Our Books

Syrup Trap City is Penny Grubb’s 7th crime novel. Set in the Northern port of Hull, it features private investigator, Annie Raymond, her boss, the enigmatic Mrs Peters, and Detective Ayaan Ahmed who Annie last met in very trying circumstances in York (see Buried Deep and Tiger Blood).

The story opens as the year draws to a close and Hull looks forward to a momentous year. The wider landscape passes Annie by as the realisation dawns that this routine job is not all that it seems. As she is faced with an unexpected and unwelcome reminder from the past, she realises just how badly she has taken her eye off the ball.

War Over Dust is the second in Stuart Aken’s Generation Mars series. In this continuation from book 1, Blood Red Dust, two communities, one a democratic technical Utopia, the other an elitist commercial ghetto, compete to rule the future of mankind on Mars, cut off from Mother Earth. Who will win when violence overcomes diplomacy to let envy and self-interest propel both groups into war?

If you’ve encountered Walt Pilcher before, you’ll know to buckle up for a hair-raising ride. Everybody Shrugged is his Walt’s first novel with Fantastic Books Publishing.

Hold tight to your car, French fries, beer, cigarettes, fluoride toothpaste, sexy underwear, bacon, butter, coffee, and anything else that tastes good, feels good, or is fun to do because here comes Congress to ban it. Professor Gardy Lavager leads the government’s campaign to outlaw popular products deemed harmful to your health, and the military is stripped of guns because war is hazardous too. But Major Tony Farina of the Army’s clandestine MADCOM force sets out to serve his own nefarious ends by subverting Lavager’s research in the name of national security while shadowy foreign interests prepare to leverage the imminent chaos. The ensuing Harmful Substance Race spells the difference between peace and global bedlam as Gardy Lavager fears for his life from enemies at home and abroad.

In this gripping account, Mary Brown charts the gritty reality of life for two very different women who live at society’s margins.

This is the book our editors recommend.

In Melodie Trudeaux’s Sci-Fi short, The 93-E Contradiction, a journalist sits at the verge of his big breakthrough, an opportunity that will only come once.

Falling into Crime comprises the first three of Penny Grubb’s private investigator crime novels. This re-edited trilogy follows Annie Raymond from her first chaotic venture into her chosen profession, through her early struggles, to her emergence as a true professional. It’s a page-turning, fast and turbulent ride, leaving Annie no space to appraise the ambition that took her life on this particular course. Once forced to face it, she knows that a fundamental re-evaluation is long overdue, but the push comes from an unwelcome source that proves more of a threat than anything she has faced before.

The trilogy includes the winner of the 2004 international Crime Writers’ Association Dagger, The Doll Makers, along with John Creasy Dagger nominee, Like False Money, and The Jawbone Gang.

George Murphy is a performance storyteller who began writing and performing comic monologues for adults after his retirement. People across the North of England (and as far south as Nottingham) have paid to laugh at George’s comic monologues and songs which he sometimes performed alongside Rod Dimbleby in The Rod and George Show.

Rory Redman’s exploits might drive his contemporaries to rage and himself to insolvency, but he has never put anyone in real danger – before now. His desperation for money drives him to accept a commission that he knows has crossed a line.

Do the job, collect the fee, and don’t look in the envelope.

All he has to do is keep a lid on his curiosity and his troubles are behind him. But Rory Redman was never one to deny an impulse. There is a heart-stopping inevitability about the way his choices funnel him ever further from safety and ever further from home. The mutual attraction between him and Ariadne Sowerby might be the route to salvation except that both strive to hide their feelings and Rory’s suicidal curiosity focuses on Klarissa Alterleta, the strange woman whose antics escalated his minor troubles into the stratosphere.