DON’T TURN AROUND by Jessica Barry

DON’T TURN AROUND Jessica Barry Harvill Secker (www.penguin.co.uk) £14.99 Cait volunteers for an organisation that helps women when they are most in need. Tonight, Cait’s job is to collect Rebecca from her fancy home in Lubbock, Texas and drive her the 300 miles through the night to Albuquerque, New Mexico, then bring her home safely […]

STRANGE INK by Gary Kemble

STRANGE INK Gary Kemble (garykemble.com) Titan Books (titanbooks.com) £7.99 Harry Hendrick has been working the same dead-end job for twenty years, recycling the same handful of stories over and over again for the local weekly newspaper. One morning Harry wakes up with a bad hangover and a strange tattoo on the back of his neck. […]

An Interview with VIC JAMES

Name: VIC JAMES Author of: GILDED CAGE (2017) On the web: http://www.vicjames.co.uk On Twitter: @DrVictoriaJames Vic James is a current affairs TV director who loves stories in all their forms, and Gilded Cage is her debut novel. She has twice judged the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize, has made films for BBC1, BBC2, and Channel […]

THE BLOOD DIMMED TIDE by Anthony Quinn

THE BLOOD DIMMED TIDE Anthony Quinn (anthonyquinnwriter.com) No Exit Press (www.noexit.co.uk) £8.99 In the dying days of 1917, the body of young woman is washed ashore on the west coast of Ireland, near Sligo. She is in an old and decomposing coffin. Before her death, she sent a letter to London, to the poet William […]

TRAITOR’S BLADE by Sebastien de Castell

TRAITOR’S BLADE Sebastien de Castell (decastell.com) Jo Fletcher Books (www.jofletcherbooks.com) £20.00 The Greatcoats are the stuff of legend. Traveling Magisters, their job is to travel the country bringing the King’s justice to his subjects and ensuring his laws are upheld. Falcio val Mond, once the First Cantor of this elite group of men and women, […]

THE BOY WITH THE PORCELAIN BLADE by Den Patrick

THE BOY WITH THE PORCELAIN BLADE Den Patrick (www.denpatrick.com) Gollancz (www.gollancz.co.uk) £20.00 On the weather-beaten island of Landfall stands the sprawling Demesne – four great Houses built around a central Keep which houses the reclusive, and reputedly mad, King. Lucien ‘Sinistra’ di Fontein is Orfano, a disfigured foundling taken in by the nobility of Demesne […]

NO-ONE LOVES A POLICEMAN by Guillermo Orsi

NO-ONE LOVES A POLICEMAN Guillermo Orsi Translated by Nick Caistor MacLehose Press (maclehosepress.com) £7.99 Argentina, December 2001. Against the background of a country in economic free-fall, we meet Pablo Martelli, a sixty-something bathroom appliance salesman with a history in the National Shame, an elite branch of the police force which lived up to their nickname […]