STICKS AND STONES by Jo Jakeman

STICKS AND STONES Jo Jakeman (www.jojakeman.com) Harvill Secker (www.penguinrandomhouse.co.uk) £12.99 Imogen Rochester is adapting to life as a single parent. Her ex-husband, Phillip, is not a nice man and Imogen is just glad that he’s no longer in the house with her and their young son, Alastair. Phillip, living in an ultra-modern barn conversion with […]

THE DEATH OF MRS WESTAWAY by Ruth Ware

THE DEATH OF MRS WESTAWAY Ruth Ware (www.ruthware.com) Harvill Secker (www.penguinrandomhouse.co.uk) £12.99 Harriet “Hal” Westaway earns her living by telling peoples’ fortunes in a small booth on Brighton’s West Pier. It’s a business she has inherited from her mother, who died just before Hal turned eighteen. Now twenty-one, Hal is struggling to pay the lease […]

INFLUENCES: Rebecca by RUTH WARE

Name: RUTH WARE Author of: IN A DARK, DARK WOOD (2015) THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10 (2016) THE LYING GAME (2017) THE DEATH OF MRS WESTAWAY (2018) On the web: http://www.ruthware.com On Twitter: @ruthwarewriter When I started writing my fourth novel, The Death of Mrs Westaway, I knew I wanted to do […]

EXTRACT: THE HAND OF AN ANGEL by Mark Brownless

THE HAND OF AN ANGEL Mark Brownless (www.markbrownless.com) £1.99 Prologue 2013 Eighth International Congress of Clinical Psychology, Granada, Spain The printed A3 sheet clipped to a folding stand outside the lecture theatre announced the afternoon sessions. Shortlist lecture series: Elspeth Dickson Award for New Research Areas A list of research papers and their presenting authors […]

THE BELOVEDS by Maureen Lindley

THE BELOVEDS Maureen Lindley (maureenlindley.com) Titan Books (titanbooks.com) £7.99 Betty Stash is a woman for whom bad luck is the only luck. Her younger sister Gloria, on the other hand, is a Beloved, a person for whom everything falls just right and who, as the name suggests, is loved by everyone. When their mother dies, […]

EXTRACT: SHATTERMOON by Dominic Dulley

SHATTERMOON Dominic Dulley (dominicdulley.com) Jo Fletcher Books (www.jofletcherbooks.com) £16.99 MENDER Consciousness returned slowly. At first the familiar throb of a ship’s mass-inversion drive made Orry think she was in her cabin, but the smell wasn’t right. There was an antiseptic odour that brought to mind a hospital, but it was fighting with something earthier, a […]

MINE by Susi Fox

MINE Susi Fox Penguin (www.penguin.co.uk) £7.99 Sasha Moloney awakens from a general anaesthetic to discover that she has delivered a baby boy – not the girl she was convinced she was having – by caesarean section almost a month early. It takes a single glance at the child in the nursery to convince Sasha that […]

THE OUTSIDER by Stephen King

THE OUTSIDER Stephen King (stephenking.com) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £20.00 When Frank Peterson’s young body is found, abused and mutilated, all of the eye-witnesses agree that the last time they saw him alive, he was with Terry Maitland, coach of Flint City, Oklahoma’s Little League team and all-round upstanding citizen. Forensic evidence also points to […]

THE HUNGER by Alma Katsu

THE HUNGER Alma Katsu (www.almakatsubooks.com) Bantam Press (www.penguinrandomhouse.co.uk) £12.99 In Spring 1846, George Donner packs up his family and his belongings, points his wagons westward, and heads for a new life in California. After joining up with another party, Donner makes a decision that not everyone will live to regret. As tensions build amongst the […]

THE HOUSE ON HALF MOON STREET by Alex Reeve

THE HOUSE ON HALF MOON STREET Alex Reeve Raven Books (www.bloomsbury.com) £12.99 Leo Stanhope works as a coroner’s assistant, spending his days writing reports and sewing up the autopsied bodies of the dead. Madly in love with Maria, he longs for the day when they can be together, for the day when she can leave […]