Seren Books

08/01/2026

Coming soon: Weaving a poetic narrative of transformation – from girl to woman – Rupinder Kaur Waraich’s tender and laugh-out-loud collection ‘Tigress with Wings’ is a celebration of feminine strength, creativity and survival. Publishing 2 February 2026. Pre-order now https://www.serenbooks.com/books/coming-soon/

06/01/2026

Happy New Year! We’re back at our desks and our site-wide January Sale is back too 🎉 Use the code JAN50 to claim 50% off all books on our website until Sunday 11 January 2026 (excluding pre-orders and subscriptions) https://www.serenbooks.com/books/

22/12/2025

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from everyone at Seren Books We’ll be back at our desks on Monday 5 January. Until then, we wish you a restful winter break and a stocking full of books! 📚🎄🎁

21/12/2025

This sparkling pamphlet of Christmas poems is the perfect last minute stocking filler for any poetry lover https://www.serenbooks.com/book/twelve-poems-for-christmas/

20/12/2025

‘Wales As Is’ – a new collection of work by David Hurn – offers a meditation on the national character of Britain’s smallest country. Taking the geography, topography, history and landscape of Wales as his subject, David’s images gently interrogate Wales’ propensity for self-mythology and romanticism, capturing the bathos and humour prevalent in everyday life, juxtaposing the spirit of the landscape with the demands made on it by industry, housing and transport. The accompanying essay by Richard King examines the position of the landscape and its idealisation within Wales’ conception of itself, giving lyrical context to images which are by turn arresting, troubling, thought-provoking and joyful https://www.serenbooks.com/book/wales-as-is/

19/12/2025

‘Cling Film’ explores existing as a young Disabled woman in a crossfire of ableism. Bethany Handley invites the reader to travel in her skin, exposing the barriers that disable people with unfiltered honesty and wit. A deep connection to nature is ever present in these poems. Swifts wheel across the sky, acorn shells crunch beneath tread, waves break against the shore and a wheelchair user leaves proud tyre tracks in the sand. Set in familiar Welsh places – from Cardiff’s Heath Hospital to Mynydd Mawr in Eryri, these witty, perceptive poems challenge myths about disability in ways that are striking, astute and devastatingly exact https://www.serenbooks.com/book/cling-film/

18/12/2025

Easter 1955. As Britain waits for a hanging, Dieter Sugar finds a boy in the red gardens of Sugar Hall: a boy who wears a silver collar. In the great house, Dieter’s mother, Lilia, scrapes the rust from the locks, the ice from the windows and battles with her own ghosts. But there are pasts hiding with the moths and rats that Lilia cannot remove so easily. Sugar Hall holds a secret: a history that has been buried but not forgotten. Based on the haunting stories of Littledean Hall in the Forest of Dean, this is a superbly spine-tingling tale, and the perfect accompaniment for dark nights https://www.serenbooks.com/book/sugar-hall-2/.

17/12/2025

In this sharp and witty debut collection, Emily Cotterill turns an inquisitive eye on the everyday, delivering astute observations about celebrity culture, small-town living, the class system and the messy realities of modern life. Here is poetry of the streets: of slag heaps, of Wetherspoons and McDonald’s, of the Brains factory and the designer outlet, of shabby but buzzing towns. Inhabiting urban, post-industrial spaces, her millennial voice is laced with neo-punk spikiness as she examines the joys, losses and eccentricities of everyday life https://www.serenbooks.com/book/significant-wow/.

16/12/2025

History dictates that Mary Shelley’s half-sister F***y Imlay died in an inn in Swansea in 1816. But what if that weren’t true? In this enthralling and mysterious novel a strange women called Jude arrives at a bookshop claiming to know the owner’s wife, Helena. It’s the 1970s and the mysterious documents she carries, suggest an alternate ending to Franny’s fraught story, one in which she escapes her former life towards independence. As the mysteries multiply, the lives of F***y, Jude and Helena begin to intertwine, casting the origin of the documents and the story they tell into doubt. Merging Gothic body-swaps and dark mansions with 70s politics and feminism, The Forger’s Ink is a must-read for fans of Gothic fiction https://www.serenbooks.com/book/the-forgers-ink/

15/12/2025

The title of Alison Binney’s popular debut collection refers to the act of de-cluttering one’s own life to save loved ones the trouble, a reality far removed from the poet’s own experience of sorting and clearing the family home of a parent with Alzheimer’s. Connection, memory, loss and belonging are recurring themes in poems which explore all the messy sides of life. Writing with heart and tenderness about coming out, coming-of-age, teaching, nature, grief and recovery, Alison Binney’s poems sing with vitality and humour. Available in bookshops and online now https://www.serenbooks.com/book/the-opposite-of-swedish-death-cleaning/

15/12/2025

Thanks Taz Rahman for picking out ‘Significant Wow’ by Emily Cotterill, ‘I Sing to the Greenhearts’ by Maggie Harris and ‘Hôtel Amour’ by Deryn Rees-Jones in your 2025 Books of the Year! All available from our website and in bookshops https://www.serenbooks.com/books/poetry/

The third and final part of our Books of the Year special is now online featuring choices from John Lavin, and Penny Simpson.

https://thelonelycrowd.org/2025/12/14/books-of-the-year-2025-part-three/

14/12/2025

Part running diary, part love letter to South Wales, ‘Wild Running’ is a funny, honest and creative exploration of fourteen trail runs in South Wales. Prize-winning poet Natalie Ann Holborow invites you to join her as she runs through shaded woods, sun-bleached sand dunes and rocky outcrops, all whilst avoiding being attacked by sheep. You don’t need to be an elite runner or even particularly fit to enjoy this book. It’s for anyone who wants to feel their body come more alive. Whether you’re looking to escape or simply to explore South Wales in a new way, Wild Running will inspire you to put on your trainers and get outside https://www.serenbooks.com/book/wild-running/