JUST ANOTHER DEAD-END JOB. DEATH. IT’S A DIRTY BUSINESS. When Diya Burman’s best friend Angie dies, it feels like her own life is falling apart. Wanting a fresh start, she joins Slough & Sons – a family firm that cleans up after the recently deceased. Old love letters. Porcelain dolls. Broken trinkets. Clearing away the remnants of other people’s lives, Diya begins to see things. Horrible things. Things that get harder and harder to write off as merely her grieving imagination. All is not as it seems with the Slough family. Why won’t they speak about their own recent loss? And who is the strange man that keeps turning up at their jobs? If Diya’s not careful, she might just end up getting buried under the family tree. . . Way back in 2020, I read an excellent anthology by Jonathan Sims called 13 Storeys. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Everyone loves a haunted house don’t they? Two years down the line and the author is back with a new novel, Family Business. The sadness that inhabits the main protagonist, Diya, feels palpable. The death of her best friend means she has lost one of the few constants in her life….

GOING UP? A dinner party is held in the penthouse of a multimillion-pound development. All the guests are strangers – even to their host, the billionaire owner of the building. None of them know why they were selected to receive his invitation. Whether privileged or deprived, they share only one thing in common – they’ve all experienced a shocking disturbance within the building’s walls. By the end of the night, their host is dead, and none of the guests will say what happened. His death has remained one of the biggest unsolved mysteries – until now. But are you ready for their stories? 13 Storeys by Jonathan Sims is a portmanteau novel featuring a baker’s dozen of tales woven together by a strange building and its equally strange owner. Welcome to Banyan Court, a place where nothing is ever quite what it seems. Let’s meet the residents and staff in the run up to the most exclusive event the building has ever hosted. Night Work – Violet Ng works the night shift. She loves the peace and quiet of the slumbering city. She finds comfort in the empty streets and the lonely walk home. Unfortunately, when your home is Banyan…