INFLUENCES: Five Books that Influenced Me by LIZ NUGENT

Name: LIZ NUGENT Author of: UNRAVELLING OLIVER (2014) LYING IN WAIT (2016) On the web: liznugent.ie On Twitter: @lizzienugent 1. The Book of Evidence by John Banville I first read this when it was published in 1991 and thought it excellent. I wasn’t surprised when it won the Booker prize. In 2002, I was […]

THE SEARCHER by Chris Morgan Jones

THE SEARCHER Chris Morgan Jones (www.chrismorganjones.com) Mantle (www.panmacmillan.com) £16.99 Isaac Hammer’s world seems to be falling down around him. The offices of his intelligence agency, Ikertu, have been raided by the police, and Ike himself has been arrested. The charge? Obtaining information by illegal means: hacking and phone tapping. But this isn’t Ike’s style, and […]

END OF WATCH by Stephen King

END OF WATCH Stephen King (stephenking.com) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £20.00 It has been almost seven years since the City Center Massacre, that fateful April morning when Brady Hartfield drove a grey Mercedes into a crowd of people waiting to attend a job fair in the heartland of recession-struck America. When a worrying trend develops […]

The Best Writers Are Onion Peelers by MICHAEL GROTHAUS

Name: MICHAEL GROTHAUS Author of: EPIPHANY JONES (2016) On the web: http://www.michaelgrothaus.com On Twitter: @michaelgrothaus Epiphany Jones, I’ve been told, is hard to categorize. When I ask people who have read it what kind of book they think it is they’ve replied “psychological thriller”, “literary fiction”, “crime”, “social satire”, “dark comedy”, “transgressive fiction”, and “a […]

EPIPHANY JONES by Michael Grothaus

EPIPHANY JONES Michael Grothaus (www.michaelgrothaus.com) Orenda Books (orendabooks.co.uk) £8.99 Tonight I’m having sex with Audrey Hepburn. Jerry Dresden is something of a loner. Obsessed with sex and celebrity – and, very often, both at the same time – he spends his days working at the Art Institute of Chicago, and his nights in front of […]

An Interview with MATTHEW BLAKSTAD

Name: MATTHEW BLAKSTAD Author of: SOCKPUPPET (2016) On the web: http://www.matthewblakstad.com On Twitter: @mattblak Matthew Blakstad’s first career was as a professional child actor. From the age of ten, he had roles in TV dramas on the BBC and ITV, in films and at theatres including the Royal Court. After graduating from Oxford with a […]

SOCKPUPPET by Matthew Blakstad

SOCKPUPPET Matthew Blakstad (www.matthewblakstad.com) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £16.99 Days before the nationwide rollout of Number 10’s Digital Citizen initiative, news appears online that the pilot scheme has been hacked, and the data stolen. The source of the information becomes an immediate suspect, but there’s only one problem: famous Parley personality sic_girl doesn’t exist; she’s […]

THE LAST DAYS OF SUMMER by Vanessa Ronan

THE LAST DAYS OF SUMMER Vanessa Ronan (vanessaronanbooks.com) Penguin (www.penguin.co.uk) £12.99 Lizzie Curtis lives with her two young daughters at the edge of a rural Texas town towards the end of the 1970s or early 1980s. Her brother has spent ten years in jail for an unspecified crime against his ex-girlfriend. His sentence served, Lizzie […]

INFLUENCES: Magic on Every Shelf by VANESSA RONAN

Name: Vanessa Ronan Author of: THE LAST DAYS OF SUMMER (2016) On the web: vanessaronanbooks.com On Twitter: @vronan To celebrate tomorrow’s launch of Vanessa Ronan’s debut novel, The Last Days of Summer, I’m very pleased to welcome the author to Reader Dad to talk about her influences as a writer. My parents had a huge […]

INFLUENCES: My Writing Influences by CHRIS WHITAKER

Name: CHRIS WHITAKER Author of: TALL OAKS (2016) On Twitter: @whittyauthor To celebrate the launch of Chris Whitaker’s excellent debut novel, Tall Oaks, I’m very pleased to invite him to Reader Dad to talk about his writing influences. Be sure to check the other stops on the blog tour for more great insights into author […]