{"title":"Verse Chorus Press","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781959163015","title":"Mice 1961","description":"MICE 1961 recounts a pivotal day in the fraught relationship of two orphaned sisters through the eyes of their obsessively observant housekeeper. Will Jody be able to cope if her younger sibling Mice, subject to constant harassment in their community for her unusual appearance and habits, leaves home? How will the all-watching Girtle convey her fierce attachment to them both? When they cross paths with an unsettling stranger at a neighbourhood party, the three women are driven toward momentous changes. Set in southern Florida at the peak of Cold War hysteria, Mice 1961 is a powerful meditation on belonging and separateness, conformity and otherness.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44203713429682,"sku":"9781959163015","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781959163015_18d2b082-7fee-4e81-9808-c2d204a2f486.jpg?v=1786030162"},{"product_id":"9781891241420","title":"Make-Up For Murder","description":"As a schoolgirl Maisie Ryan was often bullied by her peers, but a decade later she's a TV star, the glamorously renamed Rianne May. When she's invited to be guest of honour at Maryhill College's annual reunion, she has a chance to dazzle her old tormentors the way she does her adoring television audience. But as she's holding court at the reunion tea party, old grudges and new jealousies swirl around her - and suddenly one of her tablemates drops dead, poisoned. Was Rianne the intended victim? She evidently thinks so - only that day she'd received a death threat. Rianne flees the scene and cannot be found. Who is the murderer? And what has happened to Rianne May? Fortunately, the school's principal is Mother Paul, who immediately calls for Detective Inspector Savage. She assisted him (or was it the other way around?) in solving a previous case (Faculty of Murder), and between them the unlikely pair will unravel this one too. But there will be more drama - and more deaths - before the murderer is uncovered. Moving between the brash new realm of Australian television in the early 1960s and the cloistered atmosphere of a girls' convent school, Make-Up for Murder is the third and final Mother Paul novel and a must-read for all fans of June Wright's blend of intrigue, wit, and psychological suspense.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44582870483122,"sku":"9781891241420","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781891241420_bd4c6367-226f-4d67-a9e6-8614863323d7.jpg?v=1786029245"},{"product_id":"9781959163053","title":"The Music Never Died","description":"What if Biggie Smalls had survived the assassin's bullets and reinvented hip-hop with the help of an avant-garde luminary? If Amy Winehouse had shaken off her demons and channeled her inner Barbra Streisand into a new life on a tropical island? If Jeff Buckley had been pulled alive from the Mississippi by a devilish hand and become a pioneer of Southern black metal? With accompanying illustrations by Jeb Loy Nichols, Mark Swartz's stories imagine what might have happened to these stars and more - including Jimi Hendrix, Gram Parsons, Janis Joplin, Marvin Gaye, Lhasa de Sela, Lil Peep, and Jim Morrison - if their untimely deaths had been averted, or somehow had not been the end of their lives. Booklist praised Mark Swartz's fiction for its 'lithe satirical humor, impressive intellectual dimension, and sly provocation,' and these qualities are on full display in these at once heartfelt and borderline absurd tales.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44583493697714,"sku":"9781959163053","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781959163053_fab3c4c3-b0bc-441a-953c-5f5b88179bd2.jpg?v=1786030163"},{"product_id":"9781959163077","title":"Dressed In Black","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe first full-length history of the Shangri-Las, one of the most significant--and most misunderstood--pop groups of the 1960s.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSisters Mary and Betty Weiss, together with twins Mary Ann and Marguerite Ganser, were schoolgirls when they formed the Shangri-Las in 1963, and had a meteoric rise to fame with songs like \"Leader of the Pack\" and \"Remember (Walking in the Sand).\" Their career was cut short for reasons largely beyond their control, derailed by the machinations of Mafia-linked record executives, and heartbreak and tragedy followed. Historian Lisa MacKinney marshals an impressive array of new evidence to tell the Shangri-Las' story, dispelling many myths and long-standing mysteries along the way.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEqually importantly, \u003ci\u003eDressed in Black\u003c\/i\u003e radically rewrites the accepted narrative of the Shangri-Las' place in rock history. As young women, they were permitted little agency within a male-dominated industry that viewed teenagers as fodder to be manipulated and exploited by producers, songwriters, and label owners. For decades, this has served as an excuse for critics to deny the musical input of the group members, to trivialize the Shangri-Las as a \"girl group,\" and to assign their work a lesser rank in the canon of \"authentic\" rock and roll. MacKinney's great achievement here is to foreground the Shangri-Las' considerable abilities and musicality, and establish the centrality of their \u003ci\u003eperformance\u003c\/i\u003e of their songs to the group's underappreciated artistic achievement.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is not to deny the critical role in the group's success of professional songwriters (including Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry) and writer\/producer George 'Shadow' Morton, a pioneering and eccentric figure whose self-mythologizing has generated a level of obfuscation that rivals that of the Shangri-Las themselves. MacKinney's clear-sighted account reveals Morton in a completely new light--and as part of a complex ecosystem of musical relationships. Morton wrote and produced highly emotional material specifically for the Shangri-Las because he knew they had the skills to make his mini-operas not only believable, but enthralling. The group members, particularly Mary Weiss, channeled personal anguish into their extraordinary performances, which are central to the songs' impact--no less so than for such classic singers as Ella Fitzgerald and Elvis Presley, who also relied on producers and songwriters for their body of work. The Shangri-Las' impassioned delivery elicited a massive response from their audience of fellow teenagers at the time and has continued to connect profoundly with audiences ever since. MacKinney backs up these arguments with in-depth analysis of key Shangri-Las' recordings, and makes a powerful case that their achievements warrant a far more prominent place for the Shangri-Las in the history of popular music.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54926189035893,"sku":"9781959163077","price":23.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781959163077_915f793d-f516-456e-8677-4b8ad0a624b8.jpg?v=1786030165"},{"product_id":"9781959163091","title":"Nothing But Murders And Bloodshed And Hanging","description":"Mary Fortune's dramatic crime stories, set in colonial-era Australia, comprise the first detective fiction series written by a woman; they also provide a vivid account of life and death in a country in rapid flux, as the huge population increase following the discovery of gold in 1851 led to great riches for some, poverty and violence for others. Born in Ireland in 1832, Fortune emigrated to Australia during the goldrush, which she observed firsthand and depicted in many of her stories. A bigamous marriage to a policeman gave her inside knowledge to write about crime, and over the next 40 years she produced more than 500 stories, serialized under the title The Detective's Album in the mass-circulation magazine The Australian Journal. She tackled subjects such as murder, armed robbery, bootlegging, and sexual violence with a frankness unprecedented for a woman in the 19th century. This book collects 18 of Fortune's finest stories, while also showcasing her range as a writer-from melodrama and Gothic horror to social realism and what we now call noir. Mary Fortune lived a precarious existence-repeatedly jailed for public drunkenness, homeless on occasion, unable to prevent her illegitimate son George drifting into a life of crime. She preserved her privacy by publishing under pseudonyms, most commonly 'Waif Wander' (or 'W.W.')-it is a measure of her fame at the time that a racehorse and a greyhound were both named after Waif Wander. But her anonymity meant that when she died in 1911, she was almost lost to literary history. Only recently has her true identity and her extraordinary life story emerged. This collection, appearing concurrently with a biography, restores her to her rightful place as a path-breaking crime writer.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54926353203573,"sku":"9781959163091","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781959163091_edc7237e-58bd-4119-8714-6fb23373630d.jpg?v=1786030166"},{"product_id":"9781959163114","title":"Ultrazone","description":"William S. Burroughs is dead and buried, but he can find no rest. His ghost is roaming the backstreets of Tangier in search of a missing manuscript. During his chaotic years living there in the 1950s Burroughs not only wrote Naked Lunch, he also spewed out a mass of much darker material that he then lost - hundreds of pages in which he wrestled with his demons. He fears his longtime nemesis, the Ugly Spirit, has been lurking in those pages ever since - and is now emerging from its slumber. To help him find and destroy the infected manuscript before the Ugly Spirit can spread its evil in the world, Burroughs enlists fellow ghosts and old Tangier pros Paul Bowles and Brion Gysin, Joseph Dean and Brian Jones, as well as an inept witch, an elderly sorcerer, and an enterprising gang of macaque monkeys. Their adventures - often comic, sometimes ghastly - involve vanishing corpses, a magic carpet, giant black centipedes and a word virus that is about to go pandemic.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55205928370549,"sku":"9781959163114","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781959163114_bfe7b8a4-3c74-440a-828f-f9615df6d97b.jpg?v=1786030167"},{"product_id":"gods-own-singer","title":"God's Own Singer","description":"Gram Parsons sang like an angel and dressed like a country star. Sadly he was neither, at least not in his lifetime. But before his tragically early death he played a key role in bringing together the worlds of rock and country music. Born into a wealthy but ill-fated Southern family, Parsons started out playing folk with the Shilos, whose story is told here in depth for the first time. After founding the International Submarine Band during his brief time at Harvard, Gram headed to Los Angeles, where he turned the Byrds on to country music, before quitting to form the Flying Burrito Brothers. Later he recorded two magnificent solo albums and helped launch bandmate Emmylou Harris towards her subsequent fame. Yet none of Gram's musical ventures captured the imagination of the record-buying public, and his dreams of stardom were repeatedly frustrated. He nevertheless lived out the rock 'n' roll lifestyle to the full; by the time his masterpiece, Grievous Angel, was released in September 1973, he had been dead for four months. The rich musical legacy of what Parsons called his 'cosmic American music' paved the way for 70s country-rock acts such as the Eagles and also the later alternative-country movement exemplified by Wilco. But regrettably, Parsons's musical output and his pioneering role are often not what he is most known for. He has become an mythological figure, remembered less for his prodigious talents than for his prodigious drug intake, his friendship with the Rolling Stones, his premature death, and, perhaps most titillating of all, for the manner in which his corpse was cremated in the California desert by two drunken friends bent on honouring a promise. An accomplished musician himself, Jason Walker places the focus squarely on Parsons's music. He spent years interviewing Gram's friends and collaborators for this biography, first published in 2002 and reissued here in a thoroughly revised edition. And for this reissue he turned up an important source no previous researcher had found - Michael Martin, Gram's sometime 'valet' and one of only two participants in the abduction and unofficial cremation of Gram Parsons's body. He had quite a story to tell . . .","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57510192513397,"sku":"9781953835024","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781953835024.jpg?v=1787130525"},{"product_id":"life-after-death","title":"Life After Death","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eLife After Death\u003c\/em\u003e is a deep dive into the subcultures of Los Angeles and London in the 1980s as glam turned to punk and goth. Susan Compo captures the lives of aspiring musicians, scenesters, and obsessive fans-lives in which reality is a constant threat to cherished illusions, and death, while never far away, is sometimes not the end of the story.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57510193365365,"sku":"9781953835048","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781953835048.jpg?v=1787130526"},{"product_id":"stranded","title":"Stranded","description":"Stranded offers the inside story of the emergence of the Saints, the Birthday Party, the Laughing Clowns, the Go-Betweens, Nick Cave, the Moodists, the Scientists, and many more great Australian bands, told by a writer who witnessed it all first-hand.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57510194184565,"sku":"9781953835086","price":22.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781953835086.jpg?v=1787130527"},{"product_id":"pretty-things","title":"Pretty Things","description":"Susan Compo's narrative voice-sharp-tongued and allusive-has earned her comparisons to those great satirists of the pre-war demimonde, Dorothy Parker and Dawn Powell, and her characters display a similarly irresistible blend of smart-ass wit, despair, and whistling-in-the-dark bravado. Following two highly praised story collections, Compo's debut novel, first published in 2001, offers a satirical and very funny take on LA's celebrity culture industry. Talent agent Giselle Entwistle has her hands full juggling her oddball roster of clients. There's Adon, struggling to make the transition from teen idol to mature star with the aid of a goatee; and would-be rock impresario Hedda Hophead, 'aggressive as junk mail and just as relentless.' There's country singer Len Tingle, whose career has as many ups and downs as his love affair with Giselle; and Tupperware demonstrator Troy Harder, 'a living legend in food storage,' who Giselle fears might want to plastic-wrap her. Not to mention child prodigy belter Frances Culligan, who suddenly goes missing. And then there's Pandra, whose haunting memoir of growing up in suburban Orange County and coming of age back in '70s glitter-era Los Angeles (platform boots, Rodney's English Disco) forms a book within this book. Giselle hopes to get Pandra's true story published though it does bring up the matter of a possible murder...","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57510194970997,"sku":"9781953835130","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781953835130.jpg?v=1787130528"},{"product_id":"malingering","title":"Malingering","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAs the Goth subculture that flourished in the 1980s and '90s experiences a long overdue resurgence of interest, the time is definitely ripe to rediscover Susan Compo's short stories, hailed at the time as \"like Raymond Carver through Goth-coloured glasses\" (\u003cem\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/em\u003e).\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs participant and observer, Compo was immersed in the music and fashion scenes in London and Los Angeles during those years, and writes about them with wit and compassion but also brutal honesty, capturing in her fiction the exhilaration and the despair of the times, the desires and foibles of its protagonists.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat makes her stories exceptional, though, is the way the surface reality they detail so sharply is shot through with a curious dyed-black magic: a daylight-shunning bedsit dweller is visited by a mysterious lover whose angel wings keep getting in the way; a pizza-delivery boy is waylaid, Gulliver-like, by tiny ghosts who literally stitch him up; a foursome out clubbing are abruptly transmuted into Ken and Barbie dolls, missing their most precious parts . . .\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57510195757429,"sku":"9781953835192","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781953835192.jpg?v=1787130529"},{"product_id":"clyzia","title":"Clyzia","description":"Mary Fortune is now widely acknowledged as a pioneer in the field of crime fiction, whose stories offer a vivid account of life and death in colonial-era Australia. She tackled subjects like murder, armed robbery, and sexual violence with a frankness unprecedented for a woman in the nineteenth century, in styles ranging from melodrama to social realism and what is now called noir. Fortune's detective stories-like those of Edgar Allan Poe-often have an undercurrent of horror running through them, reflecting the influence of the Gothic tradition from Ann Radcliffe to Mary Elizabeth Braddon. So it's no surprise that Fortune made an original contribution of her own to the horror genre with Clyzia, which has been called 'a late and extreme flowering of the Gothic.' When dissolute aristocrat Chatham Adderfield seduces Calista Heckstone, daughter of Zela, 'Queen of the Gipsies,' then betrays her to marry a woman of property, a narrative of corruption and revenge is unleashed that will enmesh three families and blight their lives down through the generations. After Calista dies in childbirth, her daughter Clyzia is groomed by Zela to be the instrument of the family's vengeance. Physically infirm, but skilled in alchemy and magic, Clyzia is hell-bent on the destruction of the Adderfield clan. Fortune uses figures and tropes of the Gothic novel-the occult, women in jeopardy, madness and delirium, the past haunting the present-to illuminate the devastation wreaked on women's lives in a world defined by patriarchal power and class privilege, but also to show how women themselves are warped by this world-if they are not to become helpless victims, must they be pitiless killers? Originally serialised in 1866-67 in the mass-circulation Australian Journal, Clyzia has never been reprinted. This first publication in book form includes the 14 illustrations that appeared in the original serial, as well as an introduction by author and literary historian Lucy Sussex, co-author (with Megan Brown) of a biography of Mary Fortune and co-editor (again with Megan Brown) of the collection of Fortune's crime fiction, Nothing But Murders and Bloodshed and Hanging (Verse Chorus Press), which was selected by the New York Times as one of 2025's 'best classic mystery reissues.'","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57555356156277,"sku":"9781953835215","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781953835215.jpg?v=1788791228"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/publisher-verse-chorus-press.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}