By B P Walter

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Publisher: One More Chapter (HarperCollins)

Four people walked into the dining room that night. One would never leave.

Matthew: the perfect husband.

Titus: the perfect son.

Charlie: the perfect illusion.

Rachel: the perfect stranger.

Charlie didn’t want her at the book club. Matthew wouldn’t listen.

And that’s how Charlie finds himself slumped beside his husband’s body, their son sitting silently at the dinner table, while Rachel calls 999, the bloody knife still gripped in her hand.

Classic crime meets Donna Tartt in this nerve-shredding domestic noir thriller that weaves a sprawling web of secrets around an opulent West London world and the dinner that ends in death.

By Emma Musty

Genre: Literary Fiction

Publisher: Legend Press, Audio: WF Howes

Longlisted for the Mslexia Award and Cinnamon Press Novel Award.

Theo, an aging Parisian cartographer, is desperately searching for the woman he once loved before Alzheimer’s takes his memories of her.

Elise, his estranged daughter, moves in to take care of him. She still blames him for the tragic loss of her mother and is struggling with this new forced intimacy.

Nebay, an Eritrean refugee, becomes Theo’s carer and friend. Unbeknownst to Elise, Nebay does not have a visa for France and is working illegally in order to support his sister.

Each is living a life of secrets, questions and uncertainty in a world where Nebay’s very presence in France would be invisible on Theo’s maps.

An important novel that is as compassionate as it is eye-opening, The Exile and the Mapmaker is a testament to the triumph of the human spirit.

By Ryan Collett

Genre: Literary Fiction

Publisher: Sandstone Press

After witnessing from her apartment window the killing of two young boys by a hit and run driver, Doreen Durand lies low, alone and friendless, refusing to answer the door or her phone to the investigating police. When she runs away she is picked up and protected by the mysterious Violet Cascade, wealthy and powerful. As Officer Solloway continues to pursue Doreen, a surreal game of cat and mouse begins.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktXYF2yVXP0

By David Wharton

Genre: Literary Crime

Publisher: Sandstone Press

London: 1963. The lives of a professional shoplifter and a young art student collide. Delia must atone for a terrible mistake; Tess is desperate to be a real artist. With the threat of the criminal underworld encroaching, only their friendship can save them from disaster.

By Jasbinder Bilan

Genre: YA Fiction

Publisher: Chicken House Books (UK), Scholastic (US)

From the winner of the Costa Children's Book Award

Tamarind never knew her Indian mum, Chinty, who died soon after she was born. So when she arrives at her ancestral home, a huge mansion in the Himalayas surrounded by luxuriant gardens, she's full of questions for her extended family. But instead of answers, she finds an ominous silence - and a trickle of intriguing clues: an abandoned hut, a friendly monkey, a glowing star ring, and a strange girl in the garden who calls herself Ishta. Slowly, Tamarind unravels a mystery at the heart of who she is ...

By Claire McFall

Genre: YA Fiction

Publisher: Hot Key Books (UK), Beijing White Horse (Simplified Chinese)

Liam

Hayley, she just doesn’t get it. Doesn’t get that doors which are open for her, are closed for me. Doesn’t get that I’m following in my dad’s footsteps, Aiden’s footsteps, even if the shoes don’t fit. She tells me we can be together, that we can make it work. And I wish, I really wish, that we could. But wishing doesn’t change anything.

Hayley

When I was eleven, green was my favourite colour. That was before I realised my nose was blue. It was also the year I met Liam. Right from the off, we were best friends. Then more. Then... nothing. Because Tim and Hun, they’re oil and water: they don’t mix. Ask my dad. Ask Aiden. But blue, green, they’re just colours. And I like green.

By Frankie Miren

Genre: Contemporary Literary Drama

Publisher: Influx Press

Lori works illegally in a rented flat in central London, living in fear of police raids which could mean losing her small daughter and her dream of a new life.

Freya is a student who finds she can make far more money as an escort than she could in an office; life, after all, is already a tangle of madness and dissociation.

And Paula is a journalist whose long-term campaign against prostitution has brought her some strange bedfellows.

After a shock change to the law, with brothels being raided by the authorities, lives across the country are fractured. As a threat from Lori’s past begins to catch up with her, the three women are increasingly, inevitably drawn into each other’s orbit

The Service is a powerful and challenging novel about women’s bodies, sex and relationships, mental health, entitlement, authenticity, privilege and power – as shocking as any dystopia, but touching and deeply humane.

By Roderick O'Grady

Genre: Grounded Mythical Family Drama

Publisher: Firefly Press

Publication Date: 2021

Minnie is alone, high up in her favourite tree, looking out at the vast grey smoke cloud from the forest fire behind the mountain. Across the bay, lightning strikes trees on the crest of the long, hilly island.

Taayii is sitting at the top of his favourite tree watching the billowing smoke of the raging fire that has forced his clan to move to this side of the mountain. Though only a couple of years older than Minnie, he is more than a foot taller and twice as wide. He is completely covered in long dense dark brown hair.

Minnie’s mother died recently, and she and her stepfather Dan are stuck with each other, living in a small cabin at the foot of a mountain. On a hike in the forest with her best friend Billy, Minnie discovers four giant footprints. Dan is sceptical and puts it down to hoaxers - anything other than a hitherto unidentified giant bi-pedal hominid called Bigfoot. Minnie knows better.

The Bigfoots or Sasquatches are guardians of the forest, but the balance has been disturbed. There are now too many predators on this side of the mountain. Taayii’s father has decided that they must follow the ‘ancient trail’ to a new forest home.

Tayyii and Minnie’s paths become entwined as they help each other and their families to heal.

By Paul Braddon

UNDER OPTION with BBC Studios

Genre: Speculative Thriller, Grounded Sci-fi

Publisher: Sandstone Press

Publication Date: 2020

Fear makes her human - humans make her fear!

Evie, a bio-engineered human replica, lives in a Thames-side penthouse with her ‘husband’ Matthew and his servant, Daniels. A hugely valuable commodity, she has been kept secret from the world and spends her days pacing their rooftop garden, her life dull but safe.

When knowledge of her whereabouts is leaked, she is forced to leave the security of the apartment and everything she knows, and take her chances on the dangerous streets below. With the threat of capture ever present, she learns to be decisive and ruthless.

Along the way she rescues charismatic David, the only other humanoid like her, and Sola a ten-year-old pickpocket with whom she forms an instant bond. What greets her at her journey’s end is wholly unexpected. What is ‘the actuality’ and how can Evie make sense of her existence now?

The Actuality is a powerful, atmospheric speculative thriller set in a squalid, broken-down England a hundred years in the future in which technology has lurched forward then all but seized up. Evie is a brilliantly depicted character: AI but soulful, aware of her limitations but expanding her ‘consciousness’, experiencing the loneliness of being one of a kind and ultimately forcing us to question the essence of what it is to be human.

By Jasbinder Bilan

Genre: YA Fiction

Publisher: Chicken House Books (UK), Scholastic (US)

Winner of the Costa Children's Book Award 2019
Winner of the Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition 2017
Shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2020
Longlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2019
Chosen as one of the Guardian's Best Books of 2019

Asha lives in the foothills of the Himalayas. Money is tight and she misses her papa who works in the city. When he suddenly stops sending his wages, a ruthless moneylender ransacks their home and her mother talks of leaving.

From her den in the mango tree, Asha makes a pact with her best friend, Jeevan, to find her father and make things right. But the journey is dangerous: they must cross the world's highest mountains and face hunger, tiredness - even snow leopards.

And yet, Asha has the unshakeable sense that the spirit bird of her grandmother - her nanijee - is watching over her ...

By James Gould-Bourn

UNDER OPTION with Lime Pictures

Genre: Up-lit, Comedy

Publisher: Trapeze (Orion) (UK), Scribner (Simon & Schuster) (US)

Publication Date: June 2020

Foreign Rights Sales: Germany, Italy, Chinese (Simplified), France, Serbia, Japan, Bulgaria

Danny has lost his wife, his job on a building site, and he is about to lose his home. Worst of all though, he’s losing his son, Will, who hasn’t spoken since his mum died 14 months earlier in a car crash. Danny doesn’t know how to reach him.

After seeing street performers in his local park apparently raking it in, he spends his last fiver on a vomit-ridden animal suit and becomes a dancing panda… until something unexpected happens that makes the humiliation of his terrible rhythm all worth it. When Danny sees Will being bullied, he runs over in the panda outfit to save his son, who in turn then opens up to him like he hasn’t for over a year. But Will doesn’t know it’s his dad in the suit, and Danny is too afraid to tell him the truth in case he spoils everything.

Keeping Mum is a sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, sometimes sad, always poignant and ultimately uplifting story of a father and son overcoming their grief in the most unlikely of circumstances.

By Katie Marsh

Genre: Romantic Comedy-Drama

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Seven-year-old Jake has spent his whole life rushing in and out of hospital after being born with a devastating heart condition. Jake is determined over the course of a year to find his single father, Simon, someone to love. But what neither of them are expecting is for Beth, a nurse, to move into the cottage next door and change both their lives forever.

'Unbreak Your Heart was born in a hospital corridor eight years ago when I carried my baby daughter towards her first operation. It is a love story of hope and courage, about the light that shines through the darkness and the love that can transform a broken heart and let it take flight.' (Katie Marsh),

by Michael Jecks

Genre: Historical Mystery, thriller

Publisher: Canelo and Headline

The first book in an epic 32 book series. Paris, 1307. A Knight Templar weeps as he watches his friends, broken by torture, go to their deaths at the stake. Pope Clement has destroyed the Order, persuaded of corruption within it. All that remains is the desire for vengeance against those who defiled the Order’s name. Devon 1316. Simon Puttock is the newly appointed bailiff of Lydford Castle, but has little experience of violence. A charred body is found in a burned-out cottage, and only the new lord, Sir Baldwin de Furnshill, deduces that the victim was dead before the fire began. Together, Simon and Baldwin begin to piece together the events of the man’s last days. Then word comes of another murder, and this time the victim was burned alive…

By Amanda Mason

Genre: Domestic Horror/Psychological Thriller

Publisher: Bonnier Zaffre

The girls heard it first, the knocking inside the walls . . .

THEN

1976. Loo and her sister Bee live in a run-down cottage in the middle of nowhere, with their artistic parents and wild siblings. Their mother, Cathy, had hoped to escape to a simpler life; instead the family find themselves isolated and shunned by their neighbours. At the height of the stifling summer, unexplained noises and occurences in the house begin to disturb the family, until they intrude on every waking moment . . .

NOW

Loo, now Lucy, is called back to her childhood home. A group of strangers are looking to discover the truth about the house and the people who lived there. But is Lucy ready to confront what really happened all those years ago?

By Katie Coyle

UNDER OPTION

Genre: YA Dystopian Fiction

Publisher: Hot Key Books (Bonnier Zaffre) (UK), Houghton Mifflin (US)

Putting the cult back in cult fiction, this is a darkly witty and sharply questioning debut

A chilling vision of a contemporary USA where the sinister Church of America is destroying lives. Our cynical protagonist, sixteen-year-old Vivian Apple, is awaiting the fated 'Rapture' - or rather the lack of it. Her evangelical parents have been in the Church's thrall for too long, and she's looking forward to getting them back. Except that when Vivian arrives home the day after the supposed 'Rapture', her parents are gone. All that is left are two holes in the ceiling...

Viv is determined to carry on as normal, but when she starts to suspect that her parents might still be alive, she realises she must uncover the truth. Joined by Peter, a boy claiming to know the real whereabouts of the Church, and Edie, a heavily pregnant Believer who has been 'left behind', they embark on a road trip across America. Encountering freak weather, roving 'Believer' gangs and a strange teenage group calling themselves the 'New Orphans', Viv soon begins to realise that the Rapture was just the beginning.

By Eliska Tanzer

Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir

Publisher: Mirror Books

This is the true story of Eliska Tanzer. Born into a Romani life, her family already outcasts, she has no future and no way out. Very early on, Eliska realises that the only way she will ever be happy is to leave the place and make her way in the world through an education. So she sets in motion a chain of events that will bring her to England and take her within inches of her dreams.

But the dusty road she must tread is fraught with challenges, and soon young Eliska has to face up to the brutalities of the world and her own struggle to stay alive.

This is her story. A story of remarkable will, determination and desire to become a better person. A story of a girl on the brink.

By Maria Kuzniar

Genre: YA Action & Adventure

Publisher: Penguin

Aleja whiles away her days in her family's dusty tavern in Seville, dreaming of distant lands and believing in the kind of magic that she's only ever read about in books. After all, she's always being told that girls can't be explorers.

But her life is changed forever when adventure comes for her in the form of a fabled vessel called the Ship of Shadows. Crewed by a band of ruthless women, with cabin walls dripping with secrets, the ship has sailed right out of a legend. And it wants Aleja.

Once on board its shadowy deck, she begins to realize that the sea holds more secrets than she ever could have imagined. The crew are desperately seeking something, and their path will take them through treacherous waters and force them to confront nightmare creatures and pitch-dark magic. It will take all of Aleja's strength and courage to gain the trust of her fellow pirates - and discover what they are risking everything to find.

By Jeremy Craddock

UNDER OPTION with TOD Productions

Genre: True Crime, Non-Fiction

Publisher: The History Press

10 Rillington Place meets Silent Witness, set in the Agatha Christie era and written with the verse and suspense of a crime thriller

In September 1935, Dr Buck Ruxton strangled his wife Isabella, whom he suspected of having an affair, in their Lancashire home while their three children slept in their beds close by. When the nanny, Mary Rogerson, disturbed him in the act, he killer her too.

To hide his crimes, he dismembered and chopped up the bodies, removing any distinguishing features, before he disposed of them in a number of bags in a ravine on the Scottish borders. When first discovered, it was unclear how many bodies the police were even dealing with. The world’s media went into a frenzy over the so-called ‘Jigsaw Murders’.

It took the genius of Professors Sydney Smith and John Glaister and their ground-breaking forensic techniques to piece together the identities of the bodies. And when the finger of suspicion finally pointed at Buck Ruxton, he acquired the services of the most famous lawyer in the land, Norman Birkett QC who, against all the odds, had successfully defended the accused of the Brighton Trunk Murder case the previous year. Would he succeed this time?

In The Jigsaw Murders, author and journalist Jeremy Craddock tells the whole story of these gruesome killings for the first time. He brings to life the main characters, from the enigmatic and charismatic Ruxton himself, to Isabella Ruxton and Mary Rogerson - until now only seen as anonymous victims of a cruel crime - to the police officers, lawyers and scientists involved in the investigation and trial in this landmark case which led to the birth of modern forensics.

By Paul MacAlindin

Genre: Non-Fiction

Publisher: Sandstone Press

The story of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq is here told by its musical director from its inception to its eventual end. The NYOI came through the most difficult and dangerous of times to produce fine music not only in Iraq but also in Britain, Germany and France. A beacon of hope and achievement the young musicians and their tutors made bridges across their own ethnic divisions, made great music in the most trying and tragic of circumstances, and became their country's best ambassadors in 5000 years.

Paul MacAlindin discovered from an early age that he loved being an artist leading artists. As a musician, dancer and all-round performer, he found his voice through conducting, a passionate journey that has led him to work with orchestras and ensembles all over the world, from the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra to the Armenian Philharmonic to the Düsseldorf Symphoniker.

‘The great adventure of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq [...]serve[s] as an example of how the essential can survive catastrophe.' Sir Peter Maxwell Davies

‘Be prepared to laugh, cry and - above all – to discover music’s power to overcome seemingly irreconcilable differences and create harmony out of chaos.’ Julian Lloyd Webber

‘An amazing and deeply inspiring story.’ Book of the Month (August 2016), The Bookseller

‘Upbeat is an eloquently-written, moving and sometimes funny book.’ The National (UAE)

‘Fragile, precarious, quixotic and almost insanely heroic.’ BBC Music Magazine

‘...one of the most unlikely, and genuinely heroic, stories you’re ever likely to read.’ The Spectator

‘An inspiring and insightful guide towards understanding a land too long dominated by war and violence.’ The Express

by Claire McFall

UNDER OPTION with Legendary Entertainment

Genre: YA Fantasy, romance

Publisher: Templar Fiction

With more than two million copies sold worldwide, Ferryman is a cult sensation in China, staying in the top 10 bestseller chart for three years before securing a Hollywood movie deal in early 2018. Language rights to the Ferryman trilogy have been sold in 14 territories.

Three Book Series

Dylan has escaped a horrific train crash unscathed. Except she hasn't. The bleak landscape around her isn't Scotland. It's a wasteland haunted by wraiths searching for human souls. And the stranger waiting for her isn't an ordinary boy. Tristan is a Ferryman, tasked with transporting her soul safely to the afterlife, a journey he's made a thousand times before. Except this time, something's different. Torn between love and destiny, Dylan realises she can't let Tristan go, nor can she stay with him. Eventually, inevitably, the wraiths would capture her soul and she would be lost forever. Can true love overcome the boundaries of death?

by Claire McFall

UNDER OPTION with Legendary Entertainment

Genre: YA Fantasy, romance

Publisher: Templar Fiction

With more than two million copies sold worldwide, Ferryman is a cult sensation in China, staying in the top 10 bestseller chart for three years before securing a Hollywood movie deal in early 2018. Language rights to the Ferryman trilogy have been sold in 14 territories.

Three Book Series

Tristan and Dylan have escaped the afterlife. But fate never meant for them to live. Dylan should have been killed in a horrific train crash. Tristan should still be a Ferryman, an immortal. Now, living in bodies they have no right to inhabit, they discover they're connected by something stronger than love. Their souls are bound together. Alone, they'll die. When they broke through the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead they defied the laws of the supernatural world, and showed the way for others to escape. Now they must face the consequences. Can true love transcend destiny?

by Claire McFall

UNDER OPTION with Legendary Entertainment

Genre: YA Fantasy, romance

Publisher: Templar Fiction

With more than two million copies sold worldwide, Ferryman is a cult sensation in China, staying in the top 10 bestseller chart for three years before securing a Hollywood movie deal in early 2018. Language rights to the Ferryman trilogy have been sold in 14 territories.

Three Book Series

Tristan and Dylan have escaped death and conquered destiny. Finally, there is nothing to stop them from being together. But every action has a consequence, and their escape to the real world has caused an imbalance in the afterlife. It's owed two souls -- and it wants them back. When the world of the dead claims Dylan's parents to restore the balance, Dylan and Tristan are offered a terrible bargain: stay together and condemn innocent souls to death, or return to the wasteland to take their place and face separation. Forever. With no place left for them in the world of the living or the dead, will Dylan and Tristan make a heartrending sacrifice? The stunning final instalment of Dylan and Tristan's epic love story, Outcasts is the much-anticipated follow-up to the award-winning Ferryman, and heart-pounding sequel Trespassers.

By Lotte Jeffs

Genre: Non-Fiction

Publisher: Cassell (Octopus Books)

'Part memoir, part manual - this is the type of book every modern woman can take something from' Grazia

Learn to navigate the harshness of life with soft power. In her debut book, Lotte Jeffs weaves powerful life experience with practical advice and a psychological deep-dive into what truly constitutes an emotionally rich and meaningful existence. She speaks to everyone from agony aunts and archaeologists, to pop stars and novelists, to explore a diverse picture of what it is to truly live life well.

How to be a Gentlewoman will teach you how to slow down, lean out, recognize good relationships and let go of the bad, create a space you love, find your people and construct a happy and 'joined up' sense of yourself.

The gentle antidote to a brutal world.

Lotte Jeffs is a journalist who’s been published in the Independent, the Guardian, the Saturday Times, the Sunday Times, the Evening Standard, ES Magazine, High Life, ELLE and more. In 2016 Lotte won Writer of The Year at the Press and Publishing Association Awards and in 2017 was shortlisted for Columnist of the Year for her eponymous ELLE Magazine column Lotte’s Lexicon. Lotte has been a features writer and columnist for the past 15 years, with previous roles including Features Editor and Acting Deputy Editor of ES Magazine and Deputy Editor and Acting Editor in Chief of ELLE. Lotte is now Creative Director at global advertising agency Ogilvy and continues to write a column for the Evening Standard, in addition to writing for the national press and newspaper and magazine supplements.

by Sebastian de Castell

UNDER OPTION

Genre: YA, Fantasy

Publisher: Hot Key Books (UK), Orbit/Hachette (US)

Foreign Rights Sales: Denmark, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain, Turkey

Nominated for the 2018 Carnegie Medal

MAGIC IS A CON GAME . . .

Kellen is moments away from facing his first mage's duel and the start of four trials that will make him a spellcaster. There's just one problem: his magic is gone.

As his sixteenth birthday approaches, Kellen falls back on his cunning in a bid to avoid total disgrace. But when a daring stranger arrives in town, she challenges Kellen to take a different path.

Ferius Parfax is one of the mysterious Argosi - a traveller who lives by her wits and the three decks of cards she carries. She's difficult and unpredictable, but she may be Kellen's only hope . . .

‘Magic with a Wild West flavour, served with flair.’ Financial Times

‘A bucket-load of tension is offset with humour, power struggles, lots of magic and some great characters. Fantasy junkies will devour with relish.’ Guardian

by Philip C. Quaintrell

UNDER OPTION

Genre: Fantasy Adventure Fiction

The Echoes of Fate, a prophesy uttered unto the world a thousand years ago, cannot be denied…

Mankind has lorded over the land of Illian for a thousand years, enjoying what was left to them by the elves, as if it were their birthright. A thousand years is a long time for an immortal race to see the error of their ways and realise a truth that has remained unsaid for a millennia - elves are superior! They are faster, stronger and connected to the magical world in a way that man could never grasp. Illian is their birthright. The six kingdoms of man are fractured, unallied and always clawing at each other’s doors for more power.
War is coming...

Thrown into the heart of this war is an Outlander of the wilds, an assassin, a ranger. Asher was born a thousand years ago, but he doesn’t remember. Forty years of brutal training and killing for money has beaten the earliest years of his life away, leaving his ties to the oldest of evils a mystery to all.

By Paul Cheston

Genre: True Crime, Non-Fiction

Publisher: John Blake Publishing (Bonnier Zaffre)

The heartbreaking true story of two families' thirty-year fight for justice for their murdered daughters

On 9 October 1986, Russell Bishop sexually assaulted and strangled nine-year-old Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway, in woods near Brighton. He did not answer for his crimes for over thirty years.

Bishop - a petty criminal known to both girls' families - was charged after his suspiciously close involvement in the search for the bodies. But a last-minute change of testimony from his then-girlfriend allowed him to go free, and the Babes in the Woods murders became one of Britain's most infamous cold cases.

In this first book on the case, veteran crime reporter Paul Cheston brings to life this thirty-year saga of murder, betrayal and injustice - before three decades of hurt led, at last, to healing, justice and hope for the parents of two murdered girls.

Written with the approval and cooperation of the Fellows family, The Babes in the Woods Murders sheds light once and for all on the awful truth behind what happened on 9 October 1986, and how the courtroom dramas that unfolded over a generation finally brought down one of Britain's most depraved killers.

by W.C. Ryan

Genre: Supernatural Thriller

Publisher: Zaffre (Bonnier Zaffre)

Short-listed for Irish Crime Awards / Crime Writing
Included in the 2018 Books of the Year list of the Sunday Express, Irish News and i-Newspaper.

'A gripping mystery with a classic feel: And Then There Were None meets The Silent Companions'

Winter 1917. As the First World War enters its most brutal phase, back home in England, everyone is seeking answers to the darkness that has seeped into their lives.

At Blackwater Abbey, on an island off the Devon coast, Lord Highmount has arranged a spiritualist gathering to contact his two sons who were lost in the conflict. But as his guests begin to arrive, it gradually becomes clear that each has something they would rather keep hidden. Then, when a storm descends on the island, the guests will find themselves trapped. Soon one of their number will die.

For Blackwater Abbey is haunted in more ways than one . . .

An unrelentingly gripping mystery packed with twists and turns, A House of Ghosts is the perfect chilling read this winter.

'Wonderfully written and a jolly good read' - Sunday Independent

'Spooks, spies and spectres are the order of the day in this rattling good read' - Sunday Express

'An intelligent, absorbing, exquisitely spooky mystery' - Irish Times’

by Peter Laws

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Publisher: Allison & Busby

Three Book Series

Foreign Rights Sales: Germany

Three times under the water: in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but then they must die. They’ll thank him for it one day because when they finally open their eyes they will see the glory of heaven…He kills because he cares.

Matt Hunter is a disgraced ex-vicar turned atheist. Now he’s a Professor of Sociology, writing a book debunking religious faith. He’s also an expert in religion and cults, who sometimes helps the Met with religiously-motivated crimes. When his architect wife, Wren, is invited to tender for a church renovation project in Hobbs Hill, Oxfordshire, the family decide to make a holiday of it. The village is idyllic, with a serene lake and beautiful waterfall. But Matt is instantly suspicious of the wooden crosses that hang in shop windows and homes. And what are the bizarre therapy sessions being run by the church on the hill? The holiday takes a darker turn, when he helps out with a search for a missing anorexic, teenage girl. When a second woman disappears, and then a third, Matt must draw on his theological knowledge to protect his family and catch a killer. But who keeps sending him pictures of the victims, even before the police know they’re missing?

Purged is the first novel in a gripping and unique crime thriller series about a man solving religious crime while wrestling with questions of his own abandoned faith.

‘Welcome to the future of crime chiller fiction – Purged is a spooky murder-em-up which comes on with massively unsettling supernatural elements that feel like James Herbert at his best… I haven’t been this creeped out by a novel since Let The Right One In‘ Darkmatters

by Peter Laws

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Publisher: Allison & Busby

Three Book Series

Foreign Rights Sales: Germany

Fifteen years ago, 29 Barley Street in Menham, South London, became notorious as the scene of alleged poltergeist activity and then as a crime scene when young Holly Wasson hanged herself.

The shadow cast by the unhuman figure that tormented Holly has never entirely left Menham, or the gang of friends who were so affected by the strange and tragic events. The shadow looms large in the present when one of the group dies in a horrific circumstances.

Matt Hunter, former minister and now professor of sociology, is called in to advise the police on the possible ritualistic elements of the death. He can’t help being drawn into the potent mix of prayer walkers, spiritualists and talk of demons at large in the town, and drawn into the question: have forces beyond the grave been unleashed, or is a flesh-and-blood killer at work?

‘It’s a crime story wound up in supernatural, nerve-jangling creepiness. Be warned, you’ll be peering under the bed before you switch out the light!’ - Peterborough Telegraph

by Peter Laws

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Publisher: Allison & Busby

Three Book Series

Foreign Rights Sales: Germany

During a communion service at a village church, the teenage son of a vicar brutally attacks his father with an axe. The horrified congregation watch the son esape and during a frantic police search rumours arise that the boy was involved in devil worship. Professor Matt Hunter, an atheist ex-minister and expert on religion, is brought in to advise, yet he quickly suspects the church attack may have a far more complex cause.

Meanwhile, a ten-year-old boy called Ever grows up in a small Christian cult. The group believe they are the only true humans left and that the world is filled with demons called Hollows, but they’re working on a bizarre ritual that will bring peace and paradise to the world. Soon, the worlds of Matt and Ever will collide in one awful, terrifying night where Matt is thrown into the frightening and murderous world of religious mania.

‘Dark and delicious with plenty of edge of the seat moments, twisty as you like and beautifully written and plotted.’ - Liz Loves Books blog