THE MESSENGER by Megan Davis

THE PASSENGER Megan David (megandavis.co.uk) Zaffre (bonnierbooks.co.uk) £14.99 Buy a copy from your favourite independent bookshop Alex Giraud has just spent seven and a half years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Now, back on the streets of Paris, he’s determined to get to the bottom of his father’s murder, and prove his […]

CUT AND SHUT – Jonathan Peace

CUT AND SHUT Jonathan Peace (jpwritescrime.com) Hobeck Books (hobeck.net) £9.99 Three young lads steal a car belonging to a Pakistani family and go for a joyride. The car, a “cut-and-shut” job, suffers a catastrophic failure and all three die horribly. The same night, two young Pakistani men make the mistake of going into a pub […]

An Extract from KID by Sebastian de Souza

KID: A HISTORY OF THE FUTURE SEBASTIAN DE SOUZA ( offlinerpress.com ) OFFLINER PRESS (offlinerpress.com) £9.99 CHAPTER 1 CHAMPAGNE SUPERNOVA I’m definitely coming up. They must be too. The CD in my Walkman skips a little before finding itself again. Liam Gallagher singing about a champagne supernova and being caught beneath a landslide… The Roxi […]

LIGHT OF THE JEDI by Charles Soule

LIGHT OF THE JEDI (Star Wars: The High Republic) Charles Soule (charlessoule.com) Del Rey (penguin.co.uk) £20.00 An unheard-of tragedy in hyperspace destroys a starship carrying thousands of Republic citizens to their new homes in the Outer Rim, and raining deadly shrapnel on various star systems. As the Republic and the Jedi struggle to stop these […]

THE LAST THING TO BURN by Will Dean

THE LAST THING TO BURN Will Dean Hodder & Stoughton (https://www.hodder.co.uk/) £12.99 Leonard – Lenn to those that know him – lives in the small farmhouse on Fen Farm in which he was born, and in which he has lived his whole life; first with his mother, Jane; then with his first wife, also called […]

An Extract From PROXIMITY by Jem Tugwell

PROXIMITY Jem Tugwell (www.jemtugwell.com) Serpentine Books (www.serpentinebooks.com) £8.99 1 Thief For the first time in ten years, the real me walked free. I savoured every beat of excitement that pulsed through me. All those failures, but now it was working. I let the corners of my mouth drag up an unfamiliar smile. They couldn’t […]

NO WAY OUT by Cara Hunter

NO WAY OUT Cara Hunter Penguin Books (www.penguin.co.uk) £7.99 A house fire in an upmarket area of North Oxford leads to the gruesome discovery of two dead children. There is no sign of their mother, and their father – who was in London at a conference – isn’t answering his phone, or responding to any […]

THE TAKING OF ANNIE THORNE by C.J. Tudor

THE TAKING OF ANNIE THORNE C.J. Tudor (CJTudorOfficial) Michael Joseph (www.penguin.co.uk) £12.99 After almost thirty years, Joseph Thorne returns to the Nottinghamshire town of Arnhill to take up a teaching position at the local academy. There’s more than the promise of employment that brings Joe back home: when he was a teenager, his eight-year-old […]

HYDRA by Matt Wesolowski

HYDRA Matt Wesolowski Orenda Books (orendabooks.co.uk) £8.99 On a late November night in 2014, a young woman bludgeons her family to death with a hammer. While she never denied the killings, her talk of letting black-eyed children into the house as a precursor to the massacre means that Arla Macleod was sentenced to a medium-security […]

ALL THE GOOD THINGS by Clare Fisher

ALL THE GOOD THINGS Clare Fisher (clarefisherwriter.com)Viking (www.penguinrandomhouse.co.uk) £12.99 Beth is 21 and in prison, her life ruined by a bad thing that she feels there is no atonement for. Her counsellor, Erika, gives Beth a notebook and asks her to write down all the good things in her life. “But what if…I can’t […]