The Nirvana Series

Series · 5 books · 2003-2019

By Debi Alper

Books in series

Nirvana Bites

2003

Nirvana Bites is an irreverent look at alternative living, set in the housing co-ops and S&M clubs of South London. When Jen goes for a job at the BBC, she gets more than she bargains for when she recognizes her potential boss as "Stapled Stan"—a man with a serious bondage problem. It seems that she is not the only one who knows his secret identity and soon Stan enlists her as a private investigator and protector. As she sets out on a quest to find and confront his blackmailers, Stan is concealed within Jen's homely community of anti-capitalist social misfits and New Age hippies. As the threats grow more serious and Jen's friends start to suffer, it becomes clear that an inconspicuous aquatic shop, Koi Korner, is hiding some dark secrets. Can Jen expose the perpetrators? Will life ever be the same again?

Trading Tatiana

2005

Jo Cooper leads an uneventful life, selling jewellery on a Greenwich market stall and trying not to pay attention to the noises made by the S&M devotees who live next door. An ex-drug-addict herself, she has a penchant for rescuing people, which gets her in trouble when she helps a frightened girl escape from some Russian thugs. The mysterious woman overturns Jo's life, plunging her into the world of illegal immigration and prostitution, where human lives are ruthlessly traded, and violence and distrust are rife.

De Nada Nirvana

2016

Most people would be overjoyed at the offer of an all-expenses-paid trip to the Costa del Sol. But Jo isn’t so sure. All she has to do is find Matt – the teenage nephew of her mate’s bloke. It all sounds so easy … So why does she feel so anxious? Arriving in Benalmadena, Jo’s investigations soon result in an introduction to the side of the region the authorities don’t want the tourists to see; the reason the area is known as the Costa del Crime. Hopelessly out of her depth, Jo is floundering until she meets Tina, the Top Totty from Totnes. Tina is an ex-beauty queen who is desperate to contact her son, who is in Morocco having been snatched by her husband. Together, Jo and Tina get onto Matt’s trail. But it soon becomes clear the teenager had been following a sinister agenda all his own. Meanwhile, back in the Nirvana Housing Co-op in South London, Jen is struggling with the confirmation that she’s pregnant. She and Ali need to radically review their relationship before they can make any decisions about the future. As Jo and Tina are drawn further into dangerous territory, the violence spills across the continent and Jen and Ali find themselves the unexpected targets of some very ruthless villains. This is the third novel in the Nirvana series. The first two, Nirvana Bites and Trading Tatiana, were originally published by Orion before being re-published by this Nirvana Publishing imprint. The next novels in the series, Me, John and a Bomb, and The Gene Pool, will be following soon.

Me, John and a Bomb

2016

What makes someone want to build, set and detonate a bomb? In the case of anarcha-punk, Suky Higham, aka Sky High, it’s a combination of rage, frustration and confused politics. It’s hard to do on your own though. So when Sky saves a suicidal teenager, John Griffiths, she sets about inducting him into her lifestyle of petty crime and sabotage. Sparks of a different kind fly when Sky and John meet the members of the Nirvana Housing Co-op. It appears the south London network has been infiltrated and no one knows who to trust any more.

The Gene Pool

2019

In the fifth and final novel in the Nirvana series, Jen and Jo both find themselves embroiled in unexpected ways in family crises. It’s especially surprising for Jo, who never knew she had a family in the first place. Jen too has to question her decision to cut herself off from her judgemental brother and his family. Meanwhile, there’s murky stuff going on round the closure of a local swimming pool and the Nirvanans go into battle against local government corruption. In the process, Jen and Jo discover that blood relations can be as important as their alternative Nirvana family.

Author

Debi Alper

Author · 6 books

I was born into a working class Jewish family (yes, we do exist!) in north London and became active in radical politics in the 70s. In 1982, I went to Grenada and lived there on and off for the following four years, experiencing the revolution, the coup and subsequent US invasion and aftermath. For full details, see my Revo Blog. On my return to London, I worked as a finance officer for Jewish Women in London (an oral history project) and Women Focusing (a national women’s photography organisation) and took a diploma in photojournalism at London College of Printing. Together with two friends on the course, we formed a photojournalism collective, working in the not-for-profit sector. Over the years, I also had jobs as a shop assistant, farm labourer, life model and wig maker – amongst other things … I moved into the Shangri-La Housing Co-op in Peckham in 1989, providing the setting for my subsequent novels. Sadly, we had to move out of the co-op when the council repossessed the properties to turn them back into family homes. I was seven months pregnant at the time. As a result, the council had to re-house us and we moved to East Dulwich in 1995. Soon after my second son was born, I joined the East Dulwich Writers’ Group although I had no previous experience of writing fiction apart from an abortive attempt to crack the women’s magazine short story market several years earlier. (Each story would start sweet enough but then gradually turned dark and twisted. Clearly my inner voice calling out …) I wrote Nirvana Bites in the evenings in long hand lying on the settee and then typed it up in chunks using borrowed laptops, fitting it in round working as a part-time finance officer and wedding photographer, as well as parenting two young children.