Now for something completely different. I had only very tentatively dipped my toe into the fantasy/romantasy genre, as I like to step out of my comfort zone once in a while. Bolstered by recommendations and suggestions from bookselling colleagues and bloggers across social media, my strange, and at times downright hilarious, reading journey began, as just for larks I decided to dedicate a whole month to solely reading within this genre. I had to be careful when I posted this, as obviously one of these books I’ve had to wang on about for an entire month, making it out to be the best thing sinc ..read more

Matt Langley used to be somebody. Back in the late ’90s his star shone bright. Thanks to his debut novel, the shocking The Devil’s Debt, he was at the forefront of the Bright Young Things. He was on chat shows and culture shows. He was the man of the moment. And then it all stopped, because there was no second book. Now, with his marriage to Naz on the rocks, they’re trying to start over. They’ve sold the house that The Devil’s Debt built and moved to a farmhouse deep in the wilds of Northumbria, where no one knows them, and for a while their new life is fragile but good. Furthermore, Mat ..read more

Six months since the earth-shattering events of The Space Between Us, the revelatory hope of the aliens’ visit has turned to dust and the creatures have disappeared into the water off Scotland’s west coast. Teenager Lennox and grieving mother Heather are being held in New Broom, a makeshift US military base, the subject of experiments, alongside the Enceladons who have been captured by the authorities. Ava, who has given birth, is awaiting the jury verdict at her trial for the murder of her husband. And MI7 agent Oscar Fellowes, who has been sidelined by the US military, is beginning ..read more

Nate Evers, a young black political activist, struggles with rage as his people are still being killed in the streets 62 years after Emmett Till. When his little cousin is murdered, Nate shuns the graffiti murals, candlelight vigils, and Twitter hashtags that are commonplace after these senseless deaths. Instead, he leads  three grief-stricken friends on a mission of retribution, kidnapping the descendants of long-ago perpetrators of hate crimes, confronting the targets with their racist lineages, and forcing them to pay reparations to a community fund. For three of the group members, the ..read more

James Oswald Why I Wrote (Write?) ” I remember, a long time ago, reading an interview with comics artist Bill Sienkewicz, where he described his awe at writers who could take a small idea and worry away at it until it became big. That struck a chord then, and has stuck with me ever since, because it’s such an eloquent summation of my approach to writing. I will take what appears to be the simplest of ideas and poke at it until it becomes something a hundred thousand words long. On a similar theme, I am often asked where I get my ideas from. I don’t think there’s a published author out there wh ..read more

Kweku Ashworth is a child of the cataclysm, born on a sailboat to parents fleeing the devastation in search for a refuge in the Southern Ocean. Growing up in a world forever changed, his only connection to the events that set the planet on its course to disaster were the stories his step-father, long-dead, recorded in his manuscript, The Forcing. But there are huge gaps in the story that his mother, still alive but old and frail, steadfastly refuses to speak of, even thirty years later. When he discovers evidence that his mother has tried to cover up the truth, and then stumbles across an ..read more

Married couple Karin and Kai are looking for a pleasant escape from their busy lives, and reluctantly accept an offer to stay in a luxurious holiday home in the Norwegian fjords. Instead of finding a relaxing retreat, however, their trip becomes a reminder of everything lacking in their own lives, and in a less-than-friendly meeting with their new neighbours, Karin tells a little white lie. Against the backdrop of the glistening water and within the claustrophobic walls of the ultra-modern house, Karin’s insecurities blossom, and her lie grows ever bigger, entangling her and her husband in a n ..read more

When her disastrous Australian love affair ends, Lou O’Dowd heads to Edinburgh for a fresh start, moving in with her cousin, and preparing for the only job she can find, working at a halfway house for very high-risk offenders. Two killers, a celebrity paedophile and a paranoid coke dealer – all out on parole and all sharing their outwardly elegant Edinburgh townhouse with rookie night-worker Lou. Instead of finding some meaning and purpose to her life, she finds herself trapped in a terrifying game of cat and mouse where she stands to lose everything – including her life… I’m quite the fan of ..read more

The disappearance of a three-year-old girl from her isolated Highland home one summer shook the nation. A massive police search involving divers in the loch and dogs combing the moorland and mountains had failed to find Lily Masterton. Three years later, the world may have forgotten the blond-haired girl with the big blue eyes, but her grief-stricken parents hire Private Investigator Teàrlach Paterson – an expert in finding missing children – to bring their precious Lily home. But this is no ordinary family struck by tragedy. Teàrlach has heard the whispered rumours that Tony Masterton is ..read more

Tony is a young man who has always been on the losing side in life. He was brought up by his troubled, alcoholic mother who had a past of her own as a talented ballerina, until a life-changing accident brought her dreams to a sudden end. As her own ambitions for fame and success were crushed, she used cruel and brutal methods to project them onto her young son – with devastating consequences. There’s no doubt that a body found on Reykjavik’s Oeskjuhlid hillside has been there for a long time. The case is handed to veteran detective Valdimar, supported by Ylfa, who is taking her tentative first ..read more