Category: reviews

The police say Calvin Cross died naturally.

Former Scotland Yard detective Ember Lockhart lost her career following a scandal. Now working as a private investigator, she is hired by Amelia Cross to investigate her husband’s sudden death on a flight into Heathrow. Calvin had been frightened before he died, and the corrupted USB stick he left behind suggests he had good reason.

As Ember begins asking questions, she is followed, warned and threatened to abandon the case. With reluctant help from her former colleague and ex-lover, Leo Campbell, she traces Calvin’s death to a secretive technology company involved in political blackmail and corporate espionage involving an elaborate plan to destabilise the British government.

Then Amelia is murdered, and the evidence is carefully arranged to frame Ember. Charged with killing her own client, Ember must prove her innocence while pursuing an organisation prepared to eliminate anyone who gets in the way of their ultimate political goal.

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Deborah Stone is the best-selling author of four gripping psychological thrillers that keep readers turning pages late into the night. Her novels have won multiple awards and critical acclaim, establishing her as a standout voice in contemporary psychological suspense and thriller fiction.

Her new crime thriller, Buried In Silence, will be available for pre-order on September 30, 2026 and will be released on October 14, 2026. Her last release, Nowhere Man (October 3, 2024), is available in paperback, Kindle, and as an audiobook. It follows the success of Semi-Detached (April 3, 2023) which was recently honoured with the Chill With A Book Readers’ Award. Deborah’s second novel, Me and My Shadow, received the prestigious Chill With A Book Premier Award, given only to books that earn outstanding ratings across all reviewer categories. Her debut, What’s Left Unsaid, won the Runner-Up Prize for Best Book of 2018 in the same awards and remains a reader favourite.

In addition to fiction, Deborah is the author of the highly respected non-fiction guide, The Essential Family Guide to Caring for Older People, a finalist in the Wishing Shelf Book Awards 2022. A recognised expert on elder care, Deborah frequently appears on BBC, ITV, Sky, and Channel 5, offering expert advice on aging, care planning, and family support. She contributes regularly to national newspapers and lifestyle magazines, helping families navigate the complexities of caring for older relatives.

She lives in London with her husband and their delightfully mischievous golden retriever.

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My thoughts: A man dies of an apparent heart attack on an aeroplane, his wife insists it wasn’t a natural death but the police disagree. So she hires former Detective Inspector Ember Lockhart to investigate.

What follows involves being framed for murder, explosions, boxes of offal, threats, kidnappings, senior members of the government, MI5, CEOs and millionaires determined to control the country. Not what Ember, or her former colleague Leo expected at all.

It’s all very heart racing and gripping as Ember, Leo and his subordinate Rohan attempt to untangle it all, find out who really killed Ember’s client and her husband and put a stop to the evil schemes of a rather vile rich and powerful person.

I really enjoyed this, I like Ember, she’s clever and headstrong, prone to charging full steam ahead into things, but Leo is there to rescue her and try to get her to rein in her impulsive nature. They make a good team, whether it’s hunting a killer or just dodging his nosey neighbour!

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

What kind of person knows they may kill before the day is out?

Kate Arden must soon find out.

It’s London, 1999. A family tragedy breaks her heart and forces her into a new job with an elite police unit called SO19.

SO19 is all speed, power and adrenaline. There are fast cars, serious weaponry, unpredictable threats. It’s disciplined, aggressive, and highly addictive, a very long way from regular policing.

Kate is one of a tight team of firearms specialists. Their job is to protect the people from those who would steal, kill and destroy.

Including one ex-marine sniper with a grudge …

Fast-paced, gritty, and very human, The Snake looks at both sides of the ancient question – what is evil?

Philip Gladwin is a novelist, screenwriter, development executive and educator, with long experience of many different genres across TV, film and radio.

Philip has over 60 TV broadcast credits in both primetime and children’s drama. He has developed for many long running TV series, and has been commissioned to write scripts by people like Lynda La Plante, Russell T. Davies and Tony Garnett.

He is also strong at series construction, having worked on many bibles and series story documents, and has helped to create seasons of some of the UK’s most loved shows, including Casualty, New Tricks, Grange Hill, Holby City and The Bill.

The series of The Dumping Ground on which he was series script editor received two BAFTA nominations, including best Childrens’ Drama, and won a Writers Guild Award.

My thoughts: I found this a fascinating read, offering two contrasting characters, Kate, a police officer, who after the death of her sister joins SO19, the firearms unit, and tries to seek solace in her work. She’s also always looking for the man who shot her sister, wanting revenge.

And the sniper Chris, formerly a Marine, now following the orders of a voice in his head. A voice he believes to be that of a snake that bit him on his last official mission. As his grip on sanity lessens, he becomes increasingly dangerous and the police are searching for him.

Both characters are dangerous, but in different ways, Kate is tightly wound and grateful every time she doesn’t have to pull the trigger. She takes risks and pushes back against her brother-in-law who is now her teammate and constant companion in work.

Chris reacts with aggression and violence to any provocation – the neighbour’s yappy dog, his aunt’s attempts to help him, as well as the victims his inner monster demands from him. He might appear to be functioning but inside he’s barely alive.

As the two head towards the final showdown in a run down estate in Harlesden, can either of them contain their darkness enough to survive? 

Intriguing and strangely beguiling, this is an unusual and powerful read. 

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

Fallowfield is a story for our times: an exploration of how the past remains actively alive in the present and of memory’s slippery grip on reality. 

The novel’s damaged heroine, journalist Rowan Woodhouse, has always known Fallowfield Hall as the fabled backdrop to her parent’s youthful love-story. Now, mourning the loss of her artist-teacher father, she hopes a research project to celebrate the college’s half-centenary will reveal more about his life and work, and bring a deeper understanding of her enigmatic mother, who died tragically young.

Tracking down college alumni and tutors to interview, Rowan soon discovers that Fallowfield wasn’t the idyll of student hedonism and picnics on the famed daffodil lawns that it seemed. Jealousies, betrayals and rivalries emerge when she learns of the mysterious death of one young woman and the unsolved disappearance of another. As past and present become dangerously intertwined, her own contemporary world and circumstances are impacted more than she could have imagined.    

Perfect for fans of commercial fiction with ‘amateur sleuth’ female heroines, this thrilling story has a literary quality and elements that will also appeal to readers of historical fiction and dark academia, as well as those with a passion for art and design. Fans of Donna Tartt, Barbara Vine and B.A. Shapiro may also find much to enjoy in Nicole Swengley’s books.

Nicole Swengley is a highly-regarded and experienced journalist who has written about art and design for titles such as The Times, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, London Evening Standard, Wall Street Journal and many others. A past student of the Faber Academy, Nicole has written non-fiction books for Collins and Adlard Coles and has had several short stories published in magazines and anthologies. Her debut novel, The Portrait Girl, was published by Breakthrough Books in 2024. Fallowfield is her second full-length work of fiction. 

My thoughts: Asked to gather a few anecdotes from former staff and students for Fallowfield art school’s anniversary celebrations, journalist Rowan finds herself investigating the death of a young woman in the 1970s. Her own parents were at the college then, her mother was a student and her father student turned tutor. 

As she interviews the people who were there, she becomes concerned that her father, now deceased, might have been involved in the death of Zizi, who had modelled for some of his paintings. But she’d always been told that he had been madly in love with Annie, her mother, from the moment they met, so why would he have been involved with another woman? 

Struggling to find the truth in amongst the half remembered past, and one person’s outright lies, Rowan questions everything she knows about her father. But the truth is much sadder and more disturbing than she expected. 

A fascinating and interesting read, I liked Rowan, it must be hard not really knowing your parents because they never talked about the past, my mum has told me all sorts of stories from her life, my dad’s a bit less forthcoming, or just has fewer stories. Rowan’s mother died when she was five, and in his grief, her dad, Nick, just never really said much.

But the former students, some of whom were friends with Annie, help her piece together the events and give her their memories of her mum, filling in some of the blanks. I really enjoyed this mix of mystery and memory.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.