1620s, Lancashire. Away from the village lies a small hamlet, abandoned since the Plague, where only one family dwell amongst its ruins. Young Sarah Haworth, her mother, brother and little sister Annie are a family of outcasts by day and the recipients of visitors by night. They are cunning folk, the villagers will always need them, quick with a healing balm or more, should your needs require. They can keep secrets too, because no one would believe them anyway.
There are Dark Forces at work in our world (and in Manchester in particular) and so thank God The Stranger Times is on hand to report them. A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but more often the weird) of modern life, it is the go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable . . .
Northminster, 1840: a once-picturesque cathedral city, where dirty smoke stacks now rival ancient spires.
The party should have been perfect: six couples from the same baby group, six newborns, a luxurious house. But not everything has gone to plan, and while some are here to celebrate, others have sorrows to drown. When someone falls from the balcony of the house, the secrets and conflicts within the group begin to spill out …
At first glance they’re magnificent, yet the more she looks, the more she realizes how sinister the mountains appear: raw, jagged spikes. It’s not hard to imagine, she thinks, looking out; this place somehow consuming someone, swallowing them whole.
Norway, 1880. Winter is hard in Butangen, a village secluded at the end of a valley. The lake has frozen, and for months the ground is too hard to bury the dead. Astrid Hekne dreams of a life beyond all this, beyond marriage, children, and working the land to the end of her days.
There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere.
I know what you’re thinking, is it some kind of macabre joke? Has she been in a coma? How can Ruby Wax write a book about good news when the world is facing the worst disaster since the Plague?
Bob, now settled with Wendy, must reconcile old memories and new children while Richard must save his family from themselves. Along the way, they are adopted by the lascivious Lucy Fishwick and her predatory daughter Maddie, whose lives are as mad and chaotic as the radio play Lucy is trying to write and, indeed, the world itself.
For months, the FBI have been on the hunt for a terrorist who seems invincible. The death toll is rising, yet somehow the killer, known only as the “Green Man”, has avoided leaving a single clue.
Sinéad Hynes is a tough, driven, funny young property developer with a terrifying secret. No-one knows it: not her fellow patients in a failing hospital, and certainly not her family. She has confided only in Google and a shiny magpie.
Investigating the killing of a prisoner during a riot inside a state penitentiary, GBI investigator Will Trent is confronted with disturbing information. One of the inmates claims that he is innocent of a brutal attack for which he has always been the prime suspect.
Officially, Max McLean doesn’t exist. An off-the-books assassin for the British government, he operates alone. But when a routine hit goes badly wrong, a cryptic note on a $100 bill prised from his target’s dead fingers suggests there’s more to the mission than meets the eye.
Sadie has moved back to London so her daughter can attend the exclusive school her domineering father has secured her a place at. It’s highly sought-after and highly competitive – just like the other mothers, Sadie soon discovers.
Newly divorced Jo is delighted to move into her best friend’s spare room almost rent-free. The high-tech luxury Camden flat is managed by a meticulous Home Assistant, called Electra, that takes care of the heating, the lights – and sometimes Jo even turns to her for company.
After four years behind bars, notorious serial killer Tom Kerr is ready to talk.
And Chief Inspector William Wisting is waiting to listen.
Kerr has finally agreed to lead the police to his final victim’s grave. But the expedition goes horribly wrong when he escapes deep into the Norwegian forest.
It seems like a routine disappearance, a case of a musician’s stage fright. As a senior detective, Craig Gillard isn’t sure why he’s even involved. Until it turns out the woman’s father is the German Minister of Justice, and the British Home Secretary is on the case too.
A desperate alliance. A struggle for survival. And a marriage of convenience with an epic twist of fate come together in Jeffe Kennedy’s The Fiery Crown. Perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas, the lush romantic fantasy world of the Forgotten Empires series will sweep you away.
Brother against brother. Father against son. Friends turned into enemies. No one in England wants a return to the bloody days of the Civil War. But Oliver Cromwell’s son, Richard, has abandoned his exile and slipped back into England. The consequences could be catastrophic.
When Ella Watson, a woman of wealth and status, is brutally stabbed to death in broad daylight it sends a shockwave through the Lake District community. Later that day, Keira Bradley meets the same fate. But whereas Ella’s murder is a tragedy, Keira’s death on the notorious Beacon Estate is just another statistic in a dangerous place.
On the banks of the River Seine in 1899, a young woman takes her final breath before plunging into the icy water. Although she does not know it, her decision will set in motion an astonishing chain of events.
During a goodwill mission to the neighboring country of Astrul, a flying battleship, the Jared Fallor, is ambushed in the clouds and shot down over Astrul’s capital city Chassell Borg causing massive loss of life and destruction. The only survivor, Maya Sennay, is saved at the last moment by a winged mercenary called Sarok.
1815, Sumbawa Island, Indonesia
Mount Tambora explodes in a cataclysmic eruption, killing thousands. Sent to investigate, ship surgeon Henry Hogg can barely believe his eyes. Once a paradise, the island is now solid ash, the surrounding sea turned to stone. But worse is yet to come: as the ash cloud rises and covers the sun, the seasons will fail.
It is 2059, and the world has crashed. Forty years ago, a solar catastrophe began to slow the planet’s rotation to a stop. Now one half of the globe is permanently sunlit, the other half trapped in an endless night.
The worst thing possible has happened. Richard and Juliette Willoughby’s son, Ewan, has died suddenly at the age of five. Starve Acre, their house by the moors, was to be full of life, but is now a haunted place.
On the icy edge of Soviet Russia, bold and reckless Nina Markova joins the infamous Night Witches – an all-female bomber regiment. But when she is downed behind enemy lines, Nina must use all her wits to survive her encounter with a lethal Nazi murderess known as the Huntress.
In ELSEWHERE, master storyteller Dean Koontz, has created a brilliant and terrifying speculative thriller with hat-tips to George Orwell, Ray Bradbury and HG Wells.
In the little South Californian town of Suavidad Beach, Jeff Coltrane is raising his daughter Amity on his own, ever since his wife Michelle went missing seven years ago. He’s doing a pretty good job of it, and though Amity misses her mom she pours her excess love into her pet mouse Snowball: she’s on a promise for her own puppy if she proves she can take good care of the mouse.
