Long Shadows High Hopes The Life And Times Of Matt Johnson The The

From life in an East End pub to fame on a global stage, Matt Johnson – founder, songwriter and visionary lynchpin of iconic band The The – created some of the most engaging, challenging and enduring music of his era. Then he walked away from it all. In this authorised biography Neil Fraser has drawn back the curtain on a brilliant enigma. Neil Fraser has gained unprecedented access to Matt Johnson and his The The archives. He has conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with Johnson and those involved in his life and work, including Johnny Marr, Johanna St Michaels, JG Thirlwell and Tim Pope. Long Shadows, High Hopes reveals the whole story, from early days to glory days. It examines the man behind the iconic songs and the acclaimed albums – an outspoken political lyricist and visionary force who made a success of living on his own terms. With the announcement from Matt Johnson in in 2017 that The The would appear again, this book reveals what has prompted him to step out of the long shadows after so long.

Royalty Protection Team officer Robert Finlay is looking forward to a quieter life, when two police officers are killed and their links to his own past becomes clear ... putting everyone's lives in danger. A startlingly authentic debut ... first in a page-turning, searing new series. **NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER** **Shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger** **LoveReading Debut of the Month** 'Terse, tense and vivid writing. Matt Johnson is a brilliant new name in the world of thrillers. And he's going to be a big name' Peter James 'From the first page to the last, an authentic, magnetic and completely absorbing read' Sir Ranulph Fiennes ____________________ 2001. Age is catching up with Robert Finlay, a police officer on the Royalty Protection team based in London. He's looking forward to returning to uniform policing and a less stressful life with his new family. But fate has other plans. Finlay's deeply traumatic, carefully concealed past is about to return to haunt him. A policeman is killed by a bomb blast, and a second is gunned down in his own driveway. Both of the murdered men were former Army colleagues from Finlay's own SAS regiment, and in a series of explosive events, it becomes clear that he is not the ordinary man that his colleagues, friends and new family think he is. And so begins a game of cat and mouse – a wicked game, in which Finlay is the target, forced to test his long-buried skills in a fight against a determined and unidentified enemy. Wicked Game is a taut, action-packed, emotive thriller about a man who might be your neighbour, a man who is forced to confront his past in order to face a threat that may wipe out his future, a man who is willing to do anything to protect the people he loves. But is it too late? ____________________ 'Utterly compelling and dripping with authenticity. This summer's must-read thriller' J S Law 'Out of terrible personal circumstances, Matt Johnson has written a barnstormer of a thriller. Nothing is clear-cut in a gripping labyrinthine plot, which – despite thrills and spills aplenty – never falls short of believable' David Young 'Wicked Game has the authenticity I look for in a thriller. While the plot kept me turning pages, the characters made me care. Matt writes like a man who has lived it' Kevin Maurer 'Johnson litters his tale with the plotting equivalent of incendiaries: cops we don't quite trust, a career that came abruptly to an end, a secret needing to be kept ... Gripping stuff' New Welsh Review

In 1962, exactly fifty years before the Olympic Games rolled into Stratford, East London, the Johnson family took over the Two Puddings, the most notorious pub in the area. Due to a combination of its cream-tiled walls and the volume of blood spilt, it was also known locally as the Butcher s Shop . Within a few short years, it had become one of London s busiest and most fashionable pubs, its hugely popular music nights acting as a magnet for a large and colourful cast of disparate characters who would regularly descend upon the premises, including renowned actors, writers, singers, musicians, champion boxers, infamous gangsters, television personalities, and World Cup-winning footballers. By the time the Puddings closed its doors for the last time, nearly four decades later, landlord Eddie Johnson was the longest serving licensee in London. Tales from the Two Puddings is a poignant, at times hilarious, look back upon a lost world of East End eccentrics, local villainy, vindictive policemen, punch ups, and practical jokes, all now lying buried beneath the concrete blocks and sterile shopping centres of the new Stratford.

The intimate biography of the iconic DJ who was lost too soon. Tim Bergling was a musical visionary who, through his sense for melodies, came to define the era when Swedish and European house music took over the world. But Tim Bergling was also an introverted and fragile young man who was forced to grow up at an inhumanly fast pace. After a series of emergencies resulting in hospital stays, he stopped touring in the summer of 2016. Barely two years later, he took his own life. Tim - The Biography of Avicii is written by the award-winning journalist Måns Mosesson, who through interviews with Tim's family, friends and colleagues in the music business, has intimately gotten to know the star producer. The book paints an honest picture of Tim and his search in life, not shying from the difficulties that he struggled with.

In this World Fantasy Award-winning novel of magic and kungfu, four siblings battle rival clans for honor and power in an Asia-inspired fantasy metropolis. *Named one of TIME's Top 100 Fantasy Books Of All Time ​* World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, winner Jade is the lifeblood of the island of Kekon. It has been mined, traded, stolen, and killed for -- and for centuries, honorable Green Bone warriors like the Kaul family have used it to enhance their magical abilities and defend the island from foreign invasion. Now, the war is over and a new generation of Kauls vies for control of Kekon's bustling capital city. They care about nothing but protecting their own, cornering the jade market, and defending the districts under their protection. Ancient tradition has little place in this rapidly changing nation. When a powerful new drug emerges that lets anyone -- even foreigners -- wield jade, the simmering tension between the Kauls and the rival Ayt family erupts into open violence. The outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones -- and of Kekon itself. Praise for Jade City: "An epic drama reminiscent of the best classic Hong Kong gangster films but set in a fantasy metropolis so gritty and well-imagined that you'll forget you're reading a book." --Ken Liu, Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author "A beautifully realized setting, a great cast of characters, and dramatic action scenes. What a fun, gripping read!" --Ann Leckie, Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author "An instantly absorbing tale of blood, honor, family and magic, spiced with unexpectedly tender character beats." --NPR The Green Bone Saga Jade City Jade War Jade Legacy

Tenement Kid is Bobby Gillespie's story up to the recording and release of the album that has been credited with 'starting the 90's', Screamadelica. Born into a working class Glaswegian family in the summer of 1961, Bobby's memoirs begin in the district of Springburn, soon to be evacuated in Edward Heath's brutal slum clearances. Leaving school at 16 and going to work as a printers' apprentice, Bobby's rock n roll epiphany arrives like a bolt of lightning shining from Phil Lynott's mirrored pickguard at his first gig at the Apollo in Glasgow. Filled with 'the holy spirit of rock n roll' his destiny is sealed with the arrival of the Sex Pistols and punk rock which to Bobby, represents an iconoclastic vision of class rebellion and would ultimately lead to him becoming an artist initially in the Jesus and Mary Chain then in Primal Scream. Structured in four parts, Tenement Kid builds like a breakbeat crescendo to the final quarter of the book, the Summer of Love, Boys Own parties, and the fateful meeting with Andrew Weatherall in an East Sussex field. As the '80s bleed into the '90s and a new kind of electronic soul music starts to pulse through the nation's consciousness, Primal Scream become the most innovative British band of the new decade, representing a new psychedelic vanguard taking shape at Creation Records. Ending with the release of Screamadelica and the tour that followed in the autumn, Tenement Kid is a book filled with the joy and wonder of a rock n roll apostle who would radically reshape the future sounds of fin de siècle British pop. Published thirty years after the release of their masterpiece, Bobby Gillespie's memoir cuts a righteous path through a decade lost to Thatcherism and saved by acid house.

In one minute, delivering a not guilty verdict at the end of the trial for a disturbing murder of a child, Matthew Rice’s life begins to unravel. The very structures his life is built upon start to collapse. Matthew retreats to Quarry Island in Georgian Bay, where he loses his wallet in a boating mishap. Among the pieces of identification he needs to replace is his birth certificate, but he’s informed it’s not on file. His birth certificate was a forgery. Not only have the foundations of his life given way, his very identity is shattered. Matthew learns that the woman who raised him was his father’s second wife, and that his real mother died when he was a baby. What began as a search for a replacement for his birth certificate becomes a search for a woman who was a trailblazing journalist. His search takes him on a journey to Sydney, Australia, Boston, and Dublin; it results in the possession of the journals his mother kept up to her dying days in 1952. These entries are a window into a fascinating woman and a distant time not so different from our own. Still unsure of his place in a world that has changed in ways he has difficulty completely understanding, he returns to Quarry Island in Georgian Bay, where he stocks up on books and a case of good Scotch to sit out the end of his world as he knew it. But fate has more in store for Matthew than he can understand.