GUEST POST: Who is Elyse Martingale? by MATTHEW BLAKSTAD

Name: MATTHEW BLAKSTAD Author of: SOCKPUPPET (2016) LUCKY GHOST (2017) On the web: www.matthewblakstad.com On Twitter: @mattblak Ah, yes: Professor Elyse Martingale. Doyenne of Britain’s post-war computing revolution. Political radical and scourge of the state. Inspiration to a new generation of 21st century hacktivists. Surely you know all about Elyse Martingale? What’s that? You’ve never heard of […]

LUCKY GHOST by Matthew Blakstad

LUCKY GHOST Matthew Blakstad (www.matthewblakstad.com) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £16.99 Welcome to the Strange, an augmented reality game that has taken the world by storm. Through Encounters, the Strange matches participants together, giving them tasks to complete, which is why Alex Kubelick finds herself slapping a complete stranger in the face one morning. Completing tasks […]

An Interview with K.J. Howe

Name: K.J. Howe Author of: THE FREEDOM BROKER (2017) On the web: www.kjhowe.com On Twitter: @KJHoweAuthor KJ Howe is the Executive Director of Thillerfest and a three-time Daphne du Maurier winner. Thank you, Kim, for taking the time to chat with us. The Freedom Broker is a novel firmly set in the real-world. It feels like a […]

THE FREEDOM BROKER by K.J. HOWE

THE FREEDOM BROKER K.J. Howe (www.kjhowe.com) Headline (www.headline.co.uk) £8.99 Eight-year-old Thea Paris watched as her older brother was kidnapped in front of her. Twenty years later, driven by the feeling of helplessness that still haunts her, Thea is one of the most respected and elite kidnap and ransom consultants in the world. So, when her […]

LITTLE BOY FOUND by L.K. Fox

LITTLE BOY FOUND L.K. Fox (http://www.christopherfowler.co.uk/) Quercus (https://www.quercusbooks.co.uk/) £0.99 As he does every morning, Nick drops his son at school. As he is pulling away from the school gates, he is involved in a minor collision with a car that doesn’t stop. Nick acts quickly, snapping a picture of the receding car on his phone […]

Extract: IF WE WERE VILLAINS by M.L. Rio

IF WE WERE VILLAINS M.L. Rio (mlrio.com) Titan Books (titanbooks.com) £7.99 I sit with my wrists cuffed to the table and I think, But that I am forbid / To tell the secrets of my prison-house, / I could a tale unfold whose lightest word / Would harrow up thy soul. The guard stands by […]

DO NOT BECOME ALARMED by Maile Meloy

DO NOT BECOME ALARMED Maile Meloy (www.mailemeloy.com) Viking (www.penguinrandomhouse.co.uk) £8.99 Cousins Liv and Nora have decided to take their families – a husband and two young children each – on a cruise down the western coast of the Americas. The giant ship on which they find themselves has everything they could possibly want, and it […]

THE LUCKY ONES by Mark Edwards

THE LUCKY ONES Mark Edwards (www.markedwardsauthor.com) Thomas & Mercer (www.amazon.com) £8.99 Ben Hofland has moved from London back to the small Shropshire town where he grew up, with his eleven-year-old son, following the discovery that his wife was having an affair with one of Ben’s old friends. DI Imogen Evans has fled her own demons […]

INFLUENCES: Japanese Influences by MARK EDWARDS

MARK EDWARDS Author of: THE LUCKY ONES (2017) THE DEVIL’S WORK (2016) FOLLOW YOU HOME (2015) On the web: http://www.markedwardsauthor.com On Twitter: @mredwards I lived in Japan for a year, back in the early noughties, teaching ‘English conversation’. This involved sitting in a cubicle with three or four people – salarymen and schoolgirls, […]

Extract: TIME TO WIN by Harry Brett

TIME TO WIN Harry Brett (www.henrysutton.co.uk/harry-brett) Corsair (www.littlebrown.co.uk) £16.99 There was a time when the sound of rain was comforting, calming. Now it pissed her off. It was autumn already, she remembered. September 1. It was not her favourite month. She let the patter swirl around her head for another few minutes, realising she was […]