category: Fiction

Seven Days

Your father is on death row. You have seven days to save him. But do you want to?
Alice knows her father is guilty of many things.
He’s guilty of abandoning her.
He’s guilty of being unfaithful to her mother.
But is he guilty of murder?

Now on Death Row, he has seven days to live.
Some people want him released.
Others will kill to keep him just where he is.
Alice has only one chance to save him. But should she?

Robert Rutherford had a random mix of jobs before taking the dive into crime writing; he’s been a bookseller, pizza deliverer, karate instructor, football coach, and HR Manager. He lives on the North East Coast with his wife, children & overly-needy dog, and is a founding member of the Northern Crime Syndicate crime-writers group. WHAT FALLS BETWEEN THE CRACKS, the first in his Porter & Styles series, written under the name Robert Scragg, was a New Writing North pick as one of the 2019 Read Regional books of the year. Rob’s work has also seen him shortlisted for the Lindisfarne Prize for Crime Fiction in 2021, and shortlisted twice for the CWA Short Story Daggers. He is represented by David Headley at DHH Literary Agency.

An Idle Woman: gaslighting in the nineteenth century

1838, England: When eighteen-year-old Frances Dickinson impulsively marries Lieutenant John Geils, all her hopes for her future are quickly shattered as she finds there is much about her husband she did not know. A cruel and violent man, John keeps Frances in isolation on his family’s estate, while spending her fortune and preying upon their maids.

Frances yearns to break free from her marriage but the law is not on her side. Only when John’s abuse escalates can she set in motion a daring plan to secure her freedom.

A story of gaslighting, control and one woman’s fight, An Idle Woman is the true story behind one of the most sensational divorce trials of the nineteenth century.

Wendy Parkins is from Sydney and has held academic posts at universities in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK, most recently as Professor of Victorian Literature at the University of Kent. She decided to leave academia at the end of 2018 to return to New Zealand to pursue writing full-time. My memoir, Every Morning, So Far, I’m Alive, was published in 2019. In 2018, Parkins moved back to New Zealand to focus on her writing and is currently teaching English Literature and Creative Writing part-time at the University of Otago, Dunedin, and reviews books for leading New Zealand journals and magazines.

Secrets of Malta

An escapist historical novel of women, spies and a world at war

Malta, 1943.

The war in the air above Malta is over, but the battle for Europe is about to begin. Margarita, a young singer in a Valletta nightclub, has not seen her former lover Henry Dunn since breaking off their affair. His wife Vera, an enigmatic archaeologist, arrives at the club to tell her that Henry has disappeared, presumed dead.

While investigating, Margarita stumbles upon the hunt for a notorious and dangerous Nero. As an unlikely bond develops between the two women, and strange secrets emerge, an urgent quest to unmask Nero starts – before he can enact a deadly plan that may threaten the course of the war.

Cecily Blench is a freelance writer and editor with a particular interest in travel writing, wartime history, intrepid women and Southeast Asia. She grew up in Herefordshire, attended the University of York, and now lives in London. She has written for a number of publications including Reader’s Digest, Slightly Foxed, The London Magazine, and Hinterland. Her first novel won the 2019 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize and is under contract with Bonnier Zaffre.

Her first novel, The Long Journey Home, is a historical adventure set in Burma during the Second World War and will be published by Bonnier Books in June 2021. Her new novel, a WW2 espionage thriller, is being published by Bonnier Books in 2024.

Flowers from the Void

Grotesquely gothic short stories to keep you awake all night

Addictively strange and disturbing, Flowers From the Void is a collection of delectably uncanny tales. A reaper readies herself for her next gruesome assignment and a bereaved African witch prepares for a showdown with a rigidly traditional white Salem coven while an outcast teenage boy is lured into a pact with a schoolfriend that will cost him far more than he ever imagined.

Hauntingly macabre and piercingly insightful about loss and loneliness, these gothic short stories lead us into a labyrinth of other possible worlds, each one darker than the last and yet all fearfully close to our own. Living dolls serve as imperfect replacements for the deceased, a girl without a shadow finds her soulmate and spurned lovers’ bodies begin falling to pieces. In this scintillating debut collection Gianni Washington explores the limit of intimacy and empathy with the vivid intensity of your worst nightmare.

Gianni Washington’s writing has been published in The Fat City Review online, LitroNY.com, the horror anthology Brief Grislys and read aloud on the Great American Folk Show. She is a monthly contributor to the Chicago Review of Books and holds a PhD in Creative Writing from The University of Surrey. She worked for many years as a bookseller in London but is currently based in North Carolina

Poor Artists

A moving, eye-opening journey through the world of contemporary art from one of the most innovative voices in the field

At a moment in which working as a professional artist is an increasingly unattainable luxury, art criticism duo The White Pube investigate why so many artists try anyway. Labelled “the Diet Prada of the art world” by British Vogue, in Poor Artists writers Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad ridicule a contemporary art world that has turned art into artworks, art schools into art universities, and creative expression into cut-throat competition.

Poor Artists follows aspiring artist Quest Talukdar as she embarks on a surreal journey into the creative industry, where she must decide whether she cares more about success or staying true to herself. Featuring dialogue from anonymous interviews with real people who have all had to ask themselves the same question – including a Turner Prize winner or two, a recluse, a Venice Biennale fraudster, a communist messiah, a ghost, and a literal knight – The White Pube tell the story of art like never before.

The White Pube is the collaborative identity of UK-based critics Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad. They have been turning heads since 2015 when the pair began publishing provocative art reviews and essays online from their art school studios and have earned themselves an international cult following due to their innovative writing style, their honesty and irreverence, and their willingness to challenge the pale, male, stale art establishment. The White Pube have worked with art schools, galleries and museums in the US, Canada, Australia, India, Cyprus, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, Norway, and across Europe with organisations in Portugal, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Sweden and Ireland. Poor Artists is their first book.

Blessings

“A moving debut about love and loneliness” – Sunday Times

“A sublime coming-of-age tale… an extraordinarily composed and deeply felt debut – Guardian”

“Both a brutal and tender coming-of-age story, marking Ibeh as a major new literary voice.” – The i

“A magnificent debut…” – Daily Telegraph

“Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s writing has a certain delicacy to it, so wonderfully observant, and so beautiful” – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

An exquisite story of love and loneliness and coming of age that asks how we can live freely when politics reaches into our hearts and lives, as well as deep into our consciousness.

When Obiefuna’s father witnesses an intimate moment between his teenage son and the family’s apprentice, newly arrived from the nearby village, he banishes Obiefuna to a Christian boarding school marked by strict hierarchy and routine, devastating violence. Utterly alienated from the people he loves, Obiefuna begins a journey of self-discovery and blossoming desire, while his mother Uzoamaka grapples to hold onto her favourite son, her truest friend.

Interweaving the perspectives of Obiefuna and his mother Uzoamaka, as they reach towards a future that will hold them both, BLESSINGS is an elegant and exquisitely moving story of love and loneliness. Asking how we can live freely when politics reaches into our hearts and lives, as well as deep into our consciousness, it is a stunning, searing debut.

Chukwuebuka Ibeh is a writer from Port Harcourt, Nigeria, born in 2000. His writing has appeared in McSweeneys, The New England Review of Books and Lolwe, amongst others, and he is a staff writer at Brittle Paper. He was the Runner-up for the 2021 J.F Powers Prize for Fiction, a finalist for the Gerald Kraak Award and Morland Foundation Scholarship and was profiled as one of the “Most Promising New Voices of Nigerian Fiction” in Electric Literature. He has studied creative writing under Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dave Eggers and Tash Aw. He is a student on a fully funded MFA programme at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, until 2024.

The Artist

The year is 1920. The place is a remote farmhouse in Provence, home to the reclusive painter Edouard Tartuffe and his niece, Ettie. Into this strange, silent house walks Joseph: a young journalist hoping to write an article about Tartuffe. But the more he entangles himself in the peculiar household, the more Joseph’s curiosity grows…

Ettie cooks and cleans for her uncle. She prepares his studio, scrubs his paintbrushes, and creates the perfect environment for him to work. She has never gone further than the local village. She is sharp-eyed and watchful. But beneath her cool exterior, Joseph senses something simmering. Ettie, Joseph and Tartuffe circle each other throughout the hot, crackling summer, until finally they collide.

Lucy Steeds is 29 years old and a graduate of both the Faber Academy and the London Library Emerging Writers Programme. She began writing the novel while living in France and currently splits her time between London and Amsterdam. THE ARTIST has — in manuscript form — already been listed for the BPA First Novel Award, the Yeovil Literary Prize, the Page Turner Awards, the Fiction Factory First Chapter Competition, and was a Finalist in the Spotlight First Novel Award and the Moniack Mhor Emerging Writer Award. Lucy herself has synaesthesia and uses this to play with ways of translating images into words. She has a BA in English Literature and a Masters in World Literatures from the University of Oxford.

Lucy is represented by Eleanor Birne at RCW Literary Agency.

The Revenge Club

When the odds are against you, it’s time to get even.

Matilda, Jo, Penny and Cressy are all women at the top of their game; so imagine their surprise when they start to be personally overlooked and professionally pushed aside by less-qualified men.

Only they’re not going down without a fight.

Society might think the women have passed their amuse-by dates but the Revenge Club have other plans.

After all, why go to bed angry when you could stay up and plot diabolical retribution? Let the games begin…

Kathy Lette first achieved success as a teenager with the novel Puberty Blues, which was made into a major film and a TV mini-series. After several years as a newspaper columnist and television sitcom writer for Columbia Pictures in America, she wrote numerous international bestsellers including Mad Cows (which was made into a film starring Joanna Lumley and Anna Friel), How to Kill Your Husband and Other Handy Household Hints (recently staged by the Victorian Opera, Australia), To Love, Honour and Betray and The Boy Who Fell To Earth (soon to be filmed by Emily Mortimer). Her novels have been published in seventeen languages around the world. Kathy appears regularly as a guest on the BBC and Sky News. She is also an ambassador for Women and Children First, Plan International and the White Ribbon Alliance. In 2004 she was the London Savoy Hotel’s Writer in Residence where a cocktail named after her can still be ordered. Kathy is an autodidact (a word she obviously taught herself) but in 2010, received an honorary doctorate from Southampton Solent University.

Kathy is represented for publishing by David Headley at DHH Literary Agency.

The Reappearance of Rachel Price

From New York Times bestselling author of the GOOD GIRLS GUIDE TO MURDER series, soon to be seen on BBC!

18-year-old Bel has lived her whole life in the shadow of her mom’s mysterious disappearance. Sixteen years ago, Rachel Price vanished and young Bel was the only witness. Rachel is gone, presumed dead.

The case is dragged up from the past when the Price family agree to a true crime documentary. Bel can’t wait for filming to end, for life to go back to normal. But then Rachel Price reappears, and life will never be normal again.

Rachel has an unbelievable story about what happened to her. Unbelievable, because Bel isn’t sure it’s real. If Rachel is lying, then where has she been all this time? And – could she be dangerous? Bel must uncover the truth about her mother, and find out why Rachel Price really came back from the dead.

Dirty Money

*Currently under option*

RAMONA CHANG

An investigative journalist turned private detective, Ramona’s final scoop left her with a target on her back. Now in hiding, she is living in a run-down flat in east London. But when her latest case looking into an upmarket escort agency takes a dark turn, she needs information only accessible to those in power . . .

DETECTIVE SERGEANT MADELEINE FARROW

A high-flying operative at a government agency, it’s the day of her fiftieth birthday when Madeleine finds out that she has been given the lead on an investigation into corruption on a global scale. But when she finds her case mysteriously blocked from the inside, she needs someone on the outside, capable of moving undetected . . .

As Ramona’s and Madeleine’s cases collide, can the unlikely allies find justice for multiple victims within the capital’s hotbed of lies and deception?

A gripping thrill-ride set against the gloss and grit of contemporary London, DIRTY MONEY introduces an unforgettable new detective duo created by critically acclaimed writer Charlotte Philby.

‘Brilliant! Effortlessly cool and clever. Cracking plot too’ Jane Casey, author of The Killing Kind

‘Slick, stylish, glimmering with menace and introducing two unforgettable new leads’ Lucy Foley, author of The Guest List

Charlotte Philby is the author of four novels, PART OF THE FAMILY, A DOUBLE LIFE, THE SECOND WOMAN (trilogy); and EDITH AND KIM – all of which have been optioned for Film/TV. Her fifth novel, THE END OF SUMMER, will publish by The Borough Press in June 2024 and it also optioned for development. She is a former reporter, editor and columnist at The Independent newspaper – shortlisted for the 2013 Cudlipp prize for investigative journalism – and a former contributing editor at Marie Claire magazine. She has presented documentaries for the BBC World Service, The One Show, and appeared on television, podcasts and radio including Radio 4’s Front Row, Woman’s Hour, Free Thinking, Loose Ends, Brit Box’s Secrets of the Spies, Sky News, NPR’s Note to Self podcast. She has written for publications including New Statesman, Tatler, Guardian, Telegraph, Sunday Times, ELLE, Red, and more.