Over the next few weeks I’ll be showcasing several publishers, with a Christmas Selection Box of some of their titles that I hope the Fiends of Kendall Reviews will support, retweet and maybe even buy a few of.
Please support the authors & publishers listed over the next few weeks, if you do decide to buy something then please tweet out about it. Just a quick post saying which title you bought and don’t forget to tag me (@gjkendall) and I can help spread the word. If you can also leave a review either on your blog, Amazon, Goodreads, Twitter that means so much to everyone. Even a one-line review or just a star rating can make a huge difference to a book’s sales.
Today I’m delighted to showcase Orenda Books
Website: www.orendabooks.co.uk
Twitter: @OrendaBooks
Call Me Star Girl By Louise Beech
Tonight is the night for secrets …
Pregnant Victoria Valbon was brutally murdered in an alley three weeks ago – and her killer hasn’t been caught. Tonight is Stella McKeever’s final radio show. The theme is secrets. You tell her yours, and she’ll share some of hers. Stella might tell you about Tom, a boyfriend who likes to play games, about the mother who abandoned her, now back after twelve years. She might tell you about the perfume bottle with the star-shaped stopper, or about her father …
What Stella really wants to know is more about the mysterious man calling the station … who says he knows who killed Victoria, and has proof. Tonight is the night for secrets, and Stella wants to know everything …
With echoes of the chilling PLAY MISTY FOR ME, CALL ME STAR GIRL is a taut, emotive and all-consuming psychological thriller that plays on our deepest fears, providing a stark reminder that stirring up dark secrets from the past can be deadly …
You can buy Call Me Star Girl from Bookshop UK
I Am Dust By Louise Beech
A haunted theatre
A murdered actress
Three cursed teenagers
A secret that devastates them all…
The Dean Wilson Theatre is believed to be haunted by a long-dead actress, singing her last song, waiting for her final cue, looking for her killer…
Now Dust , the iconic musical, is returning after twenty years. But who will be brave enough to take on the role of ghostly goddess Esme Black, last played by Morgan Miller, who was murdered in her dressing room?
Theatre usher Chloe Dee is caught up in the spectacle. As the new actors arrive, including an unexpected face from her past, everything changes. Are the eerie sounds and sightings backstage real or just her imagination? Is someone playing games?
Is the role of Esme Black cursed? Could witchcraft be at the heart of the tragedy? And are dark deeds from Chloe’s past about to catch up with her?
Not all the drama takes place onstage. Sometimes murder, magic, obsession and the biggest of betrayals are real life. When you’re in the theatre shadows, you see everything.
And Chloe has been watching…
You can buy I Am Dust from Bookshop UK
Six Stories By Matt Wesolowski
Praise for the Six Stories series
‘Matt Wesolowski brilliantly depicts a desperate and disturbed corner of north-east England in which paranoia reigns and goodness is thwarted … an exceptional storyteller’ Andrew Michael Hurley
‘Beautifully written, smart, compassionate – and scary as hell. Matt Wesolowski is one of the most exciting and original voices in crime fiction’ Alex North
‘Insidiously terrifying, with possibly the creepiest woods since The Blair Witch Project … a genuine chiller with a whammy of an ending’ C J Tudor
‘Endlessly inventive and with literary thrills a-plenty, Matt Wesolowski is boldly carving his own uniquely dark niche in fiction’ Benjamin Myers
‘Frighteningly wonderful … one of the best books I’ve read in years’ Khurrum Rahman
‘Disturbing, compelling and atmospheric, it will terrify and enthral you in equal measure’ M W Craven
‘Bold, clever and genuinely chilling with a terrific twist that provides an explosive final punch’ Deidre O’Brien, Sunday Mirror
‘A genuine genre-bending debut’ Carla McKay, Daily Mail
‘Impeccably crafted and gripping from start to finish’ Doug Johnstone, The Big Issue
‘The very epitome of a must-read’ Heat
‘Wonderfully horrifying … the suspense crackles’ James Oswald
‘Original, inventive and dazzlingly clever’ Fiona Cummins
‘A complex and subtle mystery, unfolding like dark origami to reveal the black heart inside’ Michael Marshall Smith
‘Haunting, horrifying, and heartrending. Fans of Arthur Machen, whose unsettling tale The White People provides an epigraph, will want to check this one out’ Publishers Weekly
‘Matt Wesolowski has just the formula to meet your self-scaring needs… ‘ Strong Words magazine
‘A masterly piece of storytelling, very sinister, deliciously entertaining’ New Books Magazine
You can buy Six Stories from Bookshop UK
You can buy Hydra from Bookshop UK
You can buy Changling from Bookshop UK
You can buy Beast from Bookshop UK
You can buy Deity from Bookshop UK
The Lingering By SJI Holliday
Married couple Jack and Ali Gardiner move to a self-sufficient commune in the English Fens, desperate for fresh start. The local village is known for the witches who once resided there and Rosalind House, where the commune has been established, is a former psychiatric home, with a disturbing history. When Jack and Ali arrive, a chain of unexpected and unexplained events is set off, and it becomes clear that they are not all that they seem. As the residents become twitchy, and the villagers suspicious, events from the past come back to haunt them, and someone is seeking retribution… At once an unnerving locked-room mystery, a chilling thriller and a dark and superbly wrought ghost story, The Lingering is an exceptionally plotted, terrifying and tantalisingly twisted novel by one of the most exciting authors in the genre.
You can buy The Lingering from Bookshop UK
The Bird Tribunal By Agnes Ravatn
Two people in exile. Two secrets. As the past tightens its grip, there may be no escape…
TV presenter Allis Hagtorn leaves her partner and her job to take voluntary exile in a remote house on an isolated fjord. But her new job as housekeeper and gardener is not all that it seems, and her silent, surly employer, 44-year-old Sigurd Bagge, is not the old man she expected.
As they await the return of his wife from her travels, their silent, uneasy encounters develop into a chilling, obsessive relationship, and it becomes clear that atonement for past sins may not be enough…
Haunting, consuming and powerful, The Bird Tribunal is a taut, exquisitely written psychological thriller that builds to a shocking, dramatic crescendo that will leave you breathless.
You can buy The Bird Tribunal from Amazon UK
House Of Spines By Michael J. Malone
What you see isn’t always real
Ran McGhie’s world has been turned upside down. A young, lonely and frustrated writer, and suffering from mental-health problems, he discovers that his long-dead mother was related to one of Glasgow’s oldest merchant families.
Not only that, Ran has inherited Newton Hall, a vast mansion that belonged to his great-uncle, who had been watching from afar as his estranged great-nephew grew up. Entering his new-found home, it seems Great-uncle Alexander has turned it into a temple to the written word the perfect place for poet Ran.
But everything is not as it seems. As he explores the Hall’s endless corridors, Ran’s grasp on reality appears to be loosening. And then he comes across an ancient lift, and in that lift a mirror. And in the mirror the reflection of a woman.
A terrifying psychological thriller with more than a hint of the gothic, House of Spines is a love letter to the power of books, and a reminder that lust and betrayal can be deadly.
You can buy House Of Spines from Amazon UK
Hinton Hollow Death Trip By Will Carver
It’s a small story. A small town with small lives that you would never have heard about if none of this had happened.
Hinton Hollow. Population 5,120.
Little Henry Wallace was eight years old and one hundred miles from home before anyone talked to him. His mother placed him on a train with a label around his neck, asking for him to be kept safe for a week, kept away from Hinton Hollow.
Because something was coming.
Narrated by Evil itself, Hinton Hollow Death Trip recounts five days in the history of this small rural town, when darkness paid a visit and infected its residents. A visit that made them act in unnatural ways. Prodding at their insecurities. Nudging at their secrets and desires. Coaxing out the malevolence suppressed within them. Showing their true selves.
Making them cheat. Making them steal. Making them kill.
Detective Sergeant Pace had returned to his childhood home. To escape the things he had done in the city. To go back to something simple. But he was not alone.
Evil had a plan.
You can buy Hinton Hollow Death Trip from Bookshop UK
Seal Skin By Su Bristow
What happens when magic collides with reality?
Donald is a young fisherman, eking out a lonely living on the west coast of Scotland. One night he witnesses something miraculous … and makes a terrible mistake. His action changes lives – not only his own, but those of his family and the entire tightly knit community in which they live. Can he ever atone for the wrong he has done, and can love grow when its foundation is violence?
Based on the legend of the selkies – seals who can transform into people -Sealskin is a magical story, evoking the harsh beauty of the landscape, the resilience of its people, both human and animal, and the triumph of hope over fear and prejudice. With exquisite grace, Exeter Novel Prize-winner Su Bristow transports us to a different world, subtly and beautifully exploring what it means to be an outsider, and our innate capacity for forgiveness and acceptance.
You can buy Sealskin from Bookshop UK
The Home By Sarah Stovell
When the body of pregnant, fifteen-year-old Hope Lacey is discovered in a churchyard on Christmas morning, the community is shocked, but unsurprised. For Hope lived in The Home, the residence of three young girls, whose violent and disturbing pasts have seen them cloistered away… As a police investigation gets underway, the lives of Hope, Lara and Annie are examined, and the staff who work at the home are interviewed, leading to shocking and distressing revelations … and clear evidence that someone is seeking revenge.
A gritty, dark and devastating psychological thriller, THE HOME is also an emotive drama and a piercing look at the underbelly of society, where children learn what they live … if they are allowed to live at all.
You can buy The Home from Bookshop UK
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