Poppyland

Shortlisted for the East Anglian Book Awards 2025. On Stewkey Blues: 'In his solid, grounded, entertaining collection of stories, DJ Taylor draws out the mythical qualities of East Anglia's terrain, urban or rural or somewhere marginal in between. ' -Hilary Mantel. Most of the people in Poppyland are watching their lives begin to blur at the margins. From small-hours taxi offices, out-of-season holiday estates and flyblown market stalls, they sit observing an environment that seems to be moving steadily out of kilter, struggling to find agency, making compromises with a world that threatens to undermine them, and sometimes - but only sometimes - taking a decisive step that will change their destinies.