THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS by John Boyne

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS John Boyne (johnboyne.com) Illustrated by Oliver Jeffers (www.oliverjeffers.com) Doubleday (www.penguinrandomhouse.co.uk) £14.99 Bruno is nine years old when his father’s job forces the family to pack up their beautiful Berlin home and move to the desolate Polish countryside. This is Out-With, a cold and unpleasant place where neither Bruno nor […]

IT by Stephen King

IT Stephen King (stephenking.com) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £10.99 (he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts) In May 1985 six people receive a phone call from a friend they have long forgotten reminding them of an oath they swore when they were just eleven years old. The phone […]

‘SALEM’S LOT by Stephen King

‘SALEM’S LOT Stephen King (stephenking.com) Hodder & Stoughton (hodder.co.uk) £9.99 This review/essay originally appeared as part of the King For A Year project, and appears here in its original form, by permission. …the Lot’s knowledge of the country’s torment was academic. Time went on a different schedule there. Nothing too nasty could happen in such […]

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 ARRIVAL OF MISSIVES by Aliya Whiteley

THE ARRIVAL OF MISSIVES Aliya Whiteley (aliyawhiteley.wordpress.com) Unsung Stories (www.unsungstories.co.uk) £9.99 The Great War is a not-too-distant memory, and England is still in the process of recovering from the horror and loss that it wreaked. Teenager Shirley Fearn lives in the small village of Westerbridge, where she attends the local school taught by Mr Tiller […]

THE FIREMAN by Joe Hill

THE FIREMAN Joe Hill (www.joehillfiction.com) Gollancz (www.gollancz.co.uk) £20.00 Harper Grayson is working as a school nurse when the world ends. Draco Incendia Trychophyton, better known as Dragonscale, is a spore that infects that vast majority of people with whom it comes into contact – the symptoms are a beautiful tattoo-like patterning of the skin and […]

THE BOY AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN by John Boyne

THE BOY AT THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN John Boyne (johnboyne.com) Doubleday (www.randomhouse.co.uk) £12.99 Although Pierrot Fischer’s father didn’t die in the Great War, his mother Émilie always maintained it was the war that killed him. It is 1936 and seven-year-old Pierrot Fischer lives in Paris with his French mother, his German father having drunk […]

DUST AND DESIRE by Conrad Williams

DUST AND DESIRE (A Joel Sorrell Novel) Conrad Williams (conradwilliams.wordpress.com) Titan Books (titanbooks.com) £7.99 London-based private investigator Joel Sorrell has gotten himself entangled in a most bizarre missing person case. Hired to look into the disappearance of his client’s brother, Sorrell begins to believe that he may be on a wild goose chase, especially when […]

THE BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS by Stephen King

THE BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS Stephen King (stephenking.com) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £20.00 When people think of Stephen King, they most often think of the massive tomes that helped to make his name: The Stand, It, Needful Things. What we often forget is that King is as comfortable writing short fiction as he is writing […]