<p>Tim Cleverley inherits a failing pub in Wales, which he plans to rescue by enlisting an American pulp novelist to concoct an entirely fabricated "mystery" about Gerald Manley Hopkins, who composed "The Wreck of the Deutschland" nearby. Blending the real stories of Hopkins and the shipwrecked nuns he wrote about with a contemporary love story, while casting a wry eye on the Dan Brown industry, <i>The Hopkins Conundrum</i> is a highly original mix of commercial fiction, literary biography, and satirical commentary.</p>

The Hopkins Conundrum: A Tragic Comedy About Gerard Manley Hopkins and Five Shipwrecked Nuns

Literature & Fiction

Edge, Simon

Humor & Satire

Lightning Books

<p><div>When gay, pleasure-seeking Stefano Cartwright is almost killed by a wave while at the beach, his journey up a tunnel of light convinces him that God exists after all, and he may need to change his ways if he is not to end up in hell. When God happens to look down his celestial telescope and see Stefano, he is obliged to pay unprecedented attention to an obscure planet in a distant galaxy, and ends up on the greatest adventure of his multi-eon existence. <i>The Hurtle of Hell</i> combines a tender, human story of rejection and reconnection with an utterly original and often very funny theological thought-experiment, in an entrancing fable that is both mischievous and big-hearted.</div></p>

The Hurtle of Hell: An Atheist Comedy Featuring God and a Confused Young Man from Hackney

<p>It is 1777, and England’s second-greatest portrait artist, Thomas Gainsborough, has a thriving practice a stone’s thrown from London’s royal palaces, while the press talks up his rivalry with Sir Joshua Reynolds, the pedantic theoretician who is the top dog of British portraiture. Fonder of the low life than high society, Gainsborough loathes pandering to the grandees who sit for him. However, he changes his tune when he is commissioned to paint King George III, his German queen and their vast family. He discovers a taste for royal company—but who will be chosen as court painter, Tom or Sir Joshua? Meanwhile, two and a half centuries later, a badly damaged painting turns up on a downmarket antiques TV show being filmed in Suffolk. Could the monstrosity really be, as its eccentric owner claims, a Gainsborough? If so, who is the sitter? And why does he have donkey’s ears?</p>

A Right Royal Face-Off: A Georgian Comedy Featuring Thomas Gainsborough and Another Painter

<p><div>Under tennis courts at a ruined Suffolk abbey, archaeologists make a thrilling find: the remains of St Edmund, king and martyr. He was venerated for centuries as England's patron saint, but his body has been lost since the closure of the monasteries. Culture Secretary Marina Spencer, adored by those who don't know her, jumps on the bandwagon. Egged on by her downtrodden adviser Mark Price, she promotes St Edmund as a new patron saint for the United Kingdom, playing up his Scottish, Welsh, and Irish credentials. Unfortunately these credentials are a fiction, invented by Mark in a moment of panic. As crisis looms, the one person who can see through the whole deception is Mark's cousin Hannah, a dig volunteer. Will she blow the whistle or help him out? And what of St Edmund himself, watching through the baffling prism of a very different age? Splicing ancient and modern as he did in <i>The Hopkins Conundrum</i> and <i>A Right Royal Face-Off</i>, Simon Edge pokes fun at Westminster culture and celebrates the cult of a medieval saint in this beguiling and utterly original comedy.</div></p>

Anyone for Edmund?

<p><div>A satirical comedy featuring Christopher Columbus, a tech billionaire, and a global delusion. Mel Winterbourne is the founder of a small, single-issue charity in the obscure field of mapmaking. Its success in achieving modest aims attracts the attention of handsome tech billionaire Joey Talavera, who evicts Mel and hijacks her charity for his own ends: to convince the world that the earth is flat. Although his chances of doing so seem slim, Flat Earthery is an idea whose time has come. With the historical reputation of Christopher Columbus in free-fall, old-style 'globularism' becomes heretical for a new generation of angry, anti-Establishment free-thinkers. Teachers, politicians, and celebrities face ruin if they refuse to sign up to the new orthodoxy. For Mel, something must be done. Teaming up with a pariah tabloid journalist and a faded writer of gross-out movie comedies, she sets out to challenge Talavera and his deranged beliefs. Will history and the billionaire's own family origins be their unexpected ally? Using his trademark mix of history and satire to poke fun at modern foibles, Simon Edge is at his razor-sharp best in a caper that may be much more relevant than you think.</div></p>

The End of the World is Flat

Eye Books

Long Melford Stained Glass Colouring Book

Arts & Photography

<p>From the author of The End of the World is Flat<br />
The Terg wars are over. Now meet the Yerfs<br />
'Brilliant! Perfectly captures both the absurdity and horror of this madness'. Gareth Roberts.<br />
When Tara Farrier returns to the UK after a long spell as an aid worker in war-torn Yemen, she’s hoping for a well-deserved rest.<br />
But a cultural battleground has emerged while she’s been away, and she’s unprepared for the sensitivities of her new colleagues at an international thinktank. A throwaway reference to volcanic activity millions of years ago gets her into hot water and she discovers she belongs to the group reviled by fashionable activists as ‘Young Earth Rejecting Fascists’, or ‘Yerfs’. Faster than she can say ‘Tyrannosaurus Rex’, she is at the centre of a gruelling legal drama.<br />
In the keenly awaited follow-up to his acclaimed The End of the World is Flat, Simon Edge stabs once again at modern crank beliefs and herd behaviour with stiletto-sharp satire.</p>

In The Beginning

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

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Books by Edge, Simon