Page 111 - NEW TITLES APRIL - JUNE 2024

ADVANCE INFORMATION

Apples In The

Dark

John Alex Taylor

KEY SELLING POINTS
The first of a series of novels of love, loyalty and mutual support where characters’ abilities matter more
than their disabilities.
This novel portrays the impact of epilepsy on a person’s social confidence.
The author draws on his own experience of epilepsy, and on the way it skewed his expectations when
younger, and also on his professional experience in social care.

Alice and her mother meet a stranger on a Cardiff bus, and then minutes later, find her on a bench in a crowded
street, panicking. Rachel is not easy to befriend, but ten-year-old Alice makes that her mission. For Alice, it’s
simple: the three of them need each other. But adults never see the obvious.

Alice needs an ally who knows how it feels to be excluded for her intelligence. Her mother Beth has neglected
her artistic career in the struggle to support Alice. But no friendship is easy for scientist Rachel. She fights
against imposing her disability, epilepsy, on Beth and Alice.

Rachel’s seizures trigger painful childhood memories for Beth, and Alice is torn between loyalty to her mother
and standing by Rachel. She shows insight beyond her years as she draws them together, and her loyalty to her
new friend never wavers. Rachel’s condition worsens, and her friends stand by her as she faces the dark.

John Alex Taylor has worked for most of his with adults with learning disabilities. He has used storytelling
skills in his work, and his writing grew from this storytelling. He didn’t write much until he was fifty, in 2004,
but now writing has taken over his life.

Publication Date: 28th June 2024 £10.99 ISBN: 9781805144342
Thema subject category: FBA – Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary
paperback 198 x 129 mm 408 pp Portrait Author location: Abergavenny

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