Novella Express #2

Edition #2 of Novella Express



featuring:



• The Hardest Winter by Carole Hamilton



• Heaven Burns by Jen McGregor



• Just Like Him To Die by Douglas Bruton



Novella Express is a book series publishing novellas submitted from around the world.



CONTRIBUTING TO EDITION #2:



Carole Hamilton writes stories which often focus on individuals who live in the fringes of our society



Jen McGregor is a playwright who specialises in using horror tropes to explore painful experiences, and will tell anyone who holds still long enough about her journey from gothic heroine to monster.



Douglas Bruton has won many prizes for his short fiction. His children's novel, The Chess Piece Magician was published by Floris Books (2009); his literary fiction debut, Mrs Winchester's Gun Club, was published by Scotland Street Press (2019); and Blue Postcards, longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2022, was published by Fairlight Books (2021).



THE NOVELLAS IN EDITION #2:



THE HARDEST WINTER by Carole Hamilton



The Hardest Winter by Carole Hamilton is a beautifully and realistically drawn novella, showing the hardships of farming life in Scotland today.



Fiona and Drew live and work on a Scottish cattle farm. Beauty contrasts with the never ending chores and muck.



Fiona is suffocated by the monotony of the endless tasks both in the farmhouse and outside. The continual preparation of meals, cleaning, feeding calves and helping with farm chores leaves her exhausted.



Birth and death infiltrate her life till the harshest of winters with painful circumstances arrive. With this adversity there is always hope of a new future just as winter will always turn to spring.



The ritual of the farming year, ploughing, planting and harvesting are linked to love, loss and new life. Fiona's life is caught in this exquisite and intricate web.