John Tamberlain is The Tomahawk, the universe’s most feared food critic – though he himself prefers the term ‘forensic gastronomer’. He’s on a quest, in search of the much-storied Hotel Grand Skies, a secretive and exclusive haven where the rich and famous retreat to bask in perfect seclusion. A place where the waiters know their fish knife from their butter knife, their carotid from their subclavian artery, and are trained to enforce the house rules with brutal efficiency. Blurring the lines between detective story, horror and sci-fi, Hunters & Collectors is a mesmeric trip into the singular imagination of M. Suddain – a freewheeling talent whose poise, invention and sensational sentences have already earned him comparisons to Vonnegut, Pynchon and Douglas Adams. Back in 2013 I read Theatre of the Gods by Matt Suddain. It was trippy, bizarre and utterly enjoyable experience. Since then I’ve been waiting (impatiently) for his next novel to arrive. The good news is that now it is finally here. Welcome to Hotel Grand Skies, we hope you enjoy your stay. John Tamberlain is the most contrary of characters, just as I’d imagine most food critics to be. I found myself empathising with his plight one…

Jim Francis has finally found the perfect life – and is now unrecognisable, even to himself. A successful painter and sculptor, he lives quietly with his wife, Melanie, and their two young daughters, in an affluent beach town in California. Some say he’s a fake and a con man, while others see him as a genuine visionary. But Francis has a very dark past, with another identity and a very different set of values. When he crosses the Atlantic to his native Scotland, for the funeral of a murdered son he barely knew, his old Edinburgh community expects him to take bloody revenge. But as he confronts his previous life, all those friends and enemies – and, most alarmingly, his former self – Francis seems to have other ideas. When Melanie discovers something gruesome in California, which indicates that her husband’s violent past might also be his psychotic present, things start to go very bad, very quickly. As soon as I heard about The Blade Artist, and that Irvine Welsh was bringing one of his most iconic characters back, I knew I had to read it. There was no way I was going to miss out on the return of…

When Lucy Brennan, a Miami Beach personal-fitness trainer, disarms a gunman chasing two frightened homeless men, the police and the breaking-news cameras are not far behind and, within hours, Lucy is a media hero. The solitary eye-witness is the depressed and overweight Lena Sorensen, who becomes obsessed with Lucy and signs up as her client – though she seems more interested in the trainer’s body than her own. When the two women find themselves more closely aligned, and can’t stop thinking about the sex lives of Siamese twins, the real problems start… Superficially Lucy and Lena couldn’t really be more different. Lucy is toned and trim with a sharp tongue and an extrovert nature. Her foul mouth and gung-ho attitude towards life seems like the perfect tools to navigate life in the self-obsessed environment of Miami Beach. Lena meanwhile is the polar opposite. Overweight, introspective and shy she hides away from the world. Where Lucy appears confident and strong, Lena is weak willed and easily lead. A chance meeting brings the two together and it’s not long before they both realise that appearances can be more than a little deceptive. I love the way that Welsh’s characters often verge on…