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The Gallows Pole (2017)

The Gallows Pole is a historical novel set in 18th century Yorkshire. It focuses on the true story of the Cragg Vale Coiners, a ragtag bunch of local men under the leadership of '“King” David Hartley who scrape a living together by “clipping” coins to melt down and produce new forgeries. The book is set on the cusp of industrialisation, in the dying days of an era when a charismatic man could hold effective dominion over a valley, in a relatively closed community maintaining a form of isolation from the rules and laws of the land. The exciseman William Deighton enters as an outsider, vowing to take down Hartley and his hugely successful enterprise. As the web closes in on the Coiners, in the background cotton mills are rising, turnpikes slicing their way through the countryside, and a way of life being lost to history.

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Piranesi (2021)

Piranesi is a fantasy novel set largely in an imaginary ‘House’, composed of seemingly infinite halls filled with unique statues. Its basement level contains an ocean, teeming with sealife, and its upper level clouds, giving it its own weather system as well as an array of birds. Other than this, its only inhabitants seem to be the titular character ‘Piranesi’ (though he knows this not to be his real name) and a mysterious ‘Other’ who Piranesi meets a few times a week. Piranesi believes himself to have always lived in the House, has no awareness of a world outside of its existence, and believes the only humans ever to have existed to have been himself, The Other, and fifteen sets of skeletal remains he has cataloged in his extensive travels through the halls.

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