Young, troubled factotum Thomas Speake rolls into a grimy 1960s London to search for his estranged father. Instead, he finds a surrogate – the eccentric, drug-addled TV presenter Joseph Sanderson, who covers Britain’s shifting demographics in its most transitional decade.

When a member of Sanderson’s entourage asks Speake for help finding her missing stepdaughter, last seen in a mysterious commune in the Lake District, the pair venture into Cumbria’s brutal landscape. Will Speake find the purpose he’s desperately seeking, or will things end with the violence that pursues him?

Praise for Sanderson’s Isle:

“What a narrator. How Speake speaks. How he bends your ear, and your heart. SANDERSON’S ISLE sometimes reads like a lost John Braine or David Storey novel. There’s even a touch of Ted Lewis in its elemental fatalism. It’s that good.” -Tom Benn, author of Oxblood and The Doll Princess.

“[An] engaging, inventive literary noir novel… full of neat twists and potent writing” –The Independent.

“[Clarke] has a terrific gift for the uncomfortable and threatening scene” -Alex Clark, TLS.

“Set at the end of the 1960s, with the schism between straight society and the substratum of psychedelic dropouts making for some uneasy culture clashing, Clarke’s pacing is shrewd and cinematic, his characters vivid and beguiling… depicts the crumbling end of a hazy decade vividly.” –Buzz Magazine.

“Freewheeling, vivid, and intensely imagined, Sanderson’s Isle creates a portrait of a nation – but what a portrait is offered up here by James Clarke, and what a nation… although set 50 years and more ago, Sanderson’s Isle has a decidedly contemporary flavour: it is a letter of love to another England, one that has long been marginalised, brutalised and effectively silenced.” –The Irish Times.

“Sanderson’s Isle is a hugely enjoyable sex and drug fuelled human drama, set against the gritty backdrops of 1960’s London and the Lake District. Clarke’s vivid writing brings his characters fully to life, each one grappling in their own way with the social turbulence at the dawn of the space age. A powerful and deeply engaging read.” -Lee Schofield, author of Wild Fell: Fighting for Nature on a Lake District Hill Farm.

“Another prize winner from James Clarke? I hope so.” –BookMunch.

“Much literary fiction of recent years has erred towards minimalism: little action, few characters, story replaced by mood, dialogue replaced by thought. Manchester-born James Clarke’s third novel, Sanderson’s Isle, is a raucous, Technicolor scream against this trend… Clarke manages to fit about three Sally Rooneys’ worth of content into the first 150 pages with some brilliant set pieces (the acid party, cock fighting, camping among the wreckage of a plane crash, an ayahuasca ritual). If it feels gratuitous, that’s only because of the lethargic narratives we’ve become used to.” –The Sunday Times.

“Off-kilter, eerie, defiantly awkward and often downright unsavoury: there’s little else like it right now.” –Daily Mail.

“Sanderson’s Isle is the work of a thrillingly independent imagination – a feisty, subversive countervision of England’s lost futures and buried longings.” -Rob Doyle, author of Threshold and Autobibliography.

“Psychedelic 1960s London, TV personalities, counterculture in the Lake District, a lost child! Wasn’t I always going to want read this book? And what a magnificent experience it is in its rendering of isolation and belonging, its precise evocation of place and time.  Speake is a terrific narrator and Clarke a compelling writer.’ -Wendy Erskine, author of Dance Move.

“Gorgeous, luxurious language propels a motley crew of characters as they beg, borrow, beat and maneuver their ways up and down the country, through TV shows, derelict stations, weird communes, lockhouses and forests. Extraordinarily mapped and cinematic in its sense of place, character and time through a powerful narrative voice, this is a portrait of riotous, joyful, mystical, horrible and high little Englanders that I loved.” -Rachael Allen, poet and author of Kingdomland.

Find Sanderson’s Isle at Amazon.