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 […]

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 […]

LONG DARK DUSK by JP Smythe

LONG DARK DUSK (Book 2 of the Australia Trilogy) JP Smythe (james-smythe.com) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £13.99 Months after the events that brought her and her companions to Earth, Chan Aitch is living in a shanty town built against the inner surface of the wall that now surrounds Washington, D.C. She has, so far, managed […]

The 2015 Round-Up

As 2015 draws to a close, it’s time to take a step back and reflect on the year that has been. As is now “traditional”, I’ll be using this post to talk about my favourite books of the year, but first a quick blast through some of the non-bookish stuff that happened in the past […]

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 […]

WAY DOWN DARK by J. P. Smythe

WAY DOWN DARK (Book 1 of The Australia Trilogy) J. P. Smythe (james-smythe.com) Hodder & Stoughton (hodder.co.uk) £13.99 When Chan Aitch’s mother dies, she leaves a gaping hole in the so-called power structure aboard the Australia. Chan is left to pick up the pieces, and attempt to defend the part of the ship previously controlled […]

FINDERS KEEPERS by Stephen King

FINDERS KEEPERS Stephen King (stephenking.com) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £20.00 “Shit don’t mean shit.” In 1978 reclusive American literary great John Rothstein is murdered in the remote New Hampshire farm where he has spent the past 16 years. His safe is emptied, not only of the cash that he keeps there, but also of 150 […]

JAKOB’S COLOURS by Lindsay Hawdon

JAKOB’S COLOURS Lindsay Hawdon (lhawdon.co.uk) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £14.99 Jakob is barely eight-years old, and he is running for his life, searching for shelter in a world that has turned against him. It is 1944, and Jakob is a half-gypsy, the oldest child of a Romany father and an English mother, living in German-occupied […]

THOSE ABOVE by Daniel Polansky

THOSE ABOVE (The Empty Throne Book 1) Daniel Polansky (www.danielpolansky.com) Hodder & Stoughton (www.hodder.co.uk) £18.99 It is almost thirty years since the war between mankind and Those Above, the godlike creatures who live at the top of the great mountain city, The Roost. Now, as the warlike Aelerian people contemplate breaking the truce that has […]