Our Books

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.

My name is Kirk Ellis. I am nine years old. This is my story.

So begins the Rocking Horse Diary, penned by Kirk who wants to tell the story of his grandad, Sidney Mudge, who is “a very special man and possibly the world’s best grandad”.

Although Kirk and his grandad are fictional characters, Alzheimer's is not, and Alan Combes’ story is based on real events.

There is a strong vein of comedy in the story. As Alan says, ‘Without humour, coping with dementia would be an impossible task.’

Illustrated by John Sunderland.

Makeover by Barbara Lorna Hudson is a sharply observed and hard-hitting work of women’s fiction that explores the twists and turns of life and relationships as it follows the fortunes of Lucille, twice divorced and twice the victim of abusive marriage, and Oxford don Walter, still mourning the death of his wife.

In their own very different worlds, they both know that they have to move on and grasp new opportunities, but neither is prepared for the severe lessons they have yet to learn.