RESULTS

A middle-aged man with a guilty taste for schoolgirls looks for a way to end his shame; a hotel receptionist begins a sexual adventure with shattering consequences; a young man is troubled by a persistent itch behind his shoulder-blades; a young African boy confronts his bullying class-mates in a surprising way; and a sculptor is asked to make a realistic life-size woman by a Japanese client. In these and the other stories in this collection, there is a delight in the dark, the grotesque, and the uncanny. In each of the stories, most of the characters are Black, and it both does and doesn't matter that this is so. As Courttia Newland's previous books have led us to expect, he is a meticulous, insightful observer of West London's Black communities, of patterns of speech, fashions, pleasures and the pressures of racism and exclusion and seeking to escape. These are communities (and stories) in which crime, violence and drugs are part of the realities of life. But what is important here is not the sociology, but the form, in particular Courttia Newland's reinvigoration of the classic, popular short story form with its play with narrative twists and the unexpected. Drawing inspiration from everything from traditional horror movies to the contemporary sophistication of Japanese works in this genre.

A classy inner-city thriller that examines the seedier side of British life, moving between the pole-dancing clubs of Soho to the more threatening suburban landscape of Eltham. Using the crime genre to explore disaffection, alienation and racial tension, Snakeskin is coolly plotted, a classy urban detective novel about life on the margins. 'Raymond Chandler would have been proud of the denouement. [Newland] says as much about racism and life in the margins as in his earlier work.' Face

IC3 ('Identity Code 3' - police code for black) is an anthology of commissioned writing from black Britain divided into three sections (first, second and third generation). It focuses on short stories, poems, essays and memoirs.