She only left her daughter in the car for a minute; just a quick minute whilst she ran into the shop. She barely thought twice about making the decision, but it soon began to consume her every thought. And not just her thoughts, but those of every neighbour, police officer and social security worker in a fifteen mile radius. But this is her child. Surely she knows best? After she'd made the move to a small town in Scotland, the rolling hills and blustery beaches seemed to be the perfect backdrop for her and her four year-old daughter, Emily, to start again. It wasn't always easy just the two of them, but Liz was sure that she could manage this time. And now this? Sometimes, one mistake is all it takes to unravel everything. Cat Step is a lyrically sparse novel about judgement, intergenerational relationships, community, class, and the expectations that we place on mothers. With sharp prose Alison Irvine has crafted a compassionate narrative that compels you to read on.

Spanning the five decades since they were built up out of the cabbage fields, This Road is Red is a novel about the thousands of residents who have lived there. Each of their lives are linked to another by a character, an incident or a place with lives overlapping and connecting in a mixture of drama and domesticity. There is a fire, a suicide, a birth, a marriage, a death and a near-death. A couple of ghosts, several fights, a handful of jellies and an overdose. The book is a record of how the events of the last five decades have impacted on a community.