NOS4R2 by Joe Hill

NOS4R2 Joe Hill (joehillfiction.com) Gollancz (www.gollancz.co.uk) £18.99 Released: 30th May 2013 The Brat was nine years old the first time she rode over the covered bridge that crossed the distance between Lost and Found. Nine-year-old Victoria “Vic” McQueen’s new bicycle brings with it an uncanny new ability: when she rides it across the condemned structure […]

THE SHINING GIRLS by Lauren Beukes

THE SHINING GIRLS Lauren Beukes (laurenbeukes.com) HarperCollins (www.harpercollins.co.uk) £12.99 When Harper Curtis murders an old woman, he finds the key to a house to which he instinctively knows the way. In the bedroom of the house he finds the names of girls scratched on the walls next to mementoes and trophies, threads linking them together […]

Hospital Reading Round-up, or: A Letter of Apology

Dear Reader, I hope you will forgive this break from the usual straightforward literary(?) criticism for this personal note to explain the relative quiet at Reader Dad of late, and to apologise to authors, publishers, publicists and potential readers for the lack of reviews written and published on the site since mid-February. Anyone who follows […]

COMPETITION: Win a Signed Copy of THE TWELVE by Justin Cronin

Today sees the publication, in paperback, of The Twelve, the second part of Justin Cronin’s epic Passage trilogy. To celebrate the occasion, we have a hardcover copy of the novel, signed by the author, to give away to one lucky visitor, thanks to the book’s publisher, Orion Books. To be in with a chance of […]

MAYHEM by Sarah Pinborough

MAYHEM Sarah Pinborough (sarahpinborough.com) Jo Fletcher Books (www.jofletcherbooks.com) £14.99 It is October 1888 and the people of London are already reeling from the series of murders committed by the man who has styled himself “Jack the Ripper”. When the rotting torso of a young woman is found in the vault of the building site that […]

NO WAY BACK by Matthew Klein

NO WAY BACK Matthew Klein (matthewklein.org) Corvus (corvus-books.co.uk) £12.99 Jim Thane is a restart executive, a Silicon Valley veteran who specialises in taking on failing companies and turning them around, making them profitable. Jim’s latest assignment has taken him to the oppressive heat of Florida, where Tao Software needs his specialist skills. Within days, Jim […]

THE KILLING POOL by Kevin Sampson

THE KILLING POOL Kevin Sampson Jonathan Cape (http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/about-us/…/jonathan-cape) £12.99 Detective Chief Inspector Billy McCartney is part of Merseyside Police’s Drug Squad, his focus currently on the Rozaki brothers who have a monopoly on Liverpool’s heroin trade. When McCartney’s informant, the youngest of the Rozaki brothers is found dead and dismembered in a park, McCartney knows […]

SEAL TEAM 666 by Weston Ochse

SEAL TEAM 666 Weston Ochse (weston-ochse.blogspot.co.uk) Titan Books (titanbooks.com) £7.99 Four weeks from completion, Jack Walker is pulled from his Navy SEAL training on Coronado Island, and assigned to SEAL Team 666. Highly classified and known to only a few key people, the five-man team which specialises in operations against supernatural threats has just lost […]

WE ARE HERE by Michael Marshall

WE ARE HERE Michael Marshall (www.michaelmarshallsmith.com) Orion Books (www.orionbooks.co.uk) £16.99 On a visit to New York to meet his publisher, David bumps into a man on the street – the sort of innocent collision that happens all the time on busy city pavements – who follows him back to Penn Station and confronts him. He […]

THE FIRST BOOK OF CALAMITY LEEK by Paula Lichtarowicz

THE FIRST BOOK OF CALAMITY LEEK Paula Lichtarowicz Hutchinson (www.randomhouse.co.uk/…/hutchinson) £12.99 Calamity Leek is a teenage girl who lives, along with her many sisters, in a walled compound known as The Garden. Under the watchful, and more than a little demented, eye of their Aunty, the girls perform their daily chores and undertake their training […]