Tag: #teamorenda

blog tour, books, reviews

Blog Tour: The Winter Job – Antti Tuomainen, translated by David Hackston

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Helsinki, 1982. Recently divorced postal worker Ilmari Nieminen has promised his daughter a piano for Christmas, but with six days to go – and no money – he’s desperate. A last-minute job offers a solution: transport a valuable antique sofa to Kilpisjärvi, the northernmost town in Finland.

With the sofa secured in the back of his van, Ilmari stops at a gas station, and an old friend turns up, offering to fix his faulty wipers, on the condition that he tags along. Soon after, a persistent Saab 96 appears in the rearview mirror. And then a bright-yellow Lada. That’s when Ilmari realises that he is transporting something truly special. And that’s when Ilmari realises he might be in serious trouble…

Finnish Antti Tuomainen was an award-winning copywriter when he made his literary debut in 2007 as a suspense author. In 2011, Tuomainen’s third novel, The Healer, was awarded the Clue Award for Best Finnish Crime Novel and was shortlisted for the Glass Key Award. In 2013, the Finnish press crowned Tuomainen the ‘King of Helsinki Noir’ when Dark as My Heart was published.

Tuomainen was one of the first to challenge the Scandinavian crime-genre formula, and his poignant, dark and hilarious The Man Who Died became an international bestseller, shortlisting for the Petrona and Last Laugh Awards. Palm Beach, Finland (2018) was an immense success, with The Times calling Tuomainen ‘the funniest writer in Europe’, and Little Siberia (2019) was shortlisted for the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Readers Awards, the Last Laugh Award and the CWA International Dagger, and won the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel. It was released as a Netflix film in 2025.

The Rabbit Factor, the first book in a trilogy that includes The Moose Paradox and The Beaver Theory, is now in production for TV with Amazon Studios, starring Steve Carell. The Moose Paradox was a Literary Review and Guardian Book of the Year and shortlisted for CrimeFest’s Last Laugh Award. The trilogy was followed in 2024 by The Burning Stones. Antti lives in Helsinki with his wife.

My thoughts: Taking a last minute delivery job that turns out to be a complete nightmare, Ilmari the postman is determined to buy a piano for his daughter for Christmas.

The dodgy van he’s given guzzles fuel and isn’t exactly designed for driving through the snow. He picks up an old friend, and some unwanted followers  – a Lada and a Saab, both want the sofa in the back of the van and are prepared to do almost anything to get it.

This blackly comic tale of a desperate drive across Finland to deliver a sofa and the unpleasant surprise they find inside it, made me laugh, it’s quite silly and weird, which is very Tuomainen, whose books I really enjoy. The stakes are pretty high and the ending is rewarding, definitely worth a re-read, maybe at Christmas!

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

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Blog Tour: Deadman’s Pool – Kate Rhodes

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The islands’ secrets run deeper than the sea…

Winter storms lash the Isles of Scilly, when DI Ben Kitto ferries the islands’ priest to St Helen’s. Father Michael intends to live as a pilgrim in the ruins of an ancient church on the uninhabited island, but an ugly secret is buried among the rocks. Digging frantically in the sand, Ben’s dog, Shadow, unearths the emaciated remains of a young woman.

The discovery chills Ben to the core. The victim is Vietnamese, with no clear link to the community – and her killer has made sure that no one will find her easily. The storm intensifies as the investigation gathers pace.

Soon Scilly is cut off by bad weather, with no help available from the mainland. Ben is certain the killer is hiding in plain sight. He knows they are waiting to kill again – and at unimaginable cost.

Kate Rhodes is an acclaimed crime novelist and an award-winning poet, selected for Val McDermid’s New Blood panel at Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival for her debut, Crossbones Yard. She has been nominated twice for the prestigious CWA Dagger in the Library award, and is one of the founders of the Killer Women writing group. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, the writer and film-maker Dave Pescod, and visited the Scilly Isles every year as a child, which gave her the idea for the critically acclaimed Isles of Scilly Mysteries series.

My thoughts: I really like this series, and I have a deep love for Cornwall, but have never visited the Scillies, and considering how many murders there are, I don’t know if I would!

Ben Kitto and Shadow find the remains of a young woman buried in a shallow grave on the uninhabited (unless you’re a sea bird) island of St Helens. She’s a victim of people trafficking, and there might be another young woman out there.

The story is full of shocking twists, and big changes are coming for the islands’ police force, and Ben has to keep the team focused even as they worry about their colleague. The outcome of this case might also have implications for Ben’s private life. It’s a real game-changer of a book, reshaping what we know about this version of the Scillies.

I was totally hooked, especially as the weather worsened and events went from bad to worse, it all seemed hopeless and there were still shocks to come. Absolutely cracking.

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

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Blog Tour: The Winter Warriors – Olivier Norek, translated by Nick Caistor

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November, 1939. A conscription officer arrives in the peaceful farming village of Rautjärvi. The Soviet Union has invaded, and for the first time in its history as an independent country, Finland is at war.

Setting off into the depths of winter to face the Red Army, the small group of childhood friends recruited from Rautjärvi have no idea whether any of them will ever return home. But their unit has a secret weapon: the young sniper Simo Häyhä, whose lethal skill in the snow-bound forests of the front line will earn him the nickname “The White Death”.

Drawing on the real-life figures and battles of the Finnish-Soviet Winter War, this is a gripping, page-turning historical thriller from one of Europe’s most acclaimed storytellers.

After 18 years in the French police force, Olivier Norek turned to crime writing. Between Two Worlds was the Times and Sunday Times Crime Novel of the Year 2024.

While researching for this novel, Norek spent three months (the duration of the war itself) in Finland, experiencing the -35°C conditions in which the war was fought and in which more than 130,000 Russian soldiers died before the Soviet Union signed a peace treaty in March 1940.

My thoughts: Despite studying Russian history, I had never heard about the Winter War which Russia started in order to claim territory in their former holding – Finland. Compared to the Soviet Union, Finland was (and is) a tiny country. But it is also it seems, an incredibly brave one.

The young conscripts who head off into the winter snow to fight the Russians and the Lottas who accompany them (nurses, camp cooks etc, all female, named after a young woman who followed her man into war and despite his death, stayed to take care of the other men) have no idea what they will face and what might happen to them.

This was an incredibly fascinating, gripping read, it read like a thriller but one based on real people and events. There were a few moments that I felt like I might cry, I gasped out loud, I was horrified and enthralled all at the same time. It might be one of my books of the year – it is genuinely that good.

I don’t really know what else to say – get hold of a copy and learn about a period in history that seems to have been forgotten about, everywhere except presumably in Finland as some of the people in this book are national heroes there. Honestly, just incredible stuff.

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

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Blog Tour: The Howling – Michael J. Malone

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Vowing once more to remove herself from society, Annie is living alone in her little cottage by the shores of a loch. But when an old enemy – now locked up in a high-security hospital – comes calling, begging her to find the son that she was forced to give up at the age of seventeen, Annie is tempted out of seclusion.

The missing boy holds the key to ending Annie’s curse, and he may be the only chance that both she and Lewis have of real happiness. Annie and Lewis begin an investigation that takes them back to the past, a time etched in Scottish folklore, a period of history that may just be repeating itself.

And what they uncover could destroy not just some of the most powerful people in the country, who will stop at nothing to protect their wealth and their secrets, but also Annie’s life, and everything she holds dear…

Michael Malone is a prize-winning poet and author who was born and brought up in the heart of Burns’ country. He has published over 200 poems in literary magazines throughout the UK, including New Writing Scotland, Poetry Scotland and Markings. Blood Tears, his bestselling debut novel won the Pitlochry Prize from the Scottish Association of Writers. His dark psychological thriller, A Suitable Lie, was a number-one bestseller, and is currently in production for the screen, and five powerful standalone thrillers followed suit. The Murmurs and The Torments, first in the Annie Jackson Mysteries series, were published to critical acclaim in 2023. A former Regional Sales Manager (Faber) he has also worked as an IFA and a bookseller. Michael lives in Ayr, where he also works as a hypnotherapist.

My thoughts: I find Annie a really fascinating character, she’s obviously troubled by her “murmurs” but despite her need for quiet solitude, she is willing to risk much to help others – even those who have wronged her. Sylvia tried to kill Annie last time they met, attempting to sacrifice her, but here Annie is agreeing to help her, to look for her lost son. Yes, she’s hoping that an end to the family curse might be her reward, but when she and Lewis realise that this investigation might be very dangerous, they still want to help.

I was gripped from the off, there’s something so intriguing and compelling about the story, with its echoes of the past in people’s lives and personalities, Drew feels like he’s lived before, as one of the ancestors he and Annie share. And Annie knows only too well that you can’t outrun the past. There’s also a connection to Annie and Lewis’ birth mother – Bridget, a slightly happier story than the others they know.

It felt like a bit of an ending, or maybe a pause in Annie’s story, as certain things are wrapped up, or are they? I cannot wait for the next installment.

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

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Blog Tour: The Transcendant Tide – Doug Johnstone

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It’s been eighteen months since the Enceladons escaped the clutches of an American military determined to exterminate the peaceful alien creatures.

Lennox and Vonnie have been lying low in the Scottish Highlands, Ava has been caring for her young daughter Chloe, and Heather is adjusting to her new life with Sandy and the other Enceladons in the Arctic Ocean, off the coast of Greenland. But fate is about to bring them together again for one last battle.

When Lennox and Vonnie are visited by Karl Jensen, a Norwegian billionaire intent on making contact with the Encedalons again, they are wary of subjecting the aliens to further dangers. But when word arrives that Ava’s daughter has suffered an attack and might die without urgent help, they reluctantly make the trip to Greenland, where they enlist the vital help of local woman Niviaq. It’s not long before they’re drawn into a complex web of lies, deceit and death.

What is Karl’s company really up to? Why are sea creatures attacking boats? Why is Sandy acting so strangely, and why are polar bears getting involved?

Profound, ambitious and moving, The Transcendent Tide is the epic conclusion to the Encedalons Trilogy, and a final showdown between the best and worst of humanity, the animal kingdom and the Encedalons. The future of life on earth will be changed forever, but not everyone will survive to see it…

Doug Johnstone is the author of 18 previous novels, most recently Living Is a Problem (2024) and The Collapsing Wave (2024). The Big Chill (2020) was longlisted for Theakston Crime Novel of the Year, and Black Hearts was shortlisted for the same award. Three of his books, A Dark Matter (2020), Breakers (2019) and The Jump (2015), have been shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year.

He’s taught creative writing and been writer in residence at various institutions over the last decade, and has been an arts journalist for over twenty years. Doug is a songwriter and musician with six albums and three EPs released, and he plays drums for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers. He’s also co-founder of the Scotland Writers Football Club, and has a PhD in nuclear physics. He lives in Edinburgh.

My thoughts: We reach the end of the story of the Enceledons and their time on Earth, Sandy, Xander and the others have reached a place of safety in Greenland, or so it seems. Lennox and Vonnie are students studying sealife in Scotland, Ava is trying to adjust to life with Chloe, who still doesn’t speak. Heather and the other humans who chose to go with Sandy are slowly changing into hybrid human/Enceledons, deep in the Arctic Ocean.

But danger is coming their way. A billionaire obsessed with the aliens is trying to find them, and reaches out to Lennox and Vonnie. They’re reluctant, but Chloe becomes life-threateningly ill and only Sandy and co can help.

Events take a shocking and horrifying turn and once again the Enceledons and their friends are at risk. Changes have also been taking place in the ocean, the residents of the depths are fighting back (like the whales we’ve probably all seen online tipping fishing boats) and the local Inuit community get involved too.

I was fascinated by the descriptions of the lives of the native Greenlanders, how they have managed to preserve and protect their traditions despite the Danish attempts to colonise them.

I did cry, there are some very sad and upsetting moments and I freely admit to being a typically soppy animal lover, and feeling guilty for occasionally eating meat and fish. I also really love Sandy and his friends, these huge, gentle creatures who come to Earth for sanctuary, and find only violence abd death. I want to press copies of this trilogy into the hands of every corrupt politician and business owner and beg them to remember we aren’t the only lifeforms on this planet.

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

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Blog Tour: The Burning Stones – Antti Tuomainen, translated by David Hackston

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To celebrate the paperback publication of this funny and fun novel, I’m re-sharing my review from the hardback tour below. To buy a copy head to Orenda Books.

Saunas, love and a ladleful of murder… A cold-blooded killer strikes at the hottest moment: the new head of a sauna-stove company is murdered … in the sauna. Who has turned up the temperature and burned him to death? The evidence points in the direction of Anni Korpinen – top salesperson and the victim’s successor at Steam Devil. And as if hitting middle-age, being in a marriage that has lost its purpose, and struggling with work weren’t enough, Anni realizes that she must be quicker than both the police and the murderer to uncover who is behind it all – before it’s too late…

Finnish Antti Tuomainen was an award-winning copywriter when he made his literary debut in 2007 as a suspense author. In 2011, his third novel, The Healer, was awarded the Clue Award for Best Finnish Crime Novel and shortlisted for the Glass Key Award. Tuomainen was one of the first to challenge the Scandinavian crime-genre formula, and his poignant, dark and hilarious The Man Who Died became an international bestseller, shortlisting for the Petrona and Last Laugh Awards and now a Finnish TV series. Palm Beach, Finland (2018) and Little Siberia (2019) have both been adapted for the screen, airing shortly, and also shortlisted for the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Readers Awards, the Last Laugh Award and the CWA International Dagger, and winning the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel. The international bestselling Rabbit Factor trilogy is filming now for Amazon Studios, starring Steve Carell. Antti lives in Helsinki with his wife.

My thoughts: From theme parks to sauna sales, the first in a new series from the funniest Finnish writer I’ve read is back and I am delighted.

Saunas are big business in Finland, where people have them in their back gardens and use them daily, being the best salesperson at Steam Devil, and after the murder of her boss’ heir apparent puts Anni in the police’s crosshairs, they think she’s the killer, and even more so once another one of her colleagues also dies.

There’s evidence that seems to link her to both scenes, although she insists the “bumlets” (every time I read that word, I giggle) were stolen. Then there’s her deeply weird husband who spends all his time watching old F1 races and discussing them online as well as selling related merchandise, or at least stockpiling it.

Anni’s got issues and so do the police investigating her, it’s a small place and everyone has history.

I really enjoyed this, Finland sounds like such a unique and weird place, and Antti’s books are full of utterly ridiculous and odd people. Who knew saunas would cause so much chaos!

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Blog Tour: Home Before Dark – Eva Björg, Ægisdottir, translated by Victoria Cribb

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November, 1967, Iceland. Fourteen-year-old Marsí has a secret penpal – a boy who lives on the other side of the country – but she has been writing to him in her older sister’s name. Now she is excited to meet him for the first time. But when the date arrives, Marsí is prevented from going, and during the night her sister Stína goes missing – her bloodstained anorak later found at the place where Marsí and her penpal had agreed to meet. 

November, 1977. Stína’s disappearance remains unsolved. Then an unexpected letter arrives for Marsí It’s from her penpal, and he’s still out there…  Desperate for news of her missing sister, but terrified that he might coming after her next, Marsí returns to her hometown and embarks on an investigation of her own. But Marsí has always had trouble distinguishing her vivid dreams from reality, and as insomnia threatens her sanity, it seems she can’t even trust her own memories. And her sister’s killer is still on the loose…

Born in Akranes, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir studied for an MSc in Globalisation in Norway before returning to Iceland and deciding to write a novel. Her debut, The Creak on the Stairs, was published in 2018, becoming a bestseller in Iceland and going on to win the Blackbird Award and the Storytel Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year. It was published in English by Orenda Books in 2020, and became a number-one bestseller in ebook, shortlisting for Capital Crime’s Amazon Publishing Awards in two categories, and winning the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger.

Girls Who Lie, Night Shadows, You Can’t See Me and Boys Who Hurt soon followed suit, shortlisting for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, the Capital Crime Awards, and the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel. You Can’t See Me won the Storytel Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year in Iceland in 2023. In 2024, Eva won Iceland’s prestigious Crime Fiction Award, the Blood Drop, for Home before Dark and was shortlisted for the coveted Glass Key. The Forbidden Iceland series has established Eva as one of Iceland’s bestselling and most distinguished crime writers, and her books are published in eighteen languages with more than a million copies sold.

My thoughts: This was really good, sinister and full of twists and red herrings. Marsí has returned to her parents’ house on the tenth anniversary of her older sister’s disappearance when they were teenagers. She’s determined to find out what happened to Stina, and who killed her.

She’s received a letter from the penpal she failed to meet on the very evening Stina vanished. Something she has always thought connected. Could the boy she was writing to be the person who harmed her sister? She was using Stina’s name and parts of her identity, like her age, in her letters. But she doesn’t think her sister knew anything about them.

With dual timelines, showing Stina and Marsí in both 1967 and ’77, the truth is slowly revealed to us, and it is shocking. Marsí also finally confronts her parents about their reluctance to search for their missing daughter and the limited police investigation. What they believe happened completely changes everything for her.

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

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Blog Tour: Kill Them With Kindness – Will Carver

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The threat of nuclear war is no longer scary. This is much worse. It’s invisible. It works quickly. And it’s coming…

The scourge has already infected and killed half the population in China and it is heading towards the UK. There is no time to escape. The British government sees no way out other than to distribute ‘Dignity Pills’ to its citizens: One last night with family or loved ones before going to sleep forever … together.

Because the contagion will kill you and the horrifying news footage shows that it will be better to go quietly.

Dr Haruto Ikeda, a Japanese scientist working at a Chinese research facility, wants to save the world. He has discovered a way to mutate a virus. Instead of making people sick, instead of causing death, it’s going to make them… nice. Instead of attacking the lungs, it will work into the brain and increase the host’s ability to feel and show compassion. It will make people kind.

But governments don’t want a population in agreement. They want conflict and outrage and fear. Reasonable people are harder to control. Ikeda’s quest is thoughtful and noble, and it just might work. Maybe humanity can be saved. Maybe it doesn’t have to be the end. But kindness may also be the biggest killer of all…

Will Carver is the international bestselling author of the January David series and the critically acclaimed, mind-blowingly original Detective Pace series, which includes Good Samaritans (2018), Nothing Important Happened Today (2019) and Hinton Hollow Death Trip (2020), all of which were ebook bestsellers and selected as books of the year in the mainstream international press.

Nothing Important Happened Today was longlisted for both the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2020 and the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. Hinton Hollow Death Trip was longlisted for the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize, and was followed by the literary thrillers, The Beresford, Psychopaths Anonymous, The Daves Next Door, Suicide Thursday and Upstairs at the Beresford.

Will spent his early years in Germany, but returned to the UK at age eleven, when his sporting career took off. He and his partner run their own fitness and nutrition company, and live in Reading with five children and a tortoise.

My thoughts: This was suitably weird and intense for a Will Carver book. There’s a genius scientist in Dr Ikeda, who just wants people to be a bit nicer to each other, and a complete idiot in the British Prime Minister who cares more about getting away with all his indiscretions than the country.

Dr Ikeda finds a secret file that suggests someone, but not the Chinese government, plans to release a deadly virus, Tau, on the world. His team have developed a vaccine for this virus, but millions will still die. So being a brilliant scientist and a genuinely nice person, he engineers an alternative – a virus that behaves a bit like the flu but leaves the sufferer kinder, nicer, and hopefully makes the world a bit better.

He secretly releases his virus, watching it slowly spread from China to the rest of the world. Sadly there are some deaths, but nowhere near what Tau would have done.

Unfortunately for the British people, one of the people who was involved in the plot to release that virus was the PM. He’s a nasty, slimy man (I imagine him with a thatch of blonde hair that needs a good brush for some reason) who can’t seem to stop cheating on his wife and getting caught.

Despite being the perfect person for Ikeda’s virus, he doesn’t contract it, instead pretending he has been hospitalised. He really is the worst.

Then a deadly cloud of some sort is seen over China, it appears to be acidic in nature, melting flesh from bone and leaving behind millions of dead. Now it’s on a collision course for the UK. So of course the government issue suicide pills to the populace and tell everyone to say goodbye. As the world watches, what will happen to us?

I’m a bit torn as having lived through the delights of Covid-19, lockdown and the horrors of 2020, I don’t really like any sort of pandemic fiction, and there’s a lot of it about. But I really like Carver’s darkly funny, macabre and peculiar books. There were certainly bits of this book I enjoyed, and even found very funny, but I just don’t know if we need more books about pandemics and corrupt politicians doing dodgy deals behind our backs.

It wasn’t my favourite Will Carver book but it was enjoyable and clever, and I did really like Dr Ikeda and his wife, two truly good souls in a Sisyphean struggle. If you read it, let me know what you think, I’d love some different perspectives.

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

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Blog Tour: Double Room – Anne Sénès, translated by Alice Banks

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London, late 1990s. Stan, a young and promising French composer, is invited to arrange the music for a theatrical adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. The play will never be staged, but Stan meets Liv, the love of his life, and their harmonious duo soon becomes a trio with the birth of their beloved daughter, Lisa. Stan’s world is filled with vibrant colour and melodic music, and under his wife and daughter’s gaze, his piano comes to life. 

Paris, today. After Liv’s fatal accident, Stan returns to France surrounded by darkness, no longer able to compose, and living in the Rabbit Hole, a home left to him by an aunt. He shares his life with Babette, a lifeguard and mother of a boy of Lisa’s age, and Laïvely, an AI machine of his own invention endowed with Liv’s voice, which he spent entire nights building after her death. But Stan remains haunted by his past. As the silence gradually gives way to noises, whistles and sighs – sometimes even a burst of laughter – and Laïvely seems to take on a life of its own, memories and reality fade and blur… And Stan’s new family implodes…

Anne Sénès was born in Paris and studied at the Sorbonne, where she obtained a PhD in English studies. Her passion for Anglo-Saxon literature and culture has taken her all over the world, from London to Miami, passing through the south of France. She is currently based on the Mediterranean coast, where she works as a journalist and translator. Chambre Double (Double Room) is her first literary novel.

My thoughts: This is quite a bittersweet book, Stan is mourning his late wife, having left London with his young (and almost entirely silent) daughter for a house his aunt left him. He’s in a new relationship, with Babette, but he can’t stop thinking about Liv. He’s built an AI a bit like Alexa or Siri, that chirps and sings away to itself. He’s a bit obsessed with it, and treats it like it’s alive. Having given it Liv’s voice, it haunts him.

As he reflects on the before and after, dwelling on his happiest moments, struggling to compose any new music, barely bothering with the people in his life, he risks losing the lively Babette for good.

I don’t think Stan should have moved Babette and her strange son into his house, he’s not really ready for a new relationship and definitely hasn’t recovered from his loss. The book is melancholic and sad, and Babette is all life and vibrancy. It won’t end well.

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

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Cover Reveal: The Howling – Michael J Malone

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Annie and Lewis search for the son of an old enemy, who may hold the key to ending Annie’s curse. Their investigations lead back to the past, uncovering something that could destroy the most powerful people in the country. The compelling, chilling next instalment in the Annie Jackson Mysteries series…

Two men, centuries apart, dream of being a wolf.

One is burned at the stake.

Another is locked in a psychiatric hospital for most of his life.

And Annie Jackson is about to find out why…

Vowing once again to remove herself from society, Annie is back living alone in her little cottage by the shores of a loch. But when an old enemy – now locked up in a high security hospital – comes calling, begging her to find the son that she was forced to give up at the age of seventeen, Annie is tempted out of seclusion. The missing boy holds the key to ending Annie’s curse, and he may be the only chance that both she and Lewis have of real happiness.

Annie and Lewis begin an investigation that takes them back to the past, a time etched in Scottish folklore, a period of history that may just be repeating itself. And what they uncover could destroy not just some of the most powerful people in the country, who will stop at nothing to protect their wealth and their secrets, but also Annie’s life, and everything she holds dear…

Dark, immersive, and utterly compelling, The Howling is a story of deception, betrayal, and misplaced power, and a reminder that the most public of faces can hide the darkest of hearts…

Pre-order Publishing 11th September