A bereaved mother loiters at the school gates; an old man searches through books for the secret to eternal life; a bus driver is obsessed with one of his passengers; a young woman's happiness causes suffering for the rest of the world. In these award winning stories the characters' lives have ceased to flow smoothly. They have lost marriages, children, health, control, but still they try to cope. They find safety in numbers, reassurance in killing; they worship a small girl. These are stories of great traction and voltage, rich in dark humour, beauty and bravura. The False River is a collection for our splintered times.

How do we deal with the aftermath of catastrophe? It's ten years since a deadly pandemic swept the globe, and five years since the last new recorded case. Society came close to collapse, but now there's a vaccine - though not a cure - people are only dying in the usual ways. Lukas, along with several hundred other infected people, is quarantined in a camp on a mountain of Central Asia. With nothing to do, and no future to speak of, the inmates pass the time drinking, taking drugs, joining a cult, making are or having sex with whoever they can. Rebecca is a scientist who worked on the vaccine that saved the world. Having lost her partner in the years of chaos, she keeps testing the vaccine against mutations of the virus, because it seems inevitable that there will be a next time. Quarantine is a thrillingly intelligent novel about how we - as individuals, and as a society - deal with the aftermath of catastrophe.

After isolated terrorist incidents in 2015, the Chinese leadership has cracked down hard on Xinjiang and its Uyghurs. Today, there are thought to be up to a million Muslims held in 're-education camps' in the Xinjiang region of North-West China. One of the few Western commentators to have lived in the region, journalist Nick Holdstock travels into the heart of the province and reveals the Uyghur story as one of repression, hardship and helplessness. China's Forgotten People explains why repression of the Muslim population is on the rise in the world's most powerful one-party state. This updated and revised edition reveals the background to the largest known concentration camp network in the modern world, and reflects on what this means for the way we think about China.

One of the few Western commentators to have lived in the region, journalist Nick Holdstock travels into the heart of the province reveals the Uyghur story as one of repression and hardship. With Islamic terrorism in China likely to increase over the next decade, how the Party responds will have global repercussions. China's Forgotten People explains why terrorism is on the rise in the world's most powerful one-party state, and what this means for the way we think about China.