Stephen Davies

This is Poetry that goes a bit left of centre. It is a strange mix of free verse and rhyme that takes you to dark places in the mind and the universe which surrounds it. Amid the dark there are rays of light to bring balance and evoke a smile. The extraordinary thing about the poems collected here is that they should be the product of only one mind. It is as if 60 separate writers were given the task of producing a single piece on any subject and...

The Covid-19 pandemic was, and remains, a global disaster – claiming countless lives and wreaking economic havoc that still reverberates today. But it could have been worse. Much worse. Author Stephen Davies contends the planet 'dodged a bullet' this time around. But he warns this was no black swan event: The conflicts in the Ukraine and the Middle East already threaten global stability. And the next existential threat to mankind could happen much...

Watch out! The Locusts are coming... A terrifying army of locusts is making its way along the edge of the Sahara desert, devastating crops in one village after another. Gidaado's village is next. When the locusts arrive Gidaado will need all his wits about him in order to survive. He will need his friend Sophie. He will need his three-stringed guitar. And he will need an albino camel as fast as the harmattan wind...

After carrying a bowl of milk on her head across dunes and the River Niger, and even up a mountain, without spilling a drop despite many distractions, Penda gets a surprise when she arrives at the grasslands to give her father his lunch.

Kadija is the music-loving daughter of a guardian of the library in the ancient city of Timbuktu, Ali is a former shepherd boy, trained by Islamist militants--and both are caught up in the war in Mali and on opposite sides of the stuggle to save the sacred Sufi manuscripts that the militants want to destroy.

"Leah Baxter is a genius. She's a few wins away from becoming a junior chess grandmaster, and her life is on course to achieve everything her mom and coach want for her. But Leah is at stalemate, grieving for her father, and feeling suffocated. She decides to make the ultimate sacrifice and quit chess. But chess doesn't want to quit her. Soon Leah discovers her new gambit: chessboxing, a fierce hybrid sport which will test her body and mind to their...

"Hilda encounters her very first troll, negotiates with some very persnickety elves, and seeks to discover the mystery behind the giant who only appears at midnight as she faces the prospect of leaving her beloved wilderness home with her mom for Trolberg City." --

"Hilda and her mom have settled into their new home in the city of Trolberg. Pining for her magical friends and the wonder-filled wilderness, Hilda is finding it hard to fit in, especially at school. But when Hilda makes a new friend she soon begins to uncover some surprising secrets... Perhaps this concrete labyrinth is a place where wonderful and magical things can happen too?" --

"Meet Hilda -- explorer, adventurer, avid sketchbook-keeper, and friend to every creature in the valley! Well ... almost every creature ... Newly initiated into the Sparrow Scouts, Hilda and her friends are ready to explore and document the wilderness. Yet as luck would have it, there is a dark, menacing creature afoot near Trolberg, and Hilda is whisked back home to safety. Even so, intrigue seems to follow our blue-haired heroine wherever she goes,...

When a legendary ex-cop is murdered in L.A., the pressure's on to find the killer. Lt. Frank Duffy needs his best detective on the case, but his best detective, Ash Levine, quit a year ago. A tenacious, obsessive detective, Ash resigned after Latisha Patton, the witness in a homicide case he was working, was murdered. Without his job, Ash is left unanchored-and consumed with guilt that he somehow caused Latisha's murder. When he's asked to rejoin...