Please note, The Sinister Booksellers of Bath is a direct sequel to The Left Handed Booksellers of London. With that in mind it is entirely possible, if you’ve not read book one in this series, what follows might contain the odd spoiler or two. Consider yourself duly warned! There is often trouble of a mythical sort in Bath. The booksellers who police the Old World keep a careful watch there, particularly on the entity who inhabits the ancient hot spring. Yet this time it is not from Sulis Minerva that trouble starts. It comes from the discovery of a sorcerous map, leading left-handed bookseller Merlin into great danger. A desperate rescue is attempted by his sister the right-handed bookseller Vivien and their friend, art student Susan Arkshaw, who is still struggling to deal with her own recently discovered magical heritage. The map takes the trio to a place separated from this world, maintained by deadly sorcery performed by an Ancient Sovereign and guarded by monstrous living statues of Purbeck marble. But this is only the beginning, as the booksellers investigate centuries of disappearances and deaths and try to unravel the secrets of the murderous Lady of Stone, a serial killer…

Please note, Downfall is the third book in the Inscape trilogy. It is highly likely that what follows will contain minor spoilers if you haven’t read books one and two. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! THE SAFETY OF INTECH’S RESIDENTS IS PARAMOUNT. INSURRECTION WILL NOT BE TOLERATED. Tanta and Cole may have stopped the mass murder of InTech’s residents, but the cost was severe. Despite their efforts, Harlow 2.0 – the update to InTech’s mind-based operating system – fed out. Now its citizens are compliant zombies, and Tanta and her crew are trapped underground. All except for Fliss, who has no system to update. She alone can go outside, and it’s Fliss the crew are relying on to help get them out. For only then can they dismantle the damage Harlow 2.0 has done. If Tanta, Cole and InTech’s residents are to truly be free, it needs to be destroyed. But Tanta knows that task will put her on a collision course with the corporation that raised her, her oldest friends, and the woman who was once her soulmate. And this last mission might ask more of her than she’s able to give. After an extended break from The…

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….

Outcast is a direct sequel to Inscape. If you haven’t read the first book in this series, then what follows will contain minor spoilers. Consider yourself duly warned! TRUTH. LIES. IT CAN BE HARD TO TELL THEM APART. When a bomb goes off at InTech HQ, everything changes for Tanta’s corporation. Order becomes disorder. Safety becomes danger. Calm becomes chaos. Tanta is tasked with getting to the bottom of the attack before violence and unrest overtake the city. But even though the evidence points towards rival corporation Thoughtfront, Tanta can’t shake the feeling that she’s missing something. There’s a dark secret at the heart of the case, one that will reveal more about her own corporation than Tanta would like. And the closer Tanta gets to the mystery, the more she comes to realise something terrible: Sometimes facing the truth can be the hardest thing of all. Back in January 2021, I had the opportunity to read the rather wonderful science fiction thriller Inscape by Louise Carey. It was great, you should all read it. This week, the sequel, Outcast, is released. Guess what? It’s also great and you should all definitely read it as well. The action picks up…

Please note, The Wisdom of Crowds is a direct sequel to The Trouble With Peace and the final book in The Ages of Madness trilogy. I would strongly recommend reading books one and two in this series before proceeding any further. There are minor spoilers ahead and I’d hate to ruin the experience for anyone. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Chaos. Fury. Destruction. The Great Change is upon us… Some say that to change the world you must first burn it down. Now that belief will be tested in the crucible of revolution: the Breakers and Burners have seized the levers of power, the smoke of riots has replaced the smog of industry, and all must submit to the wisdom of crowds. With nothing left to lose, Citizen Brock is determined to become a new hero for the new age, while Citizeness Savine must turn her talents from profit to survival before she can claw her way to redemption. Orso will find that when the world is turned upside down, no one is lower than a monarch. And in the bloody North, Rikke and her fragile Protectorate are running out of allies… while Black Calder gathers his forces and…

WHO BETTER TO SOLVE A MURDER THAN A DEAD DETECTIVE? When Detective Inspector Joe Lazarus storms a Lincolnshire farmhouse, he expects to bring down a notorious drug gang; instead, he discovers his own body and a spirit guide called Daisy-May. She’s there to enlist him to The Dying Squad, a spectral police force who solve crimes their flesh and blood counterparts cannot. Lazarus reluctantly accepts and returns to the Lincolnshire Badlands, where he faces dangers from both the living and the dead in his quest to discover the identity of his killer – before they kill again. Two reviews in a handful of days? Yes, when you’re on a roll you’ve just got to go with it. Our second book of the week features more murder, but this time things have a distinctly supernatural air rather than science fiction vibe. The Dying Squad by Adam Simcox follows a dead cop given the opportunity to discover the truth of his own demise. The big problem with being dead though is that your memory is Swiss cheese at best. The more time you spend amongst the living, the less of yourself you remember. Not the most useful skill when you are attempting…

Warning: use of this gate will take you outside of the InTech corporate zone. Different community guidelines may apply, and you may be asked to sign a separate end-user license agreement. Do you wish to continue?  Tanta has trained all her young life for this. Her very first mission is a code red: to take her team into the unaffiliated zone just outside InTech’s borders and retrieve a stolen hard drive. It should have been quick and simple, but a surprise attack kills two of her colleagues and Tanta barely makes it home alive.  Determined to prove herself and partnered with a colleague whose past is a mystery even to himself, Tanta’s investigation uncovers a sinister conspiracy that makes her question her own loyalties and the motives of everyone she used to trust. This week’s review is science fiction thriller Inscape by Louise Carey. If you are looking for a new read featuring some clandestine rendezvous, shady high-level conspiracies and a dash of future-tech enhanced action then this is the book for you.  The protagonist in the novel is a newly promoted InTech agent called Tanta. She has spent her life in the care of this huge, faceless conglomerate. When…

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…

In a slightly alternate London in 1983, Susan Arkshaw is looking for her father, a man she has never met. Crime boss Frank Thringley might be able to help her, but Susan doesn’t get time to ask Frank any questions before he is turned to dust by the prick of a silver hatpin in the hands of the outrageously attractive Merlin. Merlin is a young left-handed bookseller (one of the fighting ones), who with the right-handed booksellers (the intellectual ones), are an extended family of magical beings who police the mythic and legendary Old World when it intrudes on the modern world, in addition to running several bookshops. Susan’s search for her father begins with her mother’s possibly misremembered or misspelt surnames, a reading room ticket, and a silver cigarette case engraved with something that might be a coat of arms. Merlin has a quest of his own, to find the Old World entity who used ordinary criminals to kill his mother. As he and his sister, the right-handed bookseller Vivien, tread in the path of a botched or covered-up police investigation from years past, they find this quest strangely overlaps with Susan’s. Who or what was her father? Susan,…

You know the drill. What follows is the review of the second book in a trilogy. If you’ve not read book one in this series, A Little Hatred, then it is likely there may be minor spoilers ahead. Do not tell me later that you haven’t been suitably warned. Conspiracy. Betrayal. Rebellion. Peace is just another kind of battlefield . . . Savine dan Glokta, once Adua’s most powerful investor, finds her judgement, fortune and reputation in tatters. But she still has all her ambitions, and no scruple will be permitted to stand in her way. For heroes like Leo dan Brock and Stour Nightfall, only happy with swords drawn, peace is an ordeal to end as soon as possible. But grievances must be nursed, power seized and allies gathered first, while Rikke must master the power of the Long Eye . . . before it kills her. The Breakers still lurk in the shadows, plotting to free the common man from his shackles, while noblemen bicker for their own advantage. Orso struggles to find a safe path through the maze of knives that is politics, only for his enemies, and his debts, to multiply. The old ways are swept…

“Come inside and play with G.O.D. Bring your friends! It’s fun! But remember the rules. Win and ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE.™ Lose, you die!” With those words, Charlie and his friends enter the G.O.D. Game, a video game run by underground hackers and controlled by a mysterious AI that believes it’s God. Through their phone-screens and high-tech glasses, the teens’ realities blur with a virtual world of creeping vines, smoldering torches, runes, glyphs, gods, and mythical creatures. When they accomplish a mission, the game rewards them with expensive tech, revenge on high-school tormentors, and cash flowing from ATMs. Slaying a hydra and drawing a bloody pentagram as payment to a Greek god seem harmless at first. Fun even. But then the threatening messages start. Worship me. Obey me. Complete a mission, however cruel, or the game reveals their secrets and crushes their dreams. Tasks that seemed harmless at first take on deadly consequences. Mysterious packages show up at their homes. Shadowy figures start following them, appearing around corners, attacking them in parking garages. Who else is playing this game, and how far will they go to win? And what of the game’s first promise: win, win big, lose, you…

I’ll preface this review with a warning for the more delicate amongst you. If you choose to read any further please note there will be some swearing. I normally try to keep things PG13, but I’m reviewing a Joe Abercrombie novel and if ever there was an appropriate time for a little mature content this would be it. The chimneys of industry rise over Adua and the world seethes with new opportunities. But old scores run deep as ever. On the blood-soaked borders of Angland, Leo dan Brock struggles to win fame on the battlefield, and defeat the marauding armies of Stour Nightfall. He hopes for help from the crown. But King Jezal’s son, the feckless Prince Orso, is a man who specializes in disappointments. Savine dan Glokta – socialite, investor, and daughter of the most feared man in the Union – plans to claw her way to the top of the slag-heap of society by any means necessary. But the slums boil over with a rage that all the money in the world cannot control. The age of the machine dawns, but the age of magic refuses to die. With the help of the mad hillwoman Isern-i-Phail, Rikke struggles…

Sæmundur the Mad, addict and sorcerer, has been expelled from the magical university, Svartiskóli, and can no longer study galdur, an esoteric source of magic. Obsessed with proving his peers wrong, he will stop at nothing to gain absolute power and knowledge, especially of that which is long forbidden. Garún is an outcast: half-human, half-huldufólk, her very existence is a violation of dimensional boundaries, the ultimate taboo. A militant revolutionary and graffiti artist, recklessly dismissive of the status quo, she will do anything to achieve a just society, including spark a revolution. Even if she has to do it alone. This is a tale of revolution set in a twisted version of Reykjavik fuelled by industrialised magic and populated by humans, interdimensional exiles, otherworldly creatures, psychoactive graffiti and demonic familiars.  Something a bit different this week, some Icelandic fiction. Shadows of the Short Days, by Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson, is an urban fantasy novel with a distinctly political air. The huldufólk (hidden people) of Icelandic folklore walk among us. These magical beings that live in and around Reykjavik are subjugated for being different and otherworldly. Decades of near slavery has pushed the huldufólk to their limit. Change is in the air,…