Ruby Speechley, "Someone Else's Baby"

 

Ruby Speechley is a bestselling psychological thriller writer, whose titles include Missing, Gone, Guilty, and The Uninvited Guest. Her debut, Someone Else's Baby, was re-published by Boldwood Books in July 2025. Stolen will be her ninth novel, out in November 2025. Known for their twisty plots, relatable characters and gripping suspense, Ruby's books explore domestic issues involving trust, secrets, confessions, parenting and betrayal, alongside crimes such as abduction, blackmail, online surveillance, social media danger and murder. Born in Lisbon, Portugal, Ruby came to the UK as a baby and was raised here by her English father and Portuguese mother. She moved to Cheshire during lockdown in 2020 with her husband and two of her three children (and two Springer spaniels) to be near her eldest son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. You can contact her on X: @rubyspeechley, Facebook: Ruby Speechley Author, Instagram: rubyjtspeechley, Blue Sky: rubyspeechley.bsky.social.

About Someone Else's Baby, by Ruby Speechley

She gave away her children. Now she wants them back.

Charlotte Morgan knows how it feels to desperately want a baby. As a child, seeing her mum devastated by losing her longed-for babies, Charlotte wished another woman could give her mother what she so craved.

Now Charlotte's a mum herself, and knowing how much love her daughter, Alice, brings into her life, she vows to help others achieve their dreams of becoming a parent.

When she meets Malcolm and Brenda on a surrogacy website, it seems that she's found the perfect couple. In their late forties, they have wealth and a enviable life, but there's just one thing missing: a child of their own.

When Charlotte falls pregnant with twins, the couple are overjoyed. And while Charlotte's heart breaks as she hands them over, her reward is knowing how much happiness the two tiny babies are going to bring into their life.

But are Malcolm and Brenda all they seem? As secrets become unravelled, Charlotte is forced to face that she has handed her babies over to virtual strangers. And when Malcolm and Brenda disappear without a trace, Charlotte is plunged into a frantic search for the babies she carried - before it's too late ...

You can read more about Someone Else's Baby on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an extract from the novel. 

From Someone Else's Baby

Prologue

She’s running as hard as she can on this cold blustery night, gasping and coughing, straining to breathe. No coat or jumper, only a torn summer dress and canvas shoes with not enough grip so she slips and stumbles towards the edge of the cliff. The black water shimmers hungrily, thundering over the pebbles as the sea comes in, rattling them like a thousand bones as it draws out again.

You call to her over and over, but she doesn’t stop, doesn’t look back because she knows you’re catching her up. And when you do, you thrust your fist into her back. She falls into the night, her screams echoing around you. The thud of her landing on cold, solid rocks makes you shut your eyes for a second.

A light illuminates the tiny sunroom of a cottage down on the beach. Someone is standing at the window, watching you run away.

Isabelle Kenyon, "The Dark Within Them"

 

Isabelle Kenyon is a Manchester writer and editor, and the author of 5 poetry chapbooks including Growing Pains (Indigo Dreams) and one short story with Wild Pressed Books ('The Town Talks'). She has had work published internationally in journals such as Ink, Sweat and Tears and newspapers such as The Somerville Times and The Bookseller. She coordinates the Northern Fiction Alliance and runs PR campaigns for writers and publishers under Kenyon Author Services. She has performed at Cheltenham Poetry Festival and Verbose, Manchester, Leeds International Festival as part of the 'Sex Tapes,' Apples and Snakes and Coventry Cathedral's Plum Line Festival.

About The Dark Within Them, by Isabelle Kenyon

A TIGHT-KNIT MORMON COMMUNITY. 

Faith-healer Amber is hopeful about Lehi, the safe Mormon town to which she, her new husband and two kids have just moved. 

BODIES BURIED IN THE GARDEN. 

After the sudden death of her daughter, Amber discovers the community will do anything to keep its secrets.

ONE FAMILY DIVIDED. 

When nothing feels certain anymore, will Amber take a leap of faith, for love?

You can read more about The Dark Within Them on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the opening of the novel. 

From The Dark Within Them

The Meeting, July 11th 2015

Chad

This was the kind of meeting all diaries were cleared for. Chad stood central in a horseshoe of bodies, an unlikely orchestrator. The floor was his but his tongue lay slack, hiding behind his lower teeth. There was a tremor in his wife’s shoulders which made him roll back his own, and clear his throat for silence. Each sound in the Temple reverberated off the pristine white surfaces.

“Thank you for being here today,” he begun. “I have great faith in the church community and its advice. Hell, we’ve all stood where I am now at one point or another, I’m sure. And today it’s my turn to ask for your help, with our Gilly.”

The open windows seeped humid twilight into the hall and beads of sweat formed under his cotton shirt. He talked slowly, using his hands as an offering. Holding his palms open showed he had nothing to hide: he’d been taught that by his uncle Jim. His audience gazed, unblinking. He wiped clammy paws on his jeans. He was forgetting people knew him here—since he could wobble around the neighbourhood on pudgy toddler legs—and that earned him a kind of immunity from judgement.

“Gilly’s fifteen. Young. She’s … she’s mostly a good kid. Anything badness in her? It didn’t come from her mothering. That’s not to blame,” he nodded with what he felt was warmth at his wife, her cheeks betraying a shade of fuchsia. “Perfect mother in my Amber. She made sure those kids grew up in a loving, attentive environment, and they wanted for nothing—don’t doubt that. But since Gilly moved to Lehi, with young Ivan and their mom, well, she’s been finding getting settled tough. This is a good neighbourhood—we all know that—and Amber and I, we’ve been wanting them to make friends. And these days…well, kids are always on their phones, right? Texting nonstop. She was texting at dinner and, erm,” he paused and pulled on his earlobe, “I asked to see her phone.” He felt Amber’s disapproval nettle his skin and revised: “I took her phone. And that’s when we saw the pictures.” He looked away from his wife’s shrinking form. “To be sending those kind of images to a boy—outside of the church—well, we’re all kind of cut up about it. There’s a kind of darkness in my home these days.”

He breathed out, realising his fingernails had been digging so hard into his palms that they had left indents…He flexed his hands, feeling for the back of a chair to sink into.

“Thank you, Chad,” Brett’s eyes crinkled, kind. “This is exactly the right space to discuss these kind of family dynamics in.” The circle nodded at these words, mumbling approval. “You’ve done the right thing.”

Amber wasn’t looking at him. He shuffled his chair closer to reach for her hand, but she pretended not to notice.

Gus Gresham, "Kyiv Trance"

 

Fresh from ditching an engineering career in the early 1980s, Gus Gresham found his road guru and lifelong friend Laurie lying stoned and unconscious at the edge of a vineyard in the afternoon sun, an empty Beaujolais bottle in the grass and a Jack Kerouac novel spread-eagled on his chest …

They picked grapes in the same picturesque French villages; laboured in olive groves on Crete and pumpkin paddocks in New South Wales; sought enlightenment in India and did the Auf Weidersehen Pet bit on building sites in Germany. They followed seasonal work doing pretty much everything from thousand-acre wheat harvests to beachcombing. They slept in cornfields and woke up at dawn to wash their faces in the morning dew and start hitchhiking …

Alongside hard travelling, Gus always had a passion for writing, and somehow in between it all he has been a mechanical engineer, environmental activist, English tutor, audio-book producer, interpersonal-skills facilitator, and mature student (MA in Creative Writing; MSc in Building Surveying). Currently, he juggles a building-surveying career with being a husband, father and writer.

A trip to Russia and three trips to Ukraine formed the inspiration for his latest novel, Kyiv Trance.

About Kyiv Trance

Haunted by the mysterious, tragic death of his girlfriend five years earlier, university tutor Richard Farr escapes his spiralling life in London by travelling to Kyiv, Ukraine, to teach English.

It is the winter of 2004 / 05, the midst of the Orange Revolution. Hundreds of thousands are taking to the streets to protest election-result rigging. Richard's arrival coincides with the first of a series of murders in the capital. Then he meets Nadya, who may turn out to be the love of his life or a femme fatale, or both. As they grow closer, her own tragic history is revealed.

Ultimately, Richard will tread a dangerous, obsessive path, seeking happiness against the odds – as his life, the reign of the serial killer, and the political unrest in Kyiv all lead towards a shattering, interconnected climax.

You can find out more about the book here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From Kyiv Trance, by Gus Gresham

Some experiences change you utterly. It’s not possible to go back to being who you were before.

Richard was never charged.

At the nadir of the ensuing grief, his philosophy to anybody who cared to listen was, “Shakespeare had it right. ‘Life is a tale, told by a fool’ … etcetera. Most people blunder through their days in a series of hypnotic trances. Barely conscious. Never taking the blinkers off for more than a few moments at a time. Blindly following some hackneyed script laid down in childhood, no matter what torment it brings.”

There was a little bar he visited every night, called Marrakech, where they served cloudy designer lager in frost-coated glasses. It went down well with tequila chasers. They had a reasonable lunch menu, too, and the bar was only a ten-minute walk from the university.

Because he was such a good English language and literature tutor, showing up at work half drunk was overlooked for a long time.

At some point in the dark early years of the new millennium, he was invited to resign. It was a comfort that he had substantial savings — once meant as capital on a house before Trixie’s death.

Autumn, 2004. London.

Never grasping where all the time had gone, Richard lay on the sofa reading a broadsheet newspaper one evening in late November 2004 when he saw the advert.

Kyiv School of English … Come and teach at our brand new facility … Immediate vacancies … Visas and flights arranged … contact Alexei Koval …

At the same moment, the TV news cut to images live from Kyiv, where the “Orange Revolution” had been gathering pace. Furious crowds filled Independence Square amid allegations of vote rigging.

Richard looked at the impassioned protesters waving their bright orange flags and banners. They cared about something. They looked alive.

He sat up straighter and read the job advert again.

Ruby Speechley, "Gone"

 

Ruby Speechley is a bestselling psychological thriller writer, whose titles include Someone Else’s Baby. Previously published by Hera, she has been a journalist and worked in PR and lives in Cheshire with her husband and two of her three children and two dogs. She has an older son and two grandsons.

About Gone, by Ruby Speechley

My son is missing, and everyone is lying to me.

Last night my son, Shay, sneaked out of the house and didn’t come home. He promised not to go to the illegal party in the woods. But someone’s been attacked and Shay has gone missing. The police want to know if he saw what happened. I’m worried he could be involved.

After all the trouble he’s been in lately, mixing with the wrong crowd, coming home beaten up and scared, I thought we’d put it all behind us. Trouble is, Shay resents me moving my new boyfriend into the family home. I found all sorts on his laptop, including a half-written email warning me not to trust David. What does he know that I don’t?

I’m beginning to fear for his safety. What is David hiding from me? Who have I let into our lives?

I don’t know who I can trust. Will I ever see my son alive again?

From Gone

Prologue

His breath is a plume of white as he stumbles into the cold tunnel of darkness ahead of him, the tangle of spiky branches thick with leaves slowing him down. He checks over his shoulder; he can’t see them, but he can hear them getting closer. His chest and throat are burning with exertion; the mossy earth is damp beneath his bare feet. He must reach the other side, where warm lights beckon him.

An arm reaches around his middle and bundles him to the ground. He falls on his face and lets out a pitiful groan. There’s a taste of blood on his lips, his nose thick and wet and throbbing. The smell of damp mud and torn grass are the last thing he remembers.

When his eyes flutter open, he’s lying on his back, on something as hard and cold as steel. He can’t move, not even a finger. There’s a stark white wall in front of him, grey ceiling tiles and right above him, a brown liquid stain. He blinks. Am I dead, or dreaming? A roaring pain tears down his side. His dry lips peel open but the scream in his throat is silenced by a hand pressing over his mouth. There is no face to this person, no words, only the milky skin of an arm, bleached by the bright light.

A woozy feeling washes over him, his vision blurs and his eyes fall shut.

F. C. Malby, "Dead Drop"

F. C.Malby graduated with a first-class joint honours degree in Geography and Education. She has travelled widely and taught in the Czech Republic, the Philippines and London. She writes novels, short stories and poetry. Her debut novel, Take Me to the Castle, won The People’s Book Awards. Her debut short story collection, My Brother Was a Kangaroo, includes award-winning stories published in literary journals and magazines worldwide. She is a contributor to anthologies including In Defence of Pseudoscience: Reflex Fiction Volume Five (Reflex Press), Unthology 8 (Unthank Books), and Hearing Voices: The Litro Anthology of New Fiction (Kingston University Press) alongside Pulitzer prize winner, Anthony Doerr. Her website is here.

About Dead Drop

Liesl is an art thief and an exceptionally good one. She steals priceless paintings from Vienna’s art galleries and delivers them to wealthy private collectors. This life of anonymous notes and meticulous planning, of adrenaline-fuelled dead drops and dramatic escapes, suits her restless spirit and desire for solitude and anonymity. But when Leisl finds a body on Stephansplatz underground steps instead of the expected note, she understands that she’s involved in a deadly game and that her own life is in danger. This fast-paced, intelligent thriller exposes the undercover world of art heists and takes us on a journey through Vienna’s galleries and museums until Leisl comes up against a truth that makes her question everything she knows.

You can read more about Dead Drop on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From Dead Drop, by F. C. Malby

I hear the roll and clunk of the train’s wheels on the steel tracks below, feel its vibrations in my toes and through my thighs as it leaves the platform. The wind rushes into the tunnel from Stephansplatz, its caress warm as it whips down the steps to the underground platform and fills the void. 

The Vienna spring brings with it cherry blossom and azure skies, the blues becoming celestial in the late afternoon light. Most count the short, hot summer months. I count the winter months until spring, and then when the leaves turn to a deep, burnt amber, I begin again. 

As I reach the top step, a body lies on the pavement, feet contorted, laces undone, socks pushing through holes in the soles. A red, woollen hat rests on the concrete slab by his head, hands clutch an empty bottle of Kaiser beer. Not a soul stops to look. A body littering the pavement is a familiar sight on this part of the underground. It’s not always clear whether the person is alive or dead. 

I am here for the note. Stepping closer to avoid the people coming up the steps behind me, I spot a corner of paper in his top jacket pocket and pull it free. Without reading the words, I slide it into my jacket. Checking the pocket on the other side of his jacket, I feel something hard and rough and pull out a brooch shaped like a star. I count the spokes, ten of them, and run my fingers across its surface. It lacks the pearls, but at a guess it would have been handcrafted by Hapsburg jeweller, Rozet and Fischmeister. I slip it into my pocket. An unexpected treasure. Reaching down and taking his wrist, I feel for a pulse. I should have checked it first but this is new territory for me. All signs of life have drained away and death was recent. A touch of heat still lingers on the skin, rough and calloused. I pull the hat down over his face. The beer bottle, I suspect, will have been planted to make this look like a natural event. He should have been alive when I reached him. 

K. L. Slater, "Missing"

 

Kim Slater is the number one bestselling author of seventeen psychological crime thrillers. She has sold over two million copies of her books worldwide. She has also written four Carnegie-nominated Young Adult novels as Kim Slater for Macmillan Children’s Books. Kim has an MA in Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University and lives with her husband in a small Nottinghamshire village. Her website is here. 

 

About Missing, by K. L. Slater

I've known him all my life. I know he has taken my daughter. His mother says she can help me. But she's the last person I can trust ...

Samuel lived next door when we were children. We were inseparable. But he didn’t like sharing me with my adored little brother. And one terrible night, he got rid of my brother forever …

Now, years later, he’s free. And my daughter is missing.

I turn on my baby girl’s unicorn nightlight and bury my face in her pillow, my heart breaking. I know Samuel has her – he blames me for ruining his life, and even after all this time, he still doesn’t like to share.

As darkness falls, there’s a knock at my door and I open it to see Samuel’s mother. She says she can help me.

I know I can’t trust her, but I don’t have a choice. With each step I take, my fear grows stronger. Can she help me find my daughter? Or does she know something about what really happened all those years ago? Something that could stop me from saving my baby girl …

From Missing

Prologue

Twenty-six years earlier, 1993

The disused warehouse was massive, but Jimmy was trapped in a tiny room within it.

Earlier, he’d climbed in through a broken window and looked around. The old metal machinery was still intact. It ran in lines up and down the vast floorspace. Some had been broken into bits by vandals, others had metal pieces stripped from them, but all towered above him like dinosaur skeletons.

Jimmy had been in the place about ten minutes when he’d heard shuffling noises and a funny strangled noise like someone had coughed and tried to cover it up. He’d run further inside the wide-open space of the warehouse and seen a door standing open over on the far wall.

When he’d got closer, he’d spotted an old sign hanging lopsided on it. Jimmy was the best reader in his class, if you didn’t count the new boy. He’d held the sign straight so he could see it properly and pieced the sounds together. He’d said slowly to himself: ‘Re-frig-er-ation unit.’ Everyone knew it was dangerous to hide in a fridge in case the door shut by accident and you got trapped.

Jimmy had pushed the sign hard to watch it whizz round on itself and it had flown off, clattering to the concrete floor. He’d looked around in panic, watching and listening for movement but all was still. He’d stuck his head through the gap and squinted into the gloomy unit. There was no fridge in there.

The shuffling sound had seemed like it was getting closer. Jimmy had stepped inside the unit and waited for his eyes to adjust. There were no windows in here. The room was very dusty, bare shelves all around it and rusty metal hooks hanging from the ceiling. The door had been weirdly thick and heavy when Jimmy had pulled it to behind him, leaving just a tiny gap.

People at school said the warehouse was haunted by two burning women. Once a food manufacturing plant, lots of people had died here ten years ago when there was a fire and a big explosion. Nigel Burley in Year 6 had said he’d seen the two women in the Easter holidays last year. Everyone had sat quietly in a corner of the playground, listening as he’d told how they’d rushed past him screaming, their hair smoking, the flesh melting from their faces. Nigel had told them he’d thought they were real people until they both ran through a solid wall and disappeared, leaving nothing behind.

So Jimmy had held his breath when the shuffling sound had drawn closer and he’d bit his knuckles to stop himself crying out. If the burning women pulled open the door, he would put his head down like a Spanish bull and charge forward. Ghosts weren’t real, they were like fog. You could walk right through them.

He’d heard heavy breathing and then the door had begun to open. Jimmy had caught a scream in his throat and balled his fists ready to run. Then the door had been pushed hard from the outside, like someone had their shoulder against it. When it had closed with a clunk, the space was plunged into pitch black.

David Tregarthen, "Come the Dark Night"

 

David Tregarthen is a writer, singer, accompanist, and tutor. He grew up in the North of England, studied at Oxford (where his novel Come the Dark Night is set), then worked for several years as an academic in the Midlands. In the past year he's taken some time out to travel (where the global pandemic allowed) and pursue his other interests. As a creative writer, he's interested in identity, truth, nuanced queer characters, and what (if anything) makes psychopaths different from the rest of us. Come the Dark Night is his first novel and is published by Bloodhound Books. He can be found on Twitter @davidtregarthen

About Come the Dark Night, by David Tregarthen

In this sophisticated novel of suspense, a killer with a taste for literature lurks in the shadows of Oxford University ...

After a student is found decapitated in the cupola of the Sheldonian Theatre and a cryptic note in an unknown language is discovered, DS Kate Stewart and her partner turn to medievalist Dr. Jonathan Reynolds. He identifies the note as a passage from Beowulf and explains that the murder replicates a killing in the epic poem.

Then a second, equally grisly murder escalates the situation. The victim is Tom, Jonathan’s former student and stalker. Horrified, Jonathan identifies the crime’s literary connection to another early English poem. Is the killer obsessed with medieval times—or with Jonathan? When another death suggests that a serial killer is working his way through the English Literature syllabus, both the police and the scholar are drawn into a baffling mystery ...

From Come the Dark Night

Oxford, 1998, First Week in Trinity

I look down from my vantage point high above the city, scent the early morning air and smile. It will be another of those sultry days that spring borrows from summer. On such a day, the air holds out the promise of a time beyond the teaching term that has just grudgingly begun; beyond the testing, fraught, close-knit days of Finals; beyond even those precious weeks of quiet libraries where dust motes dance as scholars snooze. On such a day, the illusory prospect of drifting on a peaceful river or browsing in bookshops along deserted lanes has not yet been shattered by the squalid reality of building works and the blind hunger of the omnipresent crowds. And on this day it is that I – or rather my Work – shall be seen.

I walk back across the wooden floor, carefully lift and place the head to one side, then take a moment to rest from my labours. As the young April sun rises over Oxford’s spires and bell towers, my city is neither dreaming nor sleeping. Whilst darkness and quietude still prevailed – though I, of course, was busy about my Work – three dozen college porters waited patiently within the establishments they guard. Now, as the bells of Tom Tower and a hundred churches strike their conflicting chimes, these men begin to unlock the smaller wickets set inside the great iron-studded timber gateways. The more famous – or cupidinous – colleges ‘fling wide their gates,’ knowing an influx of tourists waits to make its less than royal way. Agog to consume cultural capital, the sheep will stream inexorably in from early morning until dusk: from the grubby ring road and coach parks and railway station. Within each college, gardeners are doubtless hard at work weeding borders and mowing precious lawns still thirsty for the month’s promised ‘shoures soote.’ Scouts and bedders begin to scrub porcelain and polish stainless steel – or so I imagine. I do not know the truth of it. Perhaps they are instead counting out linen for distribution amongst the students in their charge – most of them still dead to the world, it’s safe to assume, bins outside their rooms to guard against unwanted intrusion. Excluded here, of course, the chasers of Firsts already annotating texts in quiet carpeted libraries, the earnest chapelgoers kneeling in prayer, and those Lycra-clad rowers quick-stepping it to the cold river. I see one now, cycling along the pavement, weaving between concrete bollards, almost close enough to … but, no, I must not allow myself to be distracted.

I hammer in the spike, muffling the sound of metal on iron with his scarf, then rest again. As I wait, silent and unseen, elsewhere cheerful shouts, ribald laughter, rise from the meat stalls in the Covered Market and the kitchens they stock. Along Catte Street and Cornmarket, Broad Street and the High, the thin light shines down alike on saints peering myopically from their niches in the church towers, and sinners, scurrying back from strange beds, rumpled-black-jacketed and pallid-faced. Loathsome in their petty deceit. Ants, all of them, waiting for one divine foot to mash them into the cobbles of Radcliffe Square.

My breath returns and I begin to pack away my tools. Nearby, the Old Bodleian’s great quadrangle lies yet hushed, as lonely staff dribble their way past old Pembroke’s statue. He stands now in shadow, impassively watching over the doorways with their neatly painted homage to the Old Schools, as he has done since his translocation in the Year of Our Lord 1723. Nearby, the sun’s warming rays slide tentatively up the wall of the Sheldonian Theatre, past its encircling grotesques with their gaping mouths, till they reach the cupola’s arched windows and pale-green dome, high above the waking city. My mouth waters. Soon and very soon.

Amanda Jennings, "The Haven"

Amanda Jennings is the author of six psychological dramas and short stories, published both in the UK and abroad. Her debut, Sworn Secret, topped the Italian bestseller list, and was a UK kindle Top 5 bestseller, while In Her Wake was a W. H. Smith Fresh Talent pick. The Judas Scar, her second book, was optioned and is due to be rereleased later this year with HarperCollins. Her books are set in Cornwall, where her family originates and where her heart lies. The Haven came out in March this year in hardback, ebook and audio, with the paperback due out next spring. The Financial Times called it 'hypnotic,' while Lisa Jewell said it has 'spine-tingling ending that will take your breath away.' Amanda and her husband have three daughters and live in Oxfordshire with a menagerie of animals. Her website is here.

About The Haven, by Amanda Jennings

Winterfall Farm, spectacular and remote, stands over Bodmin Moor. Wanting an escape from the constraints of conventional life, Kit and Tara move to the isolated smallholding with their daughter, Skye, and a group of friends. Living off-grid and working the land, they soon begin to enjoy the fruits of their labour amid the breathtaking beauty and freedom of the moor.

At first this new way of life seems too good to be true, but when their charismatic leader, Jeremy, returns from a mysterious trip to the city with Dani, a young runaway, fractures begin to appear. As winter approaches, and with it cold weather and dark nights, Jeremy's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic. Rules are imposed, the outside world is shunned, and when he brings a second girl back to the farm, tensions quickly reach breaking point with devastating consequences ... 

From The Haven

They lie together, limbs entwined, her body warm against his, his arms looped around her, their breathing synchronised. Somewhere outside an owl hoots. The dog responds with a half-hearted bark then the house stills. The silence is so loud it rings in his ears. He didn’t realise how much he’d missed this stillness until now. When he was a child he’d often creep out of the house at night. He’d lie in the rowing boat moored on the lake or hide in the soft grass in the fields, and stare up at the stars, a billion balls of fire a billion miles away, and imagine he lived on one. This place, this farm, is one of those stars. A new world. Somewhere they can be free. Somewhere he can build a home for his family.

Anita Sivakumaran, "Cold Sun"

 

Anita Sivakumaran was born in Madras and has lived in the UK since 2004. Her historical novel, The Queen, based on real events, has been made into a major television series. The Birth of Kali, her acclaimed second book, retells Indian mythology from a feminist point of view. Cold Sun is her first novel in the DI Patel detective series. She lives in Leicester with her husband, children and a rescue dog from Greece. Anita has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. 

 

About Cold Sun, by Anita Sivakumaran

Cold Sun heralds the literary debut for Detective Vijay Patel of Scotland Yard.

Bangalore. Three high-profile women murdered, their bodies draped in identical red saris. 

When the killer targets the British Foreign Minister’s ex-wife, Scotland Yard sends the troubled, brilliant Vijay Patel to lend his expertise to the Indian police investigation. A stranger in a strange land, ex-professional cricketer Patel must battle local resentment and his own ignorance of his ancestral country, while trying to save his failing relationship back home. 

Soon, the killer’s eyes will turn to Patel. And also to Chandra Subramanium, the fierce female detective he is working with in Bangalore.

This breathless thriller will keep you guessing until the final, shocking revelation of the killer’s identity.

Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

From Cold Sun

Sparks flew from the welding gun. Spots danced in the boy’s unprotected eyes. He blinked them away, placed the gun on the tamped earth, stood, stretched. Waiting for the metal to cool, he watched the mechanic kneeling in the dirt, blue coveralls filthy, reattaching a rusty bumper to an old Ambassador. The mechanic glanced up, his eyes meeting the boy’s and flitting away like a butterfly. He nearly dropped the bumper.

It wasn’t often that the boy allowed his eyes to meet another’s. Crouching now, he steadied the cylinder at his feet, checked if the joint had sufficiently hardened. Tugged at it to make sure. Then he lifted the cylinder into his backpack. Without a word or nod to the mechanic, he lifted the pack to his shoulder and left.

Outside, he paused to blink a few times. The sun hung low over the strip of wasteland on which the concrete and corrugated-iron motor-repair shack perched. Scrub grass, hard brown earth. Torn plastic bags flapped in the dusty breeze. A faint stink of decaying offal and human faeces. The rough concrete walls and curtained rear doorways of a row of butcher shops stretched in either direction. The boy walked slowly, eyes lowered.

A street dog nosed at a mound of rubbish. Her teats stretched low, pink and white patches on them. One eye glistened pearly in blindness. Ignoring the angry buzz of displaced bottle flies, the boy knelt beside the dog. He brought some stale bread from his pocket. The dog wagged her tail. Intent, the boy watched her gobble it down from his open palm. He let her lick his fingers, lifted them to his nostrils, smelt the stench of rotting meat and butcher’s bones in her saliva.

Soon the dog grew restless. She cocked her ears at some far off sound, prepared to move on. The boy reached for his backpack, slid the zip open. The dog wagged her tail again with renewed enthusiasm. He tugged at the metal ball one more time. The joint had hardened well. He fitted it into the tube.

The dog’s tail drooped to cup her anus as the boy positioned the tube’s mouth to her forehead, his knee propped under her jaw. Inured to the city’s noise, she barely flinched when he pulled the lever and the sudden boom filled the air.

The tail wagged on for a few moments, even after the one good eye had glazed over. A smile curled the boy’s lips. He gazed slowly around the empty wasteland. Then he packed up and left.

Soon, a blanket of bottle flies covered the carcass.

Chapter One

‘Patel!’ Sergeant Jackson hollered across the heads of fourteen detectives busy at their desks. ‘Skinner’s looking for you. Hop to it, baby.’

Patel ignored the sniggers. He took the blue pencil to the report in his hand, marked a missing apostrophe to the word ‘its.’ He threw the pencil into an open drawer, where it was swallowed by clutter, and ran a hand through his hair.

‘Sadly, I already left,’ he said to Jackson, who just shrugged.

He closed the file, tucked it under an arm, slung his jacket over one shoulder and jogged to the stairs. His hair bounced and flopped over his forehead, overdue a cut. Boyish locks did not suit a homicide detective. Even if, as Sarah put it when she felt friendly, combined with his smoky brown eyes they made him look like a Bollywood hero.

By the time he’d passed the IT help desk and rounded the conference block, he was out of breath. Those years of athletic training were long gone, together with his cricketing career. Mostly now he ran to catch the Piccadilly Line and lifted pints of lager.

He slowed outside the row of senior management’s private cubicles, glanced through windows overlooking the Thames. Bitter rain streaked the glass, transforming London’s dust into slime. Through the worm-runs of water, he saw the traffic lights flash dully on Westminster Bridge. Orange, then red.

Perfectly miserable weather. Perfect for a jaunt down the road for a pint of London Pride. But really, he ought to be heading home to pack. The flight was at five a.m. and he hadn’t so much as laid out a pair of swimming trunks. In fact, where were his trunks? He’d last seen them in September, when they’d booked a holiday at some posh hotel in Cornwall. He and Sarah. Booked and cancelled last minute for emergency root-canal treatment. The very thought of it made his jaw ache.

He pushed Inspector Rima’s door open.

She looked up from her computer, swept her hair off her shoulder, said, ‘Don’t you knock?’

‘I was going to leave this on your desk.’

She held her hand out for the report, eyes twinkling. ‘So you’re off, then? Sunny Tenerife?’

‘Yeah.’ He grimaced, breathless and sweaty, feeling a little foolish to be having this conversation. ‘Nearly got cancelled again.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘This case came up.’ He indicated the file, the cover of which Rima was flicking open. ‘Skinner assigned me.’

Rima raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t unaware of Superintendent Skinner’s feelings about Patel.

‘You got lucky?’

‘I guess.’

‘How?’

‘Deceased is a forty-one-year-old homeless male. Name: John Snow.’

‘No kidding.’

‘Anyway, another homeless fella comes down off his four-day bender under some bridge in West Margate, half frozen to death. Looks down, sees the blood all over his bony hands, his rags. Runs himself and his bony arse straight to Station WB10 South Precinct and ’fesses.’

Rima, flicking through the report, didn’t appear to be listening.

‘You’d think the devil got hold of the poor bugger.’

Rima closed the report, opened it again, studied the top sheet. She frowned, put her finger on it.

‘Why no copy for the FLO?’

‘Homeless man doesn’t rate a Family Liaison Officer.’

She made a face. ‘Of course. We’ve to make “savings” –’ she used air quotes ‘– of thirty million by the end of the year.’

‘You sound just like Skinner.’

She smiled. ‘If we had the resources, we’d track his family down. Even a bum has family, somewhere.’

It was unlike her to display Samaritan urges.

‘Homeless murder,’ said Patel. ‘Cold pavement to cold slab.’

‘Poor bugger,’ she said. She stared at him. ‘Come here.’

A shiver up his spine. ‘Got to go pack, Inspector.’

She came around the desk and put a finger on his shirt button.

‘How about something to remember me by in Tenerife?’ Fighting the urge to back away and run, he said, ‘Sarah wants to—’

A knock on the door. Without pause, it opened.

‘There you are, Patel. Been looking everywhere for you.’ The smarmy voice of Detective Inspector Bingham.

Rima’s hand was back by her side. ‘Dave,’ said Patel. ‘Not down the pub yet?’

‘About to, then I got asked to run an errand.’ Bingham chuckled, then guffawed.

Patel smelled beef stroganoff from the canteen lunch. He waited. He thought there was a joke brewing.

Bingham guffawed and chuckled some more before saying, ‘Super wants you.’

‘When? Tomorrow?’

‘Now, cupcake. He’s got an assignment for you.’

‘He knows I booked the week off.’

‘Yeah, he might have mentioned something like that. All the homicide detectives tied up, you know? After the New Year’s Eve spike in cases and all.’

‘You’re the SIO?’

‘Nothing to do with me. I’m going to Thailand tomorrow. Did I tell you? Warm up me old cobblers.’

Patel just looked at Bingham.

‘Don’t keep the man waiting. Ta, love.’ A quick ferrety glance at Rima and Bingham went away, strutting and chuckling his head off.

Patel raised his eyebrows at Rima.

She twitched her lips in a smile. ‘Go and get some, Sergeant.’

*

‘Have a seat, Patel.’

Superintendent Skinner gestured to the faded leather chair across his desk. Patel cautiously lowered himself into it, knowing it creaked madly. Although the smile on his face and his salt and pepper bouffant hair gave Skinner an avuncular air, his steel-grey eyes emanated hate.

‘You’ve closed the homeless case.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You’d think that in these times of austerity we wouldn’t have the resources to go after every teenage drug overdose, every homeless man pissing himself to death.’

‘It was murder, sir.’

Skinner’s smile vanished. ‘Murder of one fuck-head bum by another.’

‘Report’s been submitted, sir. Second-degree manslaughter.’

‘Justice for the poor homeless man. Could go on a recruitment poster: “We serve with ... care in the community.”’

‘Just doing my job, sir.’

‘Twice the patriot, aren’t you? Playing cricket for the country, and now righting the wrongs done to your countrymen, be they royals or the great unwashed.’

Patel felt a prickle of wariness.

‘Our poster boy.’ Skinner’s tone implied he was a highly unlikely one, and on that point, at least, Patel had to concur.

‘You’ve been with us three years, have you not?’

Patel nodded. Baiting, taunting, and now the trip down memory lane.

‘You certainly caused a storm in Yorkshire.’

Patel stared at Skinner, keeping any emotion off his face. ‘The Dales Ripper.’ Skinner smacked his lips. ‘Some of us can only dream of netting such a high-profile criminal.’ Skinner leaned forward. ‘Tell me. What did it feel like, the eureka moment?’

‘Eureka moment, sir?’

The whites of Skinner’s eyes shone like a dirty enamel sink that’d had a good scrubbing.

Charlotte Barnes, "All I See Is You"

Charlotte “Charley” Barnes is an author and academic from Worcestershire, UK. She is a Lecturer in Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Wolverhampton, and has guest lectured at a number of other West Midlands institutions including the University of Birmingham and University of Worcester. 

Charley has published a number of poetry works, most recently her debut full collection, Lore: Flowers, Folklore, and Footnotes (Black Pear Press, 2021). Alongside this, she writes crime fiction under Charlotte Barnes. Charley is predominantly interested in representation of (violent) women in contemporary crime, and this is reflected heavily in her fiction. 

Her most recent publication, All I See Is You, was published by Bloodhound Books in May 2021. Charley’s next novel, forthcoming with Bloodhound Books, is due for release in August 2021.

 

About All I See Is You, by Charlotte Barnes

All I See Is You is a psychological thriller narrated by M. 

Hinged on memory lapses, misplaced characters and suspected murder, the novel follows M as she tries to locate memories that have been misplaced through childhood and into adulthood.

While M is working with a counsellor to try to recall these missing experiences, she is also trying to nurture a new romantic relationship with Caleb who lives across the street from her. 

But Caleb doesn’t yet know M exists …

The book is an intricate narrative packed with twists and unreliability, making it the perfect read for fans of a narrator you can’t trust. 

Below, you can read an excerpt from the novel. 

 

From All I See Is You

It seems strange to confess to something that you don’t know for certain you’ve done.

At heart, I’m an honest person. One of my earliest memories is of finding a man’s wallet on the pavement, not fifty yards up the road from our house. I picked it up and, without looking inside it, I took it home to my father. He glanced inside and made a show of checking the cards. But, when he thought I wasn’t looking, he took a slim fold of notes from the back of the wallet and stashed them into his trouser pocket.

‘Dad?’

‘Kid?’ He raised his eyebrow. At the age of nine, this felt like a challenge.

‘Nothing,’ I said, then went back to my business of identifying flowers along the roadside, which probably felt more important to me at the time anyway.

At heart, I’m an honest person, yas. But I’ve never been especially big on confrontation. One of the reasons this is one of my earliest memories is that my parents spent the majority of my formative years arguing with each other – not over me, I hasten to add. I was never a troublesome child – at least, not that they were aware of. But over pretty much everything else there was to argue about.

‘Did you pay the water bill?’

‘What do you mean you didn’t get beef?’

‘How are you breathing so damn loud?’

Minor issues, really, in the grand scheme of things. But it doesn’t take a therapist to work out that the issues they were arguing over probably weren’t really the issues they were arguing over. It did take a therapist to reassure me it wasn’t unusual that I couldn’t remember it all though. The first time I relayed my pick-and-mix childhood to a counsellor – at some point during my three years at university, when well-being is shoved down your throat – I asked whether it was normal, to have misplaced these things so easily.

‘What is normal?’ she asked.

I hate people answering a question with a question. But I said, as plainly as I could, ‘Being able to hold on to your childhood memories, for a start.’

She laughed. ‘They’re unpleasant though. Why would you want to hold on to them?’

‘Is that how it works?’

‘Sometimes.’ She made a note of something. ‘Do you remember everything bad that’s ever happened to you?’

It felt like a trick question. ‘I mean, how would I know?’

‘Okay, do you remember everything good?’

‘No, I suppose not. How could I?’

‘So, with this limited filing system available to our brains, why would we use that space up by holding on to memories that are bad, when we don’t even have enough space for memories that are good?’

It didn’t seem like the most sophisticated explanation for the human psyche I’d ever come across, but it sort of made some sense. For the years after that, I never thought there was anything strange in misplacing things that didn’t fit inside the proverbial filing system of my mind. Argument with a friend? No, thank you. An exam grade I wasn’t happy with? Absolutely not. Being fired from a job? Eesh, pass.

There’s a problem with that though.

See, at heart, I’m an honest person. But I’m not exactly the most reliable …