For years, Reagan Carsen has kept her life offline. No socials. No internet presence. No photos. Safe.
Until the day she stumbles on a shocking murder in a Sydney laneway. The victim looks just like her. Coincidence?
As more murders shake the city and she’s increasingly drawn out from hiding, Reagan is forced to confront her greatest fear.
She’s been found.
A riveting psychological thriller drawn from true events, Dark Mode delves into the terrifying reality of the dark web, and the price we pay for surrendering our privacy one click at a time.
Firstly, huge thanks to James at Ultimo Press Uk for sending me a proof copy of Dark Mode.
I happened to see a post on Instagram from someone saying how brilliant Dark Mode was, so off i went to read the blurb…well as soon as i read it and saw that stunning cover i just knew this would be a bookbanger, and i was SO right!
The opening chapter sees us meet Reagan Carsen having a morning jog thru Sydney only to stumble across a dismembered body, left in full view in a lane…and strangely the body looks a lot like her!
And then Dark Mode just picks up a gear and runs! This is an absolutely exceptional novel, the writing is clear and flows like a silk scarf over your shoulders, it is sublime.
We travel thru the story with Reagan, who has kept her life offline for a pretty valid reason, up until now. She meets a nice chap called Bryce when she drives into the back of his car, and they start a freindship. With him, she becomes more trusting and gets a mobile phone, and in an effort to help kickstart her ailing Garden Centre, Voodo Lily Garden centre, Bryce helps her to post online photos of the plants and start an Instagram account, as she needs to start paying back the banks loan things start to pick up. BUT, and it is a big but, so do weird things, unsettling, chilling things start happening to Raegan and bodies start to appear and things get very very dark and heart-stoppingly bad for Raegan.
I am not going to give any more away about Dark Mode, but this will be one of THE books of 2023, it is a stunner! The attention to detail that Ms Bunt has written about the plants in the fictional Voodo Lilly Garden Centre is just marvelous (even for someone who is not Greenfingers like me!) … it had me googling to see what they actually looked like, although descriptions were precise and it was easy to visualise them. Add in the story of the Black Dahlia Murders from the 1930s and you have a near-perfect crime thriller. If like me you a lover of true crime as wellas the fictional type, then Dark Mode is going to tick all your boxes!
I cannot say enough about how brilliant a novel Dark Mode is, I was gripped, I was riveted, and I had my heart in my mouth! I bloody loved it! This is one of the best books I’ve read in a while! And I must also say that the cover art is absolutely spot on and gorgeous!
A 5-star read and if I could give more I would! Jude says its a BOOKBANGER!!
Ashley Kalagian Blunt is the author of How to Be Australian and My Name Is Revenge, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Woollahra Digital Literary Awards and was a finalist in the 2018 Carmel Bird Digital Literary Award. Her writing appears in the Sydney Morning Herald, Overland, Griffith Review, Sydney Review of Books, Australian Book Review, Kill Your Darlings and more. Ashley teaches creative writing and co-hosts James and Ashley Stay at Home, a podcast about writing, creativity and health. Originally from Canada, she has lived and worked in South Korea, Peru and Mexico.
ON THE TOUGHEST REALITY SHOW ON TELEVISION A KILLER IS HIDING OUT OF SHOT
Frozen Out is set to be a TV sensation. On a small ship off the coast of Greenland, eight contestants will push themselves to breaking point for a £100,000 prize.
The show is Tori Matsuka’s baby. After years working her way up the ladder, she’s finally launching her own production company with Frozen Out, and the late nights, the debts, the strain on her relationship will all be worthwhile. Everything is riding on the next twelve days. For camerawoman Dee, it’s a chance to start again after the tragedy that tanked her undercover journalism career. Not even Tori, her oldest friend, knows the full truth of why Dee left her previous job, and she plans to keep it that way.
But as errors and mishaps mount on set, tempers among the cast and crew start to fray. And when one of the contestants is found dead, only Dee realises the death wasn’t natural – and from what she’s seen from behind the camera, it won’t be the last. As the Arctic ice closes in around them and all chance of escape is cut off, it becomes clear that although the world outside wants them dead, it’s the secrets inside the ship that might cost them their lives.
Packed with suspense from the first page to the last, Freeze is a must-read for fans of Shiver, The Sanatorium and One By One. This thriller isn’t just chilling: it’s sub-zero.
Judefire33 star rating for Freeze
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
Firstly huge thanks to Robert Greer for very kindly sending me a copy of Freeze.
When I saw the cover of Freeze, I just knew this would be a book for me….isn’t it strange that! Well, I finally got around to reading Freeze at the weekend and here are my thoughts.
From the opening prologue, you can feel the tension in Kate Simants writing virtually crackle off the pages! We start with a scene in the past that involves a boy and a girl and an event that with every turn and decision the girl makes in the future, it ripples outwards and affects her and others’ lives.
This will be a hard review to write as I am loath to give any of the plots away, but the setting is a reality-type show – think I’m a celebrity get me out of here but set on a ship in the Arctic Circle so that the elements are already part of the dangers that contestants face without tasks thrown in as well!.
The setting is superb, its bleak, empty and its bloody cold (I know I’ve been inside the Artic Circle in Winter!), and the ship that they are on is immensely claustrophobic and with the tensions that arise from the cast of characters this just sizzles and as a reader, I was utterly gripped and almost couldn’t read fast enough!
The cast of characters is fantastic a great mixture, that as the novel goes on, opens up and reveals things central to the plot -some are lovely and I wanted to be their pals, some are horrid and I hated them! But I loved the way we get each chapter from the two main protagonists of Dee and Tori, the writing of Freeze is truly slick and I found it so easy to gorge myself on the chapters, and I read Freeze over 3 days.
The climax was thrilling and had my palms sweating and my internal voice shouting! Freeze is a really well-written thriller, I found it an easy and quick read, but the story is full and complex, I just gorged myself on it!
If you like locked-room-style thrillers, and books set in snowy ice-laden landscapes that will chill and thrill you with a splatter of creepiness thrown in then Freeze needs to be on your radar to purchase.
A superbly written chilling thriller, my rating 5 stars.
Kate Simants is a writer of psychological thrillers and crime fiction. After a decade working in the UK television industry, specialising in investigative documentaries, police shows and undercover work, Kate relocated from London to Bristol to concentrate on writing. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Brunel Univeristy (2007) and another in Crime Fiction from the University of East Anglia (2018), where she was the recipient of the UEA Literary Festival Scholarship. Her novel LOCK ME IN was shortlisted for the 2015 Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger, and is published by HarperCollins. Kate won the 2019 Bath Novel Award with her second novel A RUINED GIRL, which is published by Viper/Serpent’s Tail in August 2020
BERLIN. JANUARY 1941. Evil cannot bring about good . . .
After Germany’s invasion of Poland, the world is holding its breath and hoping for peace. At home, the Nazi Party’s hold on power is absolute.
One freezing night, an SS doctor and his wife return from an evening mingling with their fellow Nazis at the concert hall. By the time the sun rises, the doctor will be lying lifeless in a pool of blood.
Was it murder or suicide? Criminal Inspector Horst Schenke is told that under no circumstances should he investigate. The doctor’s widow, however, is convinced her husband was the target of a hit. But why would anyone murder an apparently obscure doctor? Compelled to dig deeper, Schenke learns of the mysterious death of a child. The cases seem unconnected, but soon chilling links begin to emerge that point to a terrifying secret.
Even in times of war, under a ruthless regime, there are places in hell no man should ever enter. And Schenke fears he may not return alive . . .
Thank you so much to Jess Hunt from Ransom PR for inviting me to the Dead Of Night blog tour and sending me a copy of the book.
As I knew Dead Of Night was book 2 in the Berlin Wartime Series by Simon Scarrow, I decided to read Blackout ( book 1 ) first. And I’m so glad I did, as Blackout is a fantastic opener to the Kripo Inspector Horst Schenke series.
The story for Dead Of Night is set during the coldest of winters January/February 1940… and from the first page, the reader knows they are in for a thrilling read amongst the politics, in-house fighting, and mistrust of Berlin during the early days of WW2 and the rise in Nazism.
The way that Simon Scarrow writes is utterly compelling, he’s like my favorite History Teacher, because although Dead Of Night is a work of fiction, it is based on truth, and in his exceptional style, taught me to look at how working and living in Berlin under the threat of Hitler and his SS henchmen when one is just trying to do one’s job, becomes a minefield of difficulty. In our protagonist, Criminal Inspector Horst Schenke, we have a man who cannot fight due to an injury sustained whilst racing for the famous Silver Arrows Racing Team, so he has risen to the rank of Criminal Inspector with the Kripos, and he loves his job, and just wants to keep fighting the criminals, murderers and rapists and make sure they are caught and punished….sounds simple right? But during wartime in Berlin, nothing is simple, no one trusts one another, and Horst finds himself embroiled in a case that he has been warned off investigating, and when he continues to do so puts himself and those he cares about in grave danger.
I’m not going to give any more of the plot away, but let’s just say the speed of Dead Of Night and the storyline, are thrilling and utterly gripping, you will not be able to put it down. It also had me heading across to Google on several occasions to find out more about topics and people ( there are real Nazis in the books ) so as to add to the story.
If you haven’t read Blackout before you start Dead of Night, I would urge you to – it runs closely after the storyline in Blackout and several characters as important to the storyline and plot in Dead Of Night.
I loved Dead Of Night so much, and am a firm fan of The Berlin Wartime series by Simon Scarrow, I actually feel utterly sad now I’ve finished Dead Of Night! And that, my friends, is the sign of a superb book!
If you like thrillers and Police Procedurals set during WW2, then Dead Of Night is definitely for you, the research Simon Scarrow puts into his work makes for such a visceral and realistic read, and it’s refreshing to have a different point of view with a Police Inspector who is German.
An easy 5-star rating for Dead Of Night and also for Blackout. I cannot wait for book 3!
Simon Scarrow is a Sunday Times No. 1 bestselling author with several million copies of his books sold worldwide. After a childhood spent travelling the world, he pursued his great love of history as a teacher, before becoming a full-time writer. His Roman soldier heroes Cato and Macro made their debut in 2000 in UNDER THE EAGLE and have subsequently appeared in many bestsellers in the Eagles of the Empire series, including CENTURION, INVICTUS and DAY OF THE CAESARS. Many of the series have been Sunday Times bestsellers.
Simon Scarrow is also the author of a quartet of novels about the lives of the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon Bonaparte, YOUNG BLOODS, THE GENERALS, FIRE AND SWORD and THE FIELDS OF DEATH; a novel about the 1565 Siege of Malta, SWORD & SCIMITAR; HEARTS OF STONE, set in Greece during the Second World War; and PLAYING WITH DEATH, a contemporary thriller written with Lee Francis. He also wrote the novels ARENA and INVADER with T. J. Andrews. His thriller, BLACKOUT set in WW2 Berlin and first published in 2021 was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick.
The inspiration for ‘Dead of Night’ (in Simon Scarrow’s own words)
When I research the period covering the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, it is sometimes hard to believe the bald statistics concerning the number of people murdered by the regime, nor is it easy to comprehend the cold-blooded manner in which those responsible went about it. Sometimes the sheer scale and breadth of the horrors inflicted by the Nazis is almost impossible to contemplate, and it is necessary to break the atrocity down in a way that allows people to connect with the victims in a more personal and empathetic way. That was the approach I took with this novel.
In order to understand what became known after the war as the Aktion T4 programme, it is necessary to realise that this mass murder policy was the result of many years of conscious preparation, drawing on influences much wider than those located in Germany. A perversion of Darwin’s theories of evolution gave rise to a growing number of works by scientists and pseudo-scientists advocating the removal of ‘defective’ humans in order to take them out of the chain of heredity and thereby ‘improve’ humankind. Such notions were eagerly taken up across Europe and in the Americas and provided febrile encouragement to the political programme of Adolf Hitler and his followers as early as the mid-1920s, when Hitler was already advocating the elimination of those he regarded as ‘degenerates’ (‘degeneriert’).
When the Nazi party seized power in 1933, they wasted no time in imposing their ideology on Germany. Besides the suppression of the media, the arrest, torture and murder of political rivals and the removal of Jewish civil rights, one of the first measures put in place was compulsory sterilization of certain groups. This was imposed on a wide range of those deemed degenerate: gypsies, prostitutes, the work-shy, habitual criminals, mixed-race people and those with incurable mental and physical disabilities. That same July, Hitler intended to pass laws to enable the killing of patients diagnosed with mental illness but was persuaded that such a move was too controversial. Even so, in 1935 he let it be known that, in the event of war, he would introduce such a measure, since the public’s attention would be elsewhere and, in any case, in time of war, a few extra deaths would be easily missed amongst so many others. From 1937 a secret committee of the Nazi party was making plans for a euthanasia programme, seeding the notion through sympathetic articles in the Nazi-controlled press that portrayed the lives of people with disabilities as ‘life not worthy of life’ (‘Lebensunwertes Leben’).
The programme was activated in February 1939 when the father of Gerhard Kretschmar, a boy born with missing limbs, petitioned Hitler to have his son killed. The father had already approached a doctor in Leipzig asking him to end Gerhard’s life but the doctor had refused on the basis that he might as a result be charged with murder. Having reviewed the case, Hitler sent his personal doctor, Karl Brandt, to arrange the murder of the child at the end of July. At the same time Hitler authorised Brandt to oversee the creation of a euthanasia programme. A month later, Hitler put an end to the sterilization program. Things had moved on from preventing reproduction by the ‘degenerates’ to eliminating them altogether. In October, Hitler signed an order empowering doctors to rid society of ‘useless eaters’ (‘unnütze esser’) by granting them a ‘merciful death’ (‘barmherziger Tod’).
The programme was the responsibility of the Reich Committee for Scientific Registering of Serious Hereditary and Congenital Illnesses, whose structure and purpose were kept secret from the general public. The overall head of the programme was Philipp Bouhler, an SS officer, and one of the first members of the Nazi party. The section of the programme concerned with children was under the control of an SS doctor, Viktor Brack, and based at Tiergartenstrasse 4, from which the later name Aktion T4 derives. From the start the emphasis of the programme was on killing, not children already in institutions, but those who were still living at home with their families, before moving on to the elimination of those already institutionalised. Parents were coaxed by doctors to entrust their children to institutions where they would, supposedly, be better cared for. Once the children had been removed from their homes, they were subjected to various treatments ultimately intended to kill them. Some were injected with drugs that would progressively weaken them, while others were starved to death. Their deaths were passed off as the result of natural causes. Often, the bodies were cremated to destroy the evidence, and the parents were only then sent news of the death of their child. Considerable efforts were taken to conceal the scale of the killings; for example Brack’s officials kept a map in their office with pins placed in it for each child, to ensure there were not any suspicious clusters and that the victims were evenly spread out.
Very soon there was pressure to increase the numbers of those being eliminated. The German forces in Poland had already been engaged in mass murder of patients with mental illnesses of all ages, and had first started using poison gas on Polish inmates transported to Posen. Chemical expert Albert Widmann was brought in from the Kripo’s forensic department to develop the most effective and efficient means of using gas (at this point carbon monoxide) to murder people, or, as they were described to him, ‘beasts in human form’. Widmann oversaw the construction of a test unit at Brandenburg prison, where patients diagnosed with mental illness were gassed in batches of fifteen to twenty. The process took approximately twenty minutes to kill them.
The programme was rapidly expanded across Germany and for some time it was kept secret from those not directly involved. But suspicion began to be aroused when the number of deaths in institutions for those with particular illnesses and conditions swiftly climbed and a number of doctors, coroners, judges and Catholic priests began to protest. The American journalist William Shirer was aware of the programme very early on, but only had concrete proof of its existence when he was contacted by a conscience-stricken official with the details in September 1940. Nonetheless, by a combination of denial, distraction, threats and ideological justification, the Nazi regime managed to prevent any effective opposition to the programme. By the end of the war, more than 80,000 people with disabilities had been murdered, over 5,000 of them children.
While the Holocaust is the most notorious crime committed by the Nazi party, it was through the euthanasia program that the Nazis first experimented with then perfected the means by which vast numbers of Jews, political opponents, gypsies, homosexuals and other victims were subsequently murdered. It was on the bodies of those helpless children that the most terrible atrocity of the twentieth century was built.
What was the fate of those responsible? Philipp Bouhler was captured by the Americans then committed suicide. Karl Brandt was tried and hanged in 1948, as was Viktor Brack. Albert Widmann escaped justice until 1959, when he was finally tried for his part in the programme and sentenced to six years in prison. He died in 1986. Even after the war, many of the doctors involved in the programme expressed their pride in what they portrayed as a process intended to improve the human race. In truth, all the above were the real ‘beasts in human form’.
It is worth remembering that the Nazis were not alone in imposing compulsory sterilization. As mentioned earlier, the cause of improving racial purity had gained advocates in many countries. Between the 1907 and 1939 the USA carried out over 60,000 compulsory sterilizations. In Europe, Switzerland, Denmark and Norway also embarked on similar programmes in the 1930s. In the case of Sweden, between 1935 and 1975, over 63,000 compulsory sterilizations took place. That is proportionately more, taking account of the relative populations, than Nazi Germany’s 350,000. It is clear that some seeds of Nazi Germany’s racial policies were sown in many other nations who were influenced by eugenics advocates from both ends of the political spectrum. We should not be so complacent as to assume that what happened in Nazi Germany could not be replicated somewhere else at another time.
I am sure that most people reading this account of the Aktion T4 programme will share my despair that such things are possible. How could such inhumanity as that underlying the Aktion T4 programme and the Holocaust have existed on so vast a scale? I can think of no greater horror than the fate of the vulnerable children who were murdered in cold blood by the Nazis.
When Teddy Colne arrives in the small town of Rye, he believes he will be able to settle down and leave his past behind him. Little does he know that fear blisters through the streets like a fever. The locals tell him to stay away from an establishment known only as Berry & Vincent, that those who rub too closely to its proprietor risk a bad end.
Despite their warnings, Teddy is desperate to understand why Rye has come to fear this one man, and to see what really hides behind the doors of his shop.
Ada moved to Rye with her young son to escape a damaged childhood and years of never fitting in, but she’s lonely and ostracised by the community. Ada is ripe for affection and friendship, and everyone knows it.
As old secrets bleed out into this town, so too will a mystery about a family who vanished fifty years earlier, and a community living on a knife edge.
Teddy looks for answers, thinking he is safe, but some truths are better left undisturbed, and his past will find him here, just as it has always found him before. And before long, it will find Ada too.
Firstly huge thanks to Karen at Orenda Books for kindly sending me a copy.
I went into So Pretty with an open mind, I hadn’t really read much about this novel so when I started reading it, well let’s just say, from the outset unsettled me!
The opening page is the advert above, and Berry & Vincent’s shop is where most of the action takes place.
We follow the story from 2 points of view- Teddy, the son of a notorious serial killer, and Ada, a single Mum of Albie, trying to rise him away from an unloving Mother. Both are inherently lonely and lost, and both are damaged humans, from upbringings and well, life’s hand that they’ve been dealt.
The story starts slowly and builds with each page that you turn, in the small seaside town of Rye, on the South Coast of the UK. We learn things about both Teddy and Ada as we start reading through So Pretty, and the more you read the more creepy, gothic, and frankly bloody terrifying the novel becomes.
I really do not want to give away any of the explosive and utterly thrilling plots, but I will tell you once you start reading, you will not be able to put So Pretty down. And the darkness that lies in the quaint and beautiful Rye, will eek itself into your mind and give you sleepless nights! the way that Ronnie Turner has observed the minds of both Teddy and Ada and has then been able to express this in her writing is frankly a marvel! Her skill at making the reader feel very uncomfortable and unsettled is amazing. So Pretty is a dark, psychological thriller with short snappy chapters that are written in an almost poetic style, and each one will give you that creepy feeling of a gothic horror novel. And it culminates into a frankly terrifying and page-turning conclusion.
This is Ronnie Turner’s first novel and it is a total book banger, another superb find by Orenda books. I look forward to reading her next novel and having sleepless nights!
An amazing and frightening 5-star read.
Ronnie Turner grew up in Cornwall, the youngest in a large family. At an early age, she discovered a love of literature. She now works as a Senior Waterstones Bookseller and barista. Ronnie lives in the South West with her family and three dogs. In her spare time, she enjoys traveling and taking long walks on the coast.
Hannah awakens to carnage, all mangled metal and shattered glass. Evacuated from a secluded boarding school during a snowstorm, her coach careered off the road, trapping her with a handful of survivors.
Meg awakens to a gentle rocking. She’s in a cable car stranded high above snowy mountains, with five strangers and no memory of how they got on board.
Carter is gazing out of the window of an isolated ski chalet that he and his companions call home. As their generator begins to waver in the storm, the threat of something lurking in the chalet’s depths looms larger.
Outside, the storm rages. Inside each group, a killer lurks.
But who?
And will anyone make it out alive? . . .
Firstly hugest of thanks go to CJ Tudor for kindly sending me a proof copy of The Drift.
Ever since I saw the very first promo for The Drift, I was hooked and just knew this would be a book that I would devour and enjoy….little did I know that I would be reading the PERFECT thriller and CJ Tudor’s most accomplished novel yet!
Firstly a couple of things, I adore snow, I adore snowy thrillers and reading The Drift, I was immediately taken into the snowy mountains and because of the way The Drift is written, I actually felt like I was there! This book is so visceral in its depictions of a place high in the mountains, in the future, where a world has been ravaged by disease and survival is the only way forward, it’s cold, it’s chilling and it’s creepy, The Drift has it all!
There are 3 settings in The Drift, we start with an overturned coach and a cast of characters who have survived this, lead by Hannah. Then we meet Meg, in a cable car stuck high above the frozen landscape and a claustrophobic setting and group of people and finally we meet Carter, in The Retreat, a place of safety from those who threaten the safety and survival in these dangerous and frankly scary times.
As always I’m not going to give the game away by telling you what happens BUT I will tell you The Drift will be a massive bestseller, it’s frankly bloody triumphant, the mixture of a frankly gripping and outstanding plot, with what could be any of our futures, in the coming years, and add to the mixture characters you will love and want to survive against all the odds, plus a dash of horror, sickeningly realistic gore and a creepiness that permeates the whole book…..I LOVED it, it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read!
So in summing up, it’s a 5 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 read for me ( actually it should be 500 stars!), The Drift needs to be on everyone’s list to read in 2023….in fact get it pre-ordered now and set yourself a couple of days aside because once you start you won’t lbe able to stop reading The Drift! A bookbanger and a masterpiece of thrill writing!
C. J. Tudor lives with her partner and young daughter. Her love of writing, especially the dark and macabre, started young. When her peers were reading Judy Blume, she was devouring Stephen King and James Herbert. Over the years she has had a variety of jobs, including trainee reporter, radio scriptwriter, dog walker, voiceover artist, television presenter, copywriter and, now, author. Her first novel, The Chalk Man, was a Sunday Times bestseller and sold in thirty-nine territories.
JW; How much research did you have to do for The Bleeding? Especially the settings as they are so visceral!
JW; I’d like to start by asking, have you always wanted to be a writer? And where did the idea of The Bleeding come from?
JG: No, I didn’t know yet! At the time I was answering: an actress! Hahaha! I studied in Paris ata famous acting school at the same time as working as a journalist for thepress and TV, and I dreamt of becoming an actress. I was on stage in Paris and had an agent, but I really didn’t like this business. I didn’t like learning the texts, or going to auditions, which was problematic, as you can imagine! It took me a while to realize that what I liked was the text itself! I have always been an avid reader and was very fond of crime novels so, years after that, I started writing and that, I tremendously enjoyed!
The idea of The Bleeding was a mixof crazy and completely different desires: writing about La Belle Epoque, Maxine, and Lina, who came first in my mind and had to be fleshed, setting up my characters in Québec, which I fell in love with thanks to Roxanne Bouchard a friend and fellow writer at Orenda Books.
JW; How much research did you have to do for The Bleeding? Especially the settings as they are so visceral!
JG; It was a lot of research, about the Belle Epoque and witchcraft, but it was fun and I spent a few phenomenal months! I started researching something that had nothing to do with what The Bleeding ended up talking about: I wanted to write about the secret society of the Golden Dawn, and with this terrible habit I have to research more and more and some more with every detail which I find thrilling, I ended up in the caldron of quite a few witches!
JW; The 3 women in The Bleeding are all strong characters, was it important to you to portray them in this way even during the eras?
JG; It was key to me. I wanted to showcase the battles we, women, go through. Battles that can become wars. And some of those battles haven’t changed, despite changing centuries. We have still so much to fight for and against.
JW; As a child growing up, were you an avid reader or watcher of television? Did any part of your childhood make you the writer you are?
JG; I became an avid reader after plunging into my first Agatha Christie, around the age of 7. It was The Mysterious Affair at Styles that made me one. Then I devoured books. I don’t know how I became the writer I am today, but reading, from poetry to dark gritty crimes, surely played its role.
JW; As we’re now in September, which books that you’ve read this year have been your favorite? OR which are you most looking forward to?
JG; I have been reading quite a few but mostly for research for a project I cannot yet talk about. Reading about neurology mostly and memory. And I really found fascinating “Livewired” by David Eagleman, a neuroscientistexplains how our brains work.
JW; Do you have a favorite Author or favorite book of all time?
JG: Agatha Christie and French poet Charles Baudelaire. French writer Marguerite Duras is too… “Murder on The Orient Express” and “Les Fleurs du Mal” (Flowers of Evil) are two of my favorites. And actually, traveling on the Orient Express train is still on our dream list with my father, who is also a big fan!
JW; Have you ever been starstruck by meeting one of your heroes in real life?
JG; As a journalist, I met Samuel L. Jackson with whom I shared breakfast (well, I did not eat a thing). I was interviewing him for the movie Snakes on the plane, and he welcomed me saying: “that was a shit movie, don’t you think? Let’s talk about something else. Where are you from?” And we ended up talking about Provence and golf, and god knows what else, whilst he ate his eggs and bacon! And I met Harlan Coben, in 2019 at the Harrogate festival, and there too: starstruck!
Sameul L. JacksonHarlan Coben
JW; What is something you are passionate about aside from writing?
JG; Oh yes! Dancing! I used to be a ballet dancer, and I would love to go back to some sort of dancing: flamenco being my top choice, but I have absolutely no time to dive into anything but writing, which is also my passion, as my three boys take up all my time!
JW; If you could go back in time, to one historical event, to witness it, what would it be and why?
JG; Oh god. There are so many. But I’d chose Paris during La Belle Epoque, like in The Bleeding. The international fair. Another era. The Beauty of Paris in the making.
JW; Can you share a shelfie (photo of your bookshelf) with us?
JW: You can pick 4 famous people, dead or alive, for a dinner party, who would you pick and why?
JG: Agatha Christie. Almodóvar. Poirot (David Suchet will do if I’m not allowed to have a fictionalized character). Dalí. I think the night would be completely mad!
Agatha ChristiePedro AlmodóvarPoirot (David Suchet)Salvador Dali
JW; What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
JG: That hard work is the key. Consistency and hard work always pay off. It was, of course, my parents. They taught me it is not over when you lose, it only is when you quit. And of course, they were right!
JW; What’s next? Are you writing a new novel?
JG; I just handed in my next novel to my French publisher, called The Island of Yule, which Karen Sullivan, my UK and US publisher Called “Christmas Island”, on the spot. The novel is taking place on the island of Storholmen, just in front of the one I live on, in Sweden, where a young girl is found hanged close to a manor said to be haunted. It is out in France in January 2023.
THREE GIRLS MISSING……..Twenty years ago: One rainy night, Olivia Rutherford is driving three friends home when a figure in the road causes her to swerve and crash. Regaining consciousness, she finds herself alone in the car – her friends have vanished.
THEY ARE NEVER SEEN AGAIN…….Now: Journalist Jenna Halliday visits the close-knit community of Stafferbury to persuade Olivia to talk and solve the mystery of the girl’s disappearance. But Olivia won’t speak.
What happened?……….. Is Olivia hiding something? Why are the people of Stafferbury so frightened? How many secrets can one small town hide?
I loved The Girls That Disappeared by Claire Douglas, a totally gripping read from page one.
The start of this book had me hooked and I could not put it down, a very creepy feel to this story which I found made my anxiety rise whilst reading!!
The plot is intelligent and the cast of characters is easy to follow and identify with, the story builds and builds to a crescendo of an ending! A truly great gripping read for spooky October!
Claire Douglas is the award-winning author of seven stand-alone thrillers, THE SISTERS, LOCAL GIRL MISSING, LAST SEEN ALIVE, DO NOT DISTURB, THEN SHE VANISHES, JUST LIKE THE OTHER GIRLS and her most recent, THE COUPLE AT NO. 9, which is a number one Amazon bestseller and reached number three on the Sunday Times bestsellers list. Her books have sold over 500,000 copies in the UK and have been translated into twenty languages. You can find Claire on Twitter at @DougieClaire, on Instagram as clairedouglasauthor, or visit her Facebook page clairedouglasauthor
Most are here to recharge and refresh. But someone’s here for revenge . . .
The new atmospheric locked-room thriller from the author of The Sanatorium, the bestselling crime thriller debut of 2021. ___________________________________
This is a warning for all our guests at the wellness retreat.
A woman’s body has been found at the bottom of the cliff beneath the yoga pavilion.
We believe her death was a tragic accident, though DS Elin Warner has arrived on the island to investigate.
A storm has been forecast, but do not panic. Stick together and please ignore any rumours you might have heard about the island and its history.
As soon as the weather clears, we will arrange boats to take you back to the mainland.
In the meantime, we hope you enjoy your stay.
Well after reading and loving The Sanatorium last year, I’ve been counting the days down to receive and read The Retreat.
And what a stinking bookbanger The Retreat is! From the outset we are taken on a spooky, locked island journey with out heroine DS Elin Warner on an Island called Reapers Island off the coast of Devon UK.
The Retreat moves along at at fabulously fast pace, with punchy chapters and superb characters. The description of Reapers Island is amazing and really struck me as being so visceral! How writers are able to take the reader to a place and make you feel like you are there, always amazes me, and Sarah Pearse has done it again here! I was almost out of breath at the climatic ending and it’s situation!! ( Nope not giving that away! )
For Sarah’s second book it is an amazing gem of a well written cast, and I love the way we are able to get into DS Elin Warners mind, and her doubts and fears really add to this storyline. The plot is stunning and I didn’t guess the perp until the very end when they were revealed, there are twists and turns a plenty and it really is a gripping read! Sarah seems to have a absolute gift at writing “locked room” mysteries and I am in awe of her talent, a modern Agatha Christie!
I hope with The Retreat this will seal Sarah’s writing in the Suspense/Thriller genre. And I cannot wait for the DS Elin Warner book 3!
A superb and gripping book and a 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ readi!
AUTHOR
Sarah Pearse
Sarah Pearse lives by the sea in South Devon with her husband and two daughters. She studied English and Creative Writing at the University of Warwick and worked in Brand PR for a variety of household brands. After moving to Switzerland in her twenties, she spent every spare moment exploring the mountains in the Swiss Alpine town of Crans Montana, the dramatic setting that inspired her novel. Sarah has always been drawn to the dark and creepy – remote spaces and abandoned places – so when she read an article in a local Swiss magazine about the history of sanatoriums in the area, she knew she’d found the spark of the idea for her debut novel, The Sanatorium. Her short fiction has been published in a wide variety of magazines and has been shortlisted for several prizes.
You can find out more about Sarah Pearse on her WEBSITE
Her best friend is dead and she needs to know why.
Aspiring journalist Bella is on work experience at a national newspaper when, out of the blue, she receives an anonymous letter promising her a big scoop if she travels down to Wiltshire.
All she finds is a government scientist spouting conspiracy theories in the pub. But then Bella’s best friend Erin is found dead in a nearby field, her body staged in the centre of a crop circle. Bella is devastated. Is this the real reason she was lured out here?
While detective Silas Hart searches for evidence, Bella scours her own memory for clues. But it’s full of blanks – the details of her university days with Erin keep slipping away. What secrets was Erin hiding? And, once they’re uncovered, what will it mean for Bella?
Firstly thank you so much, as always to the wonderful Head Of Zeus Publishing for gifting me a copy of The Man On Hackpen Hill by J.S Monroe
Secondly, this is my first read of a J.S Monroe book, the blurb had got my interest piqued, and let me tell you, from the moment I picked it up, I was hooked and obsessed!
The storyline is fast and really interesting revolving around our two protagonists Bella and Jim and the dark goings on of Porton Down, and testing of psychiatric drugs on human guinea pigs! I loved both these characters so much, and found them totally believable, so much so that I never saw the ending coming!! The illegal goings on are investigated by DI Silas Hart of Swindon CID, and he is also a character I loved… he had his own demons to deal with which made this case pretty close to home. I really hope that DI Silas Hart will return in another book as I also adored the setting in the countryside around Swindon, Wiltshire and Hampshire and not a million miles from where I live, and I’m quite familiar with it, which I think also makes for a reader to love this book.
It’s not too scientific which is good as it’s not really something I’m that interested in BUT it works so well in this storyline! I read The Man On Hackpen Hill over a weekend as I could not put it down! The writing is easy to read with short sharp chapters, I can find no faults with this book, in fact it’s going to be in my top 10 of the year I’m sure, I utterly loved loved loved it!
If you like a fast paced gripping thriller then look no further than The Man On Hackpen Hill by J.S Monroe.
An exceptional 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ star read!
J.S.Monroe is the pseudonym of author Jon Stock (see separate author page), who is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford. The new J.S.Monroe suspense thriller, set in rural Wiltshire, is called The Man on Hackpen Hill. It was published in the UK in September 2021 and is the third book to feature DI Hart, head of Swindon CID. A dead body in a crop circle sends a coded message. Can DI Hart uncover the chilling truth before it’s too late? Rosamund Lupton, bestselling author of Three Hours, said of it: “Original and brilliantly plotted, with not so much a twist as a seismic shifting of the ground under your feet … Amazing.” Tom Bradby, author of Secret Service, said: “A kind of Wiltshire Da Vinci Code, with crop circles, mathematical equations and shadowy figures from Porton Down. A real page turner written with beguiling wit.” J.S.Monroe’s third thriller, The Other You, was published by Head of Zeus in in the UK in January 2020 and in paperback in January 2021. The book, the second to feature DI Silas Hart, has been in the Kindle Top 100 for two months and an Amazon #1 Bestseller in Medical thrillers. “Brilliantly original and intriguing … Kept me hooked, enthralled and guessing to the very end,” according to Peter James. The Telegraph’s Jake Kerridge agreed: “I doubt many other psychological thrillers published this year will be as propulsive and fun.” Monroe’s best-selling debut, Find Me, was published in the UK and the US in 2017. Translation rights have been sold to 14 countries. Forget My Name, the first DI Hart thriller, was published by Head of Zeus in hardback in the UK in October 2018 and in paperback in June 2019. It was published in the US as The Last Thing She Remembers by Park Row Books (HarperCollins) in May 2019. After reading English at Magdalene College, Cambridge, Jon worked as a freelance journalist in London, writing features for most of Britain’s national newspapers, as well as contributing to BBC Radio 4. He was also chosen for Carlton TV’s acclaimed screenwriters course. In 1995 he lived in Kochi in Kerala, where he worked on the staff of India’s The Week magazine. Between 1998 and 2000, he was a foreign correspondent in Delhi, writing for the Daily Telegraph, South China Morning Post and the Singapore Straits Times. He also wrote the Last Word column in The Week magazine from 1995 to 2012. On his return to Britain in 2000, Jon worked on various Saturday sections of the Telegraph before taking up a staff job as editor of its flagship Weekend section in 2005, which he oversaw for five years. He left Weekend and the Telegraph in 2010 to finish writing his Daniel Marchant trilogy (under the name Jon Stock) and returned to the Telegraph in February 2013 to oversee the Telegraph’s digital books channel. In May 2014 he was promoted to Executive Head of Weekend and Living, editing the paper’s Saturday and Sunday print supplements, as well as a range of digital lifestyle channels. He left the paper in October 2015 to resume his thriller-writing career. Jon’s first two novels, The Riot Act, and The India Spy (originally published as The Cardamom Club) were reissued as eBooks by Head of Zeus – “J.S.Monroe writing as Jon Stock” – in November 2018. The Riot Act, originally published by Serpent’s Tail, was launched on the top floor of Canary Wharf tower in 1997. The book was shortlisted by the Crime Writers’ Association for its best first novel award and was subsequently published by Gallimard in France as part of its acclaimed Serie Noir. The Sunday Times called it a “darkly sparkling crime thriller”. The Cardamom Club was published in 2003 by Blackamber (now Arcadia Books) in Britain and by Penguin in India. It was hailed by the travel writer William Dalrymple as a “witty, fast-moving, cleverly plotted espionage romp”. Dead Spy Running, his third novel and the first in the Daniel Marchant (or ‘Legoland’) trilogy, was published by HarperCollins (Blue Door) in 2009 and has been translated into five languages. It follows Daniel Marchant, a young MI6 officer, as he tries to clear the name of his disgraced father, the former Chief of MI6. The sequel, Games Traitors Play, was published in 2011, and the final part of the trilogy, Dirty Little Secret, was published in 2012. Warner Brothers bought the film rights to the trilogy in 2009, hiring Oscar-winner Stephen Gaghan (Traffic, Syriana) to write the screenplay for Dead Spy Running, which went into development with McG (Terminator IV, Charlie’s Angels, This Means War) and Kevin McCormick (Gangster Squad) producing. Jamie Moss worked on Gaghan’s script, followed by Simon Barrett, with Adam Wingard attached to direct. In 2014, the film rights to Dead Spy Running were bought by Wonderland Sound and Vision, McG’s own production company. In 2017, Jon was commissioned by The Nare, a luxury hotel in Cornwall, to write a spy novella set in and around the hotel, which is located on the Roseland Peninsula. To Snare A Spy is available to buy from the hotel.
Thank you so much James for being a guest on my blog, it is a huge honour!
JW: I’d like to start, by asking, have you always wanted to be a writer? And where did the idea of The Homes come from?
JM: Yes I have always wanted to be a writer, from about the age of 16 when I first fell in love with books. I always used to write short stories or ideas and share them with my friends, as if I didn’t get them out of my head they would eat away at me. It took me to the age of 34 to first get published and there were a couple of books I wrote first before then that looking back probably helped me get better at writing.
The idea for The Homes came about because after my father died I moved back in with my mum and we talked a lot more than we had done when I was growing up as there was no longer the burden of parenting any more. She told me about The Quarrier’s homes in Bridge of Weir and it sounded like such a strange and unique place, I hadn’t ever seen a book written that was set there and I wanted to get the story told before that generation who lived it got too old.
Quarrier’s Home’s Children’s Houses on Faith Avenue (Dalry Home nearest Camera) 2005 @ Peter Higginbotham
JW: How hard was it writing from the point of view of teenage girls (Lesley & Jonesy)?
JM: I wrestled a lot with this a lot. I felt weird writing at a 40+ bloke writing as a 12-year-old girl (and originally wanted it to be anonymous or under a pseudonym, in the end, we went with a genderless name), but that girl is essentially my mother at that age and I worked with her a lot to get it right, but I would think it is unlikely I would write in the voice of a teenage girl again, just feels a bit weird.
There is an amazing and hilarious Twitter account called @menwritewomen and I live in fear of ever having my work on there.
JW: How important do you think it is to raise the issues children face in care, in the past and today?
JM: The overwhelming thing I wanted to get across was how brave the kids were to make it out of these places, they really had to fend for themselves. The whole book is a tribute to my mum and her friend (who she didn’t meet until after they had left the homes) and the courage and bravery that showed each day.
My mum is a quiet woman and I wanted a book that showed bravery not as a soldier running into a battlefield all guns blazing, but as a small person showing courage on a daily basis to get themselves out of this place.
JW: Who would you like to see playing the part of Jonesy & Lesley The Homes were to be turned into a TV series or movie?
JM: I never really had ideas for the children’s parts as I don’t know any child actors, but I did think of Peter Mullan as the Superintendent.
Peter Mullan
JW: I have to add here that I think Tessa Peake-Jones would be brilliant as Mrs Patterson!!
Tessa Peake -Jones
JW: As a child growing up, were you an avid reader or was television your thing? Do you have a favourite childhood book or television programme?
JM: I really didn’t like reading growing up. My dad loved reading and it wasn’t for me, I wanted to be outside playing football. Then one day I read Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh and a lightbulb went on that “Oh books can be like this”
That said my favourite childhood book and the book that I remember my dad reading to me was Danny Champion of the World by Roald Dahl, and I have since read it to my son and he loved it and it felt like passing on a baton.
JW: Which book, that you read in 2021, has been your favourite?
JM: I really enjoyed Andrew O’Hagan – Mayflies and The Young Team by Graeme Armstrong
I should say in the last year I have read a lot of the authors on Viper., the publisher of The Homes, and the standard on that imprint is terrifyingly good. Janice Hallet, Tina Baker, David Jackson, Catriona Ward, every one of the books gives you something more that you were thinking of, every one of them has wonderful extra levels.
JW: Who do you most admire?
JM: Bookwise Iain Banks, Michael Marshall Smith, Steve Toltz.
Iain BanksMichael Marshall SmithSteve Toltz
JW: What do you consider your greatest achievement?
JM: I think the friends and family I have, I am fortunate to have such good friends and a lovely family and it’s important to stop and appreciate it, that and the penalty I saved in the last minute of a cup final when I was 10.
JW: If you could go back in time, to one historical event, to witness it, what would it be and why?
JM: Anfield ’89. I got offered a ticket in my maths lesson at school for £3.50 and we couldn’t go as we were travelling to Scotland that day for the Scotland vs England match the next day.
Football – 1988 / 1989 First Division – Liverpool 0 Arsenal 2
The press team sheet list the players for the title-deciding game at Anfield.
26/05/1989
JW: What is something you are passionate about aside from writing?
JM: Music – I have always loved music. I haven’t been to an event in a long time and saw Father John Misty last week and I have forgotten how much I love it. I have spent a lot of this year trying to listen to albums in full rather than Spotify shuffle.
Father John Misty
JW: If you could invite 4 people to dinner, living or dead, who would you invite and why?
JM: Amanda Donohoe, David Rocastle, Bill Drummond, David Bowie (the world has gone to pieces since he left us, I think he was holding it all together)
JW: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
JM: Bad news quick, good news slow. If you know or think something is going to be bad, better warn someone and let them know, with good news, make sure you are certain of the good news as it’s the hope that kills you.
JW: What’s next? What are you currently working on??
JM: I am working on a story called The Herd of Buffaloes, I am 75,000 words into the first draft so there’s a long way to go but after 10 years of starting it I finally have the ending I want for it which is a relief. The hard work starts once the first draft is done.
