Quarry Lane is the lane in which John meets his future girlfriend Vivienne. Their relationship, like the flowers of the lane, blossoms and they look forward to a future of promises. But they reckon without the implications of a mining disaster which leaves John's father crippled; he is also distraught, as he believes he has been the cause of the accident. The family begins to experience financial difficulties, with the result that John has to leave school and find work before he can complete his sixth form education. This spoils his chances of gaining the place at university that he is so keen to achieve. The repercussions are also significant for John's relationship with Vivienne. Her mother, the wife of a bank manager, is strongly opposed to her daughter associating with a miner's son. She is devastated by the news that her daughter's boyfriend has had to take a job in the local mine and seemingly committed himself to a life in the red brick rows of a mining village. Determined to break up John and Vivienne's relationship, she persuades her husband to send Vivienne abroad to a finishing school. The story explores sensitively the tough life of a Yorkshire mining family in the 1950s and how John strives to fulfil his responsibilities to his family. At the same time he seeks to overcome the opposition of Vivienne's mother to his relationship with her daughter.

'Halls' stories show that even in zero-hour, austerity-battered Britain, the tenderness and warmth of human connection exists. The Quarry is, in the end, a testament to this messy truth - how love, hate, hope and fear have always lived on the same street' GLEN BROWN, author of Ironopolis You can see it in them; all that anger inside, it's toxic. Throw some drink into it and everything bubbles over. People say that they never see it coming, the swing of the fist that kicks it all off, but I can tell. In these interconnected short stories, we meet the men living on the Quarry Lane estate in west London. These are men at work, at the pub, at home, with their families, lovers and friends. Men grappling with addiction, sexuality and the corrosive effects of toxic masculinity. From a bouncer at the local nightclub, to a postman returning to the streets of his youth, and a young man thinking of all the things he'd say and do to the father who left him behind, this startling debut reveals the complex inner lives of individuals whose voices are too often non-existent in fiction. Powerful and impressive, The Quarry marks the arrival of a bold new voice.

The Streets of Louth offers an A-Z history of virtually every road within the town, from ancient streets such as Upgate and Mercer Row through to modern residential developments such as Anthony Crescent. Designed for the general reader and anyone who has ever wondered how the streets of Louth have changed and developed over time, it not only looks at the archaeology, buildings and businesses of each of the individual streets, but also the people who used to live on them, from brewers and fish fryers through to jewellers and prostitutes. The book also makes use of local court reports from the nineteenth century to bring the Victorian history of the streets of Louth alive, with crimes and accidents recorded that range from the mundane to the truly shocking!