entering the watercolors' blue horizons to sit on Robinson Crusoe's imaginary shore.

Romping from Barcelona to Sicily and back again, this enjoyable novel is full of sun, sex, desire, and infidelity. While in Barcelona translating a bestselling Italian book, Blanca identifies so much with the main character—a woman whose husband is unfaithful—that she begins to doubt her own husband....

A riotous, unsentimental picture of life in a small Wales town, this portrait of a working-class woman of the Victorian era explores the hardships and joys of family life. Saran, the novel's female protagonist, faces hard times in the industrial work climate of South Wales at the turn of the century and deals with the devastating effects of World War I.

Leonora Brito's literary career, though cut tragically short, produced some of the most unique, culturally diverse and fresh fiction the Welsh writing scene has encountered. Though Cardiff-born, Brito's work was frequently shaped by her Afro-Carribean roots, and her stories are characterised by an...

Extremely controlled studies of constrained desire, loneliness, and incomplete relationships, these tales fostered Edwards' development of a nonrealist world of imagery and symbolism in her own language. The ten stories of Rhapsody, together with the three previously uncollected pieces added to this...

A rich depiction of the conflicting cultural, social, and political values in Wales in the 1900s, this powerful and exceptional narrative follows Trystan Morgan as he comes of age. An artist at heart, Trystan abandons his dreams of painting the Welsh countryside to instead fulfill a pledge to his...

One year after Darwin’s explosive publication of The Origin of Species, sisters Anna and Beatrice Pentecost awaken to a world shattered by science, radicalism, and the stirrings of feminist rebellion—a world of charismatic religious movements, Spiritualist séances, bitter loss, and medical trauma....

A poignant and subtle novella, this story unfolds slowly, revealing a mother and daughter in opposite corners of the planet, both experiencing their own personal revelation. Following the tragic death of her boyfriend, 19-year-old Amy escapes to Los Angeles, where a man lay in wait for her: a man...

In What I Know I Cannot Say / All That Lies Beneath, Dai Smith combines a novella and a linked section of short stories to create a dazzling fictional synthesis that takes the reader on a tour of the South Wales Valleys during the twentieth century. All That Lies Beneath is white-knuckle fiction ride:...

Making connections between the Suez Canal War in 1949 and the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this novel about a British couple's disastrous marriage is told by their daughter, who has discovered her mother's diary written at the end of World War II. Ailsa Roberts, the writer of the diary,...

This tender and moving novel follows Ellie, a shy girl growing up in modern Zimbabwe who has a close attachment to her grandmother Evelyn. One day, Ellie receives the news that her beloved grandmother has been brutally murdered, apparently without reason. The narrative then backtracks to Rhodesia...

The Library of Wales’ Story anthologies feature the very best of Welsh short fiction, written amid the political, social, and economic turbulence of 20th-century Wales and beyond. More than 80 outstanding works from the classics of Dylan Thomas, Rhys Davies, Arthur Machen, and Gwyn Thomas to the...