Harryboy is lowlife, scum. Trouble starts for him when the Deaners move into his boarding house. Quicker than he can place a bet on a dog, Harryboy finds himself the admired hero and evil genius of the family, particularly for the child Gregory. But Harryboy is also the victim of a secret guilt of his own, something unknown even to his doting sister. The complications resulting from this involve him and the Deaners in even deeper trouble and culminate in a thrilling chase when Harryboy's luck threatens to desert him.

January 1944, the south coast of England. The Fifth Battalion, Wessex Regiment wait patiently and nervously for the order to embark. There is boredom and fear, comedy and pathos as the men - all drawn from different walk of life - await their order to move. With an economy of language that belies its emotional impact, From the City, From the Plough is a vivid and moving account of the fate of these men as they embark for Normandy and advance into France, where the battalion suffers devestating casulaties.

Spanning the Sicilian countryside to the brothels of Ostend, and the final book in Alexander Baron’s War Trilogy, The Human Kind is a series of pithy vignettes reflective of the author’s own wartime experiences. From the interminable days of training in Britain to brutal combat across north-west Europe, the book depicts many of the men, women – and, in some cases, children – affected by the widespread reach of the Second World War. In his trademark spare prose, Baron’s work provides an emotive and incisive snapshot into the lives of myriad characters during this tumultuous period in history. Spanning the Sicilian countryside to the brothels of Ostend, and the final book in Alexander Baron’s War Trilogy, The Human Kind is a series of pithy vignettes reflective of the author’s own wartime experiences. From the interminable days of training in Britain to brutal combat across north-west Europe, the book depicts many of the men, women – and, in some cases, children – affected by the widespread reach of the Second World War. In his trademark spare prose, Baron’s work provides an emotive and incisive snapshot into the lives of myriad characters during this tumultuous period in history.

It’s 1943. The allied invasion of Sicily. In a lull in the fighting, a British battalion march through the summer heat into the bombed-out city of Catania, to be greeted by the women, children and old men who remain there. Yearning for some semblance of home life, the men begin to fill the roles left by absent husbands and fathers. Unlikely relationships form; tender, exploitative even cruel, and each doomed to end when the battalion moves on. Many lives interleave in There’s No Home but at its heart is the love that develops between Graziella, a bright young mother, and Sergeant Craddock, whose faltering Italian and rough attempts at seduction mask a deeper sympathy. In this sensitive and authentic portrayal of men and women thrown together by chance and conflict, Baron offers us a rare insight into the emotional impact of war.

In the spring of 1949, Jack Agass belatedly returns from the war to the working class street in Islington where he grew up. A proud, supportive community with a pub and a barber shop, and a common love of The Arsenal. But the street has changed. Jack eventually finds his footing but he's haunted by a yearning for his old childhood friend, Rosie Hogarth, and for the pre-war security and certainties she represents. Rosie has moved out and up—living bohemian-style in Bloomsbury. He thinks she's selling sex, but it turns out her motive is political.

1911, London. The police collaborate with racketeers to keep an uneasy peace, periodically broken by violent gang wars. Dido Peach comes to prominence by breaking the unwritten rules of the street. For a brief time, he rules the underworld. His fall is spectacular, shaking even the callous and vicious neighbourhood in which he is trapped.