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.