Now the festivities are over and the novelty of the new year has worn off, we face a long month of cold dark misery. If you’re one of those people where January just sort of gets to you then you’ve come to the right place.

We recommend you escape the January blues with these great books…

Splashes of Hues

Neha Batool

Neha Batool's new anthology, Splashes of Hues, combines accessibility and depth. These warmly appealing poems concern deep and personal themes like self-worth, fulfilment, rejection, love - all splashed onto the page from a colourful palette (Colourful Melodies).

The poems are often very short and make a single, telling statement (Wings and Autumn Leaf).

They mainly draw on nature for their vivid imagery. In Thalassophile, the subject of the poem identifies with sunsets and splashing waves.

Neha Batool encourages her readers to be free (Be You), to cultivate self-worth (Self-Worth), and not its opposite (In His Shadows). We need others (The Magician and Friends) and a sense of integrity (Unity).

These poems are little uplifting gems inspired by ‘facets of life'. We are asked to share Neha Batool's sense that ‘every day brings a new adventure', one that will improve our sense of self-worth, we hope.

The Dragon Rider

T. J. Weekes

My name is Abagail Stone, and I always wished I could be a Dragon Rider and often dreamed of serving the kingdom."

When a rare dragon egg was stolen from the sacred Cave of Noelle, the dragons' immense power vanished along with the hope of a mass dragon army. And over the past few years, the amount of Dragon Riders has fallen. Few men have been chosen to mount the fierce yet magnificent winged creatures and sail through the sky. In the history of Dragon Riders, the priests have only written down men. Women have never been chosen as a Dragon Rider, but all that changes when a prophetic dream starts to visit Abagail in her sleep. Armed with her father's bow and arrow, Abagail leaves her home. And it isn't long before she learns what it meant to be the only woman Dragon Rider while discovering the evil behind the one person closest to her heart - poised to strike terror and darkness in the people of Athena.

Getting On With It

Pippa Holmes

Katy, a city girl through and through, never expected to find herself living on a farm in the middle of nowhere. However, a series of events including an annoying ex-boyfriend made her think that maybe London wasn't such a great place after all and that she should try the peace and tranquillity of the countryside. Katy was soon on a steep learning curve, having met and married Charlie, a farmer with a variety of livestock and a seven bedroomed house. She gradually adapts to this new life in her own inimitable way and is responsible for the birth and development of her very own farm shop.

This hilarious and pithy book follows Katy's life on the farm through to old age, and includes the eccentric Cynthia along with a son and various grandchildren - not forgetting the bull and thirty fickle chickens!

Master Defiance

Blair Wylie

On a post-apocalyptic earth, the human species has reverted to its ancient native ways, surviving and thriving by hunting and fishing. It will be so easy for the strange invaders to take control.

But... there is one thing left from the old technological age of years before: a machine the earth hominids call "Mother", which can teach them, through revisiting history, how to defend themselves.

Someone, many years ago, once said, "What have the Romans done for us?"

Well... now, their ideas might just save the planet!

Frozen Fire

Christopher Downey

When you live in a world full of magic, unusual things are bound to happen. Zack Glacis, Gretchen Shadows, Eric Flare, Malcolm Spark and Patrick Tempus live on a floating island called Kerozonia and each wields elemental magic of ice, shadow, fire, lightning and time respectively. These five friends find themselves called to another world born from their world's magic and the data of all things digital, The Data Realm. A being called Astral requests that they guard the part of this realm born from video game data.

Join the group of friends who call themselves Frozen Fire as they protect the land called Miyamoto from destructive viruses, a ruthless scientist and a lot of monsters. Our heroes encounter a strange king, bizarre races, a strong-willed prince, a musical princess and all manner of magical objects. They may be in over their heads.