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he first few months of 2014 saw some of the worst storms Wales has seen in recent years. Dramatic pictures showed huge waves smashing the promenade in Aberystwyth, sea defences were broken and houses flooded. Most people stayed indoors. But one group of people were delighted and rushed for the sea. Some even made special trips to Wales to catch the worst of the storms. They were the international surfers who travel across Britain and beyond looking for massive waves. Tom Anderson from Porthcawl is one of them. He has travelled the world looking for good surf and has written guides about the best places.
New!
In 2014, it was a rare treat to surf the monster waves so close to home. “There’s no doubt that 2014 was an incredible year for storms,” says Tom Anderson. “Nothing like that has happened before. “I don’t think that I’ve seen waves like that in 20 years of surfing. The storms were so powerful, they were making waves in places where no one had surfed before.” The result of all this is Tom’s new book for the Quick Reads series, Code Black: Winter of Storm Surfing. The winter when Welsh waves rivalled those of Hawaii.
Catching the monster wave Code Black follows two people closely – a photographer called Claire and a young surfer called Ezra. They come together in Wales when Claire is there to record one of the greatest moments in Ezra’s life. “Claire was injured in a car accident 20 years ago,” says Tom Anderson. “Because she can’t surf any longer, she enjoys the sport by taking pictures with her camera. “The story follows the two through the winter until Ezra catches one of the biggest waves ever seen in south Wales and Claire takes his picture. “That’s the picture on the book’s cover.” Tom hopes that more people will take up surfing after reading Code Black. “Surfing is a great sport and you feel close to nature when you do it,” says Tom. But there’s a warning too – surfing can be dangerous, especially surfing the storms. Many of the places that Code Black describes are only for the most experienced!
New!
How to spoil St Valentine’s Day
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here are some things a man should never do and a woman should never stand for. One of those things is the start of a new novel in the Quick Reads series. It’s St Valentine’s Day and Alex is a woman who loves romance.
This is Beth Beth Reekles is like Alex in at least one way – she too is a student. Although she is famous for writing romantic stories for teenage girls, the author from Newport is studying a really hard-headed subject – Physics, at Exeter University. In 2013, when she was only 17, Time magazine chose her as one of the 16 most influential teenagers in the world. That was because of success as an author. She published her first novel on the wattpad
Sadly, her boyfriend decides to dump her on 14 February, her favourite day of the year. The story in Cwtch Me If You Can could have ended there. Alex, the main character in the novel, decides that she will never go out with a man again.
website when she was only 15. She was astonished when it got 19 million views and was later taken up by one of the big publishers. She hopes that Cwtch Me If You Can will reach loads of young people too and thinks that Quick Reads is a very good idea. “They’re easy to read; they don’t look challenging,” says Beth. “They’re a great way for getting people who aren’t all that confident in reading to pick up a book.” But they won’t find any secrets about Beth Reekles herself in the novel. “I don’t normally write about my personal experiences in my books,” she says. “But I like romance!”
“Alex is breaking her heart when her boyfriend breaks up with her, on St Valentine’s Day of all days,” explains the book’s author, Beth Reekles. “She’s not sure if she should have another relationship or not ... and on top of all this she is in college studying to try and get good grades.” But then she meets Sean ...
I wanted to be Sparky New! So Jason Mohammad did the next best thing – he got a job watching sport
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n his work with BBC Sports, Jason Mohammad has seen loads of Welsh stars at their best. Now he has written about some of his greatest heroes – his heroes as a child and now when Sport is part of his every day work. In My Sporting Heroes he writes about some of Wale’s most famous stars – Mark ‘Sparky' Hughes, Ryan Giggs, Sam Warburton, Ieuan Evans, Tanni Grey-Thompson, Joe Calzaghe and David Davies. But, says Jason, it was hard work to choose his favourites. “They are all people who deserve so much respect; they have done great things in their own sports.” “I hope that the balance is right between the stars of yesterday and today,” he explains. “When I was a child, I
used to watch Mark Hughes playing and used to think ‘I want to be Mark Hughes’.” ‘Then you have Sam Warburton who’s still playing rugby for Wales – I wanted to tell the story of how we almost won the World Cup.”
The stars and me In his work now, Jason meets many of the stars but there is a downside too. He has to admit one thing – when he’s working it’s hard to enjoy sport as much as he used to as a child. But there are no regrets. “My job is one of the best things you can do, apart from playing,” says Jason Mohammad. “I get the chance to watch sport in my work. “But, when you’re working, you can’t go to a match just to enjoy the atmosphere.”
Fun x 2 Jason Mohammad is very happy to have had the chance of writing one of the Quick Reads books. It has given him the chance to combine two of the things he enjoys – sport and books. “A few years ago I held a conference urging boys to read, so this is a big honour for me. “I wanted to make it fun to read. It’s not just about me – I wanted to write about the lives of people who watch sport in Wales and someone who broadcasts about it.”
Great stories
New! – on the field and off it
W
ith 100 caps for Wales and games for the British and Irish Lions, Gareth Thomas is one of the greatest rugby players ever to come from Wales. He was always a brave player – in the thick of things and using his strength to break through tackles and make some bone-crunching tackles of his own. But in recent years, the man known as ‘Alfie’ has been even more brave – he is one of the first ever top flight players to tell the world that he is gay. In his new book, Captain Courage, Gareth looks back on his rugby career which included scoring 40 tries for Wales and breaking the record for caps. His career spanned 17 years, including stints with clubs such as Bridgend, Celtic Warriors, Toulouse and the Crusaders. But he was best known for his spells playing with Cardiff and then the Cardiff Blues, and his ‘Ayatollah’ celebration
A book to help others In 2009 Gareth Thomas made the brave step of announcing he was gay – the first high profile rugby player to do so. He now works to try and help others
to get over their fears and problems through his anti-bullying work with schoolchildren. And he hopes that the story of his own personal struggles in Captain Courage will help others who are worried.
when scoring a try. ‘Alfie’ insists that it took a lot of practice and training, not only talent, to stay at the top level for so long. “There is no secret – you need to work hard, train hard and be more dedicated than everyone else.” Since retiring in 2011 the former Wales star has continued to be seen on screen, but often it has been very far from the rugby world. As well as appearing on a number of reality TV shows such as Dancing On Ice and Celebrity Big Brother, Gareth Thomas has played pantomime parts and played himself in the hit sit-com Stella. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I retired, but the journey I’ve been on is really exciting and I am enjoying every minute,” he says.
“I hope that by reading about my troubles people know they are not alone and can find courage in that,” he says. “If my story can help one person then it was all worth it.”
New for 2015! As well as the 8 new titles published in Wales, there are a further 6 new Quick Reads on sale throughout the UK and Ireland, £1 r.r.p. These include books by
© Mark Nixon 2013
some very popular writers. They are all guaranteed to get you hooked on books.
Dead Man Talking
Paris for One
Pictures Or It Didn’t Happen
Roddy Doyle
Jojo Moyes
Sophie Hannah
Pat had been best friends with Joe Murphy since they were kids. But five years ago they had a fight. A big one, and they haven’t spoken since --- till the day before Joe’s funeral. What? On the day before his funeral Joe would be dead, wouldn’t he? Yes, he would…
Nell is twenty-six and has never been to Paris. She has never even been on a weekend away with her boyfriend. Everyone knows she is just not the adventurous type. But, when her boyfriend doesn’t turn up for their romantic mini-break, Nell has the chance to prove everyone wrong. Alone in Paris, Nell meets the mysterious moped riding Fabien and his group of care free friends. Could this turn out to be the most adventurous weekend of her life?
Would you trust a complete stranger? After Chloe and her daughter Freya are rescued from disaster by a man who seems too good to be true, Chloe decides she must find him again to thank him. But instead of meeting her knight in shining armour, she comes across a woman called Nadine Caspian who warns her to stay well away from him. Chloe knows that the sensible choice would be to walk away but she is too curious. Can Chloe find out the truth without putting herself and her daughter in danger?
Red for revenge
Out of the Dark
Street Cat Bob
Fanny Blake
Adèle Geras
James Bowen
Two women, one man: code red for revenge... Maggie is married with two grown-up children. Her twenty-five year-old marriage to Phil has lost its sparkle. Carla is widowed. She understands life is short so she lives it to the full. But is her new romance all that it seems? When the two women meet in the beauty salon, they soon find they have more in common than the colour of their nails. The discovery that they are sharing the same man is shocking. How will Phil be taught a lesson or two he won’t forget?
Rob Stone comes back from the horrors of the First World War with a ruined face and a broken heart. Lonely, unable to forget the things he has seen, and haunted by the ghost of his dead captain, all that Rob has left is a picture of the captain’s family. Rob sets out to find them, hoping that by giving them the picture, he can bring peace to the captain’s ghost – and to his own troubled heart.
When James Bowen found an injured street cat in the hallway of his sheltered housing, he had no idea just how much his life was about to change. James had been living on the streets of London and the last thing he needed was a pet. Yet James couldn’t resist the clever tom cat, whom he quickly named Bob. Soon the two were best friends, and their funny and sometimes dangerous adventures would change both their lives, slowly healing the scars of each other’s troubled pasts. Street Cat Bob is a moving and uplifting story that will touch the heart of anyone who reads it.
New for 2015!
Trenches and s e k i b , s e n i l t e k pic and ghosts! l
Picket-line MP!
The timing of O’r Streic i’r Senedd (From Strike to Parliament) is spot on. It’s the story of one of the women whose character became a star in the new film Pride. Siân James, a miner’s wife during the Great Strike of 1984, is now a Labour MP and it’s all down to the way the strike fired her up and gave her confidence. And part of her story is the story of Pride and how lesbian and gay campaigners from London defied the odds to make friends with a mining village.
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The Welsh language version of Quick Reads offers just as much variety, info and fun. The new books this year go from war in the trenches of France to a strike in the Valleys of Wales, as well as offering a horror story and the first ever Welsh language book about cycling.
Wheels from Wales beat the world l
Wales has world-beating cyclists – like Nicole Cooke or Geraint Thomas – but that’s not a new thing. Phil Stead’s book about cycling Ar Dy Feic (On Your Bike) tells about three Welsh cyclists who were the best in the world more than 100 years ago – a story that’s been forgotten. That’s the history, but Phil Stead, who is a keen cyclist himself, also has pieces about the world’s great races and tips about where best to go cycling in Wales.
l It was the name that
The every day heroes
inspired the novelist Bethan Gwanas – Bryn y Crogwr (Hangman’s Hill).
Lots of people know about Lloyd George and his part in winning the First World War. But Cymru a’r Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf (Wales and the First World War) tells the story of the ordinary heroes, the men who fought and the women who cared for them – all in their own words. Historian Gwyn Jenkins and Gareth William have brought together all kinds of eye witness accounts of the war that was supposed to end all wars.
And when she found that there was a real story behind the name, from the time of the great Welsh prince Owain Glyndw^ r, her mind ran riot. In the novel, one of Glyndw^ r’s henchmen comes back to haunt a young Welshman and makes him do terrible things. And the name of the novel? Bryn y Crogwr, of course!
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Look out for these special Quick Reads titles at bookshops and libraries across Wales. The books are available in your local book shop, library or from www.gwales.com For more info about Quick Reads in Wales visit www.readingwales.org.uk; follow us on Twitter @quickreads2015 and on Facebook.