What if the music that once spoke truth became part of the system instead?

This is a short work of dystopian fiction told in tracks, not chapters. Each track stands alone, yet together they form something closer to an album — a rhythm of control, compliance, and quiet resistance.

A well-known British reggae album of the 1980s once spoke through tracks like Tyler and King — stories of injustice, identity, and lives shaped by power. This book listens back to that spirit and carries it forward into a near-future Britain where reassurance replaces freedom, and choice is managed rather than denied.

Screens glow. Rules sound reasonable. Most people accept the deal without argument.

But not everyone keeps time.

Inspired by British reggae, working-class politics, and understated rebellion, these tracks explore what happens when dissent is absorbed, softened, and sold back as comfort. They can be read in any order, but together they ask a single, uncomfortable question:

How much of yourself would you give up to feel safe?

This is dystopian fiction for readers who value:

• political and social themes without slogans

• working-class voices

• music as memory, protest, and inheritance

• short, sharp writing that lingers

Read one track — or let the whole album play.

Taj has spent most of his life learning how not to take up space.

At work, he’s reliable. Calm. Useful. The one who never kicks off. The one who absorbs everyone else’s weight without complaint. It looks like strength. It feels like survival.

Then one ordinary afternoon, on a walk he hasn’t taken in years, he steps into a corner shop in Wolverhampton — and meets Baba.

Part shopkeeper, part mirror, part mystery, Baba doesn’t offer advice or answers. He offers something far more unsettling: recognition. A quiet insistence that Taj look at the names he’s swallowed, the truths he’s buried, and the self he’s folded smaller for decades.

What follows isn’t a story about miracles, but about waking up. About returning to your own name. About discovering that what you thought was gentleness may have been fear — and that strength doesn’t always look the way you were taught.

Rooted in Wolverhampton and grounded in everyday moments, The Lion in a Shoebox is a quietly powerful fable about identity, dignity, and the cost of disappearing politely.

It’s funny in the way truth often is — awkward, painful, and quietly liberating.

And it offers a simple, radical reminder:

Strength doesn’t always roar.
Sometimes it stands.
Sometimes it speaks softly.
Sometimes it writes its own name again.

Second edition (only cover changed)
Two cities. Two moments in time. One quiet act of courage.

Delhi, 1664. A mysterious illness spreads fear through the city.
Wolverhampton, today. A boy named Arjan begins to understand what courage really costs.

Inspired by a moment from Sikh history, Light Beneath the Fever Sky is a historical coming-of-age story that moves across centuries — from plague-stricken streets to modern lives shaped by memory, inheritance, and choice.

This is a story about what we carry forward, and what it means to act with compassion when no one is watching.

Thoughtful, grounded, and quietly powerful, Light Beneath the Fever Sky is written for readers who value story over spectacle.

Available to read free on Kindle Unlimited.

Wolves ay we, Yaar is a poetry anthology rooted in Wolverhampton and spoken from within it.

These poems move through everyday life in the city — buses and back streets, schools and workplaces, weddings and match days — capturing how belonging is learned quietly, through habit, restraint, and staying put. They reflect on class, faith, race, work, and loyalty without nostalgia or explanation, letting the city’s voices speak for themselves.

From the rhythms of shift work and school registers to the shared roar of a Saturday crowd, the poems hold Wolverhampton as it is lived: diverse, grounded, and shaped by unspoken rules. Moments of tenderness sit alongside harder truths, including homelessness, exclusion, and the cost of being seen.

Written with clarity and restraint, Wolves aye we, Yaar is a collection about community rather than spectacle — about what it means to remain, to recognise one another, and to say “we” without needing to raise your voice.

FORHCOMING  - Placed 3rd in the Critique Match Fiction Writing contest 2026

They all came back.

For the funeral.
For the memories.
For the version of themselves they left behind.

Gurpreet hasn’t been back to Wolverhampton in years — not properly, not in a way that means anything. But grief has a way of pulling you back. Back to the streets that shaped you. Back to the people who knew you before you knew yourself. Back to the moments you never really left behind.

Lord Street.
West Park.
The old shops.
The pub that’s no longer there.

And Sophie.

As past and present begin to blur, Gurpreet is forced to confront the quiet truths he’s carried for years — about family, about friendship, about love… and about the cost of silence.

Set in 1980s Britain and moving between memory and the present day, Once We Were Champions is a powerful coming-of-age novel about identity, belonging, and the complicated pull of home.

Because leaving is easy.

It’s coming back that asks the questions.

FORTHCOMING

Some streets are not just places. Some streets remember who stood for them.

Simanrita Kaur loves colour.

At Rani’s Boutique on Dudley Street, Wolverhampton, she knows the language of gold bangles, bridal sets, aunties, gossip, glitter, and the small daily dramas of everyday shop life. She has never thought of herself as brave. She is not an activist, not a leader, not the kind of girl who stands in front of powerful people and refuses to move.

But when regeneration plans threaten to strip Dudley Street of its colour, culture and memory, Sim is forced to ask what is really being taken — and what silence will cost.

As pressure builds, the past begins to echo through the present. A mysterious old woman appears. A steel kara grows heavier on Sim’s wrist. And the story of another soul, centuries before her, begins to show her that courage does not always roar at first.

Sometimes it trembles.

Sometimes it doubts.

Sometimes it stands anyway.

Rani’s Boutique is a moving British Sikh novel about identity, belonging, community, and the quiet power of refusing to be made small.

A Wolverhampton story of colour, courage, and the unbending thread that joins one generation to the next.

FORTHCOMING SERIES OF CHILDRENS BOOKS for 4-8 yeaar old 

watch this space of register your interest theindependentsingh@gmail.com