Longlist, 2025 WCoNA Book of the YearWith a foreword by Jennifer Richmond-BryantIn October 1948, a seemingly average fog descended on the tiny mill town of Donora, Pennsylvania. With a population of fewer than fifteen thousand, the town’s main industry was steel and zinc mills—mills that continually emitted pollutants into the air. The six-day smog event left twenty-one people dead and thousands sick. Even after the fog lifted, hundreds more died or were le...

I grew up in the Highlands of Scotland and I became a musician while still at School. Then I made my first musical instrument at the age of just 13 years, an Appalachian Dulcimer. I joined the Royal Air Force at the age of 18. I served for 9 years and worked at many of our secret establishments. Even during my military career, I continued to play in bands as well as to write music. When time would allow, I made guitars for myself, although most of these ended up in my friend’s hands. With ...

I grew up in the Highlands of Scotland and I became a musician while still at School. Then I made my first musical instrument at the age of just 13 years, an Appalachian Dulcimer. I joined the Royal Air Force at the age of 18. I served for 9 years and worked at many of our secret establishments. Even during my military career, I continued to play in bands as well as to write music. When time would allow, I made guitars for myself, although most of these ended up in my friend’s hands. With ...

The first novel entitled Altered Perceptions is the first part of a trilogy featuring Andy McPhee and Team Seven of the SIS Black Door Operations. SIS does exist, as do Black Door Ops. What goes on at CDE Porton Down is part factual and part fiction. Although this story is fiction, or you could say factional, the enriched uranium and plutonium did go missing from FBR Dounreay. The Secret Royal Navy program, the Vulcan Project, did take place between the RN and Rolls Royce. There were two m...

'This book is about my journey through the Australian prison system. You'll have heard a few of these stories before, but not like this. It's a step-by-step history of my twenty-three years behind bars; what day to day life was really like in jail, what I did to survive and why I'll never go back. It's not a nice story. I was not a nice prisoner ...' Mark 'Chopper' Read is over fifty years old and has spent almost half that time in prison. He is a man who knows the Australian prison system...