In this definitive collection, Julia Darling's indomitable women emerge laughing, shouting and snarling. Darling's cast of aunties, sisters, mothers and grandmothers do battle with house keys and knitting needles as they deal with cancer, teen angst and tyranny. Their heartbreakingly funny stories portray women making their own worlds - of survival, love and loyalty. This exquisite book will enfold the reader in an origami of vivacious, witty narratives, exploring the fault lines in everyday life. `Julia Darling is a true original. Her particular way of looking at the world is infectious. Time and time again, the reader thinks, yes, that's it, exactly. Here's a whole cast of characters who will win over your heart.' Jackie Kay

'Perhaps it will be all right, I thought. Perhaps, when I go to work, there will be peace, and Theobald will stop jumping from foot to foot, and Eva will no longer be beautiful.'Gert Hardcastle leads a life of isolation cataloguing the Egyptian artefacts at a northern museum - until the First Letter drops onto her desk. That's the day she meets ballroom-dancing, iris-eyed Eva, and her careful, stilted existence begins to unravel.As Gert begins her strange courtship of Eva, she looks back on her eccentric, surreal upbringing - the rambling house with its resident Victorian ghost, her peculiar, telepathic twin, her father George with his family crocodile farm, and her beautiful, neglectful mother Jean, whose letters continue to disturb her peace. Award-winning novelist Julia Darling's classic tale of the search for love, identity and acceptance is funny, poignant and bizarre by turns, as Gert gradually learns that her journey to the future must go via the past.This commemorative edition of the long listed Orange Prize (1998) Crocodile Soup is a celebration of the work and life of the extraordinary woman that was Julia Darling.

'This book of poems is for all of us who go through illness, deal with doctors, hospitals, and experiences such as bereavement and ageing, and who struggle to find language to describe the suffering we have to go through. Medical language baffles and alienates us. It's a harsh, unforgiving vocabulary that often seems to bear no relationship to our own emotional predicament. In this uplifting anthology we see how poetry can give us metaphors and images to help us understand our feelings and communicate them to people around us. This is a book that should be in every waiting-room, and should be by the bed of every GP and consultant. It may inspire you to write poetry, and also help you to find order in the chaos of ill health. By giving us words, poetry can help cure us.' - Julia Darling & Cynthia Fuller

The original Northern Powerhouse, Newcastle upon Tyne has witnessed countless transformations over the last century or so, from its industrial heyday, when Tyneside engineering and innovation led the world, through decades of post-industrial decline, and underinvestment, to its more recent reinvention as a cultural destination for the North. The ten short stories gathered here all feature characters in search of something, a new reality, a space, perhaps, in which to rediscover themselves: from the call-centre worker imagining herself far away from the claustrophobic realities of her day job, to the woman coming to terms with an ex-lover who's moved on all too quickly, to the man trying to outrun his mother's death on Town Moor. The Book of Newcastle brings together some of the city's most renowned literary talents, along with exciting new voices, proving that while Newcastle continues to feel the effects of its lost industrial past, it is also a city striving for a future that brims with promise.

This collected edition commemorates the 10th anniversary of Julia Darling's death, and includes a substantial selection of unpublished work. Jackie Kay writes: "The poems are funny, irreverent, moving and never sentimental. You can recognise yourself in them, recognise your family. They are warm, full of compassion; [...] a shining bright light."

Gert Hardcastle is thirty-something and unlucky in love. She is also estranged from her mother. As Crocodile Soup opens, she thinks she has found "the One" -- the enigmatic Eva, who serves coffee at the cafeteria in the museum where Gert works as a curator cataloging Egyptian artifacts. As Gert embarks on her hilarious and poignant pursuit of Eva, she looks back on her eccentric, childhood through a series of vivid and surreal flashbacks: her obsessive twin, Frank, with whom she communicates telepathically; her father, George, who vanished to Africa to salvage the family crocodile farm; her vain, neglectful mother, Jean; and the family ghost -- a Victorian poet who haunts the attic.

In a narrative studded with relentless humor and giddy self-deprecation, Julia Darling introduces an endearing cast of characters whose shared and wayward search for love is irresistible.