Tag: Blog Tour

Posted in Random Things Tours

The Collapsing Wave by Doug Johnstone

Posted on by thelotusreaders

When I first met the incredible being Sandy in The Space Between Us I had no idea that there would be a sequel, never mind a trilogy. I grew up at the time when home VCRs were becoming affordable and we rented the Star Wars films so many times that I’m sure if we added up the hire fees we probably bought them. Doug Johnstone’s second novel has something in common with the original trilogy in that this second outing is much like The Empire Strikes Back, it’s darker in tone and it looks like our heroes may be beaten. Heather, Ava and Lennox come up against the worst traits of human nature; fear, hate and paranoid self-preservation seem to be winning and it’s the military’s role to carry this ideology through.We start several months after the last book ended as Sandy was reunited with the rest of his species at Ullapool and disappeared into the sea loch. Our three heroes seemed set for different fates as the research scientists and police who’d been tracking their journey finally caught up with them. Ava is confronted by and wreaks revenge on her abusive husband who pushed her to the edge of suicide and now tries to take her baby Chloe away. At the beginning of this novel we find her in Edinburgh for the court case, watched by her sister who is now Chloe’s guardian. As she’s given a suspended sentence Ava’s elation turns to terror as she’s swept up outside the court room by military officers with guns. Lennox and Heather have been in a makeshift compound that’s now become the biggest American military base on British soil, named New Broom it sits at one end of Ullapool’s sea loch in the middle of nowhere, like Guantanamo Bay rebuilt in a beautiful Highland setting. Heather and Lennox are detained, seemingly with no legal basis, as MI7 Agent Oscar and the American military attempt to capture partial enceladons and understand the way they work. Oscar at least has an academic interest, whereas the military seem more fixated on how to exploit their alien powers to overpower and control the Earth. Nothing could be further from the alien’s minds, they are simply looking for somewhere to live now that their oceanic home has become colonised by another species. They are refugees.

I think the political climate and local circumstances had me reading the book on two levels: as a great science fiction story, but also as an allegory. For those who don’t know my closest city is Lincoln and we’re currently experiencing community divisions. The government’s decision to requisition the recently closed RAF base of Scampton, home of the Dam-Busters, and turn it into a centre for asylum seekers has met with uproar. It’s terrifying to hear the opinions of people who drink in the same pub, deliver the mail or wash the windows, in case it’s far removed from your own. There were sensible arguments against the plan: there was already a plan to turn the base into a museum and heritage centre, for which local people had fundraised hard; the government are not using the actual existing barrack blocks to house the men, but putting portacabins on the runway instead; it’s so far away from any services in the city. Yet, instead of being able to protest these points at a local level, a far right extremist group from Yorkshire has hijacked the cause and set up a protest camp at the base’s main gate with racist signage and ideology. They are protesting against any asylum seekers: ‘coming in illegally for the benefits; to commit crime; to be terrorists; to groom children; to take social housing’. They don’t even understand that in order to claim asylum someone must first arrive in their chosen country. Maybe because this is now part of my everyday life, the parallels between the enceladons and asylum seekers/ refugees were undeniable. Both have been forced from their own country for whatever reason and the majority seek to live somewhere peacefully and in harmony with the existing population, not realising that to some people, their very arrival itself is a threat.

New Broom’s research staff are carrying out experiments that wouldn’t have been out of place in concentration camps. They are building Faraday Cages to capture partial enceladons and prevent them communing with others through telepathy. This silence is enough to depress and eventually kill them, because they can’t live separately only as part of the whole. Lennox and Heather miss the sense of communion they get from their telepathic communication with Sandy. They can commune with each other though and do so whenever they can. Heavily guarded wherever they go, they have no idea that Ava and Chloe are on their way, or that a camp of ‘Outwithers’ has built up on the edge of the loch filled with travellers, believers, anti-government protestors and anyone who despises the idea of such a huge military base on Scottish soil or the capture and torture of enceladons. There’s only one American soldier who shows a trace of empathy, the others are simply unquestioning drones taught to believe they are acting in the interests of National Security and the defence of the Western way of life. The two main men in charge are clearly in the grip of obsession, whether it’s a selfish intellectual curiosity or the terrifying birth of a megalomaniac. While I felt Oscar could perhaps be redeemed, General Carson is itching to exert authority over both security and experimentation. The only character who has their freedom is Sandy, but how can they be truly free with their family being captured bit by bit and their peace threatened by a man determined to destroy them all. Make no mistake, this is not the soft humorous story we might have expected from the first novel. In parts it was hard to read and made me feel physically sick, especially when Ava is finally reunited with her friends at New Broom. As Carson separates Ava from her daughter and proceeds to torture Chloe I felt so angry I was tearful. It is horrific and has the reader rooting for the overthrow of the Americans, by whatever means necessary.

It’s the feelings that Doug Johnstone’s writing conjures in the reader, that make this such an immersive read. The moments of love, friendship and sacrifice between these characters are beautiful and are but a small part of the collaborative existence the enceladons share. The moments where Sandy takes a human into the ‘whole’ are euphoric and more than a little trippy! The way the enceladons harness and work with nature to fight back against the military base has a similar feeling. The way Heather decides to stop resisting the cancer invading her body and just enjoy the life she has left living within the collective. All of these are pointing to the same life philosophy. We must work with something, not against it. The enceladons want to exist alongside humans, to become friends and communicate with them. After years of Thatcherism and the message that autonomy is the route to success and freedom, working together actually is an alien concept. It isn’t just the communication between the three friends that proves to be powerful. It’s the mother – daughter bond between Ava and Chloe. It’s the ‘Outwithers’ who have come together to create their protest camp and two women; Jodie, a lifelong activist for connection and Vonnie, whose love connection with Lennox creates it’s own power. Communication with the Outwithers is what changes Oscar, although whether this actually redeems his character overall I don’t know. These are the people who understand that connection with the colony can strengthen society as a whole, rather than destroy it. There are also those who choose not to see, whether that’s by building a fence and only caring about what’s in your own backyard, or by choosing to believe the government and mainstream media narrative, which only exists to manipulate. It reinforced my belief that language is so incredibly important. If we choose the word integration instead of infiltration, opportunity rather than threat, to embrace something changing for the better rather than hankering after a nostalgic past that mustn’t be destroyed, if it ever existed. If we realise that connection is more important than individual attainment we learn to grow, adapt and embrace new things. It’s amazing that E.M. Forster’s quote ‘only connect’, although now it’s over a 100 years old, still has such huge resonance.

Published on 14th March by Orenda Books.

Meet the Author

Doug Johnstone is the author of twelve novels, most recently The Great Silence, the third in the Skelfs series, which has been optioned for TV. In 2021,The Big Chill, the second in the series, was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. In 2020, A Dark Matter, the first in the series, was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year and the Capital Crime Amazon Publishing Independent Voice Book of the Year award. Black Hearts (Book four), will be published in 2022. Several of his books have been best sellers and award winners, and his work has been praised by the likes of Val McDermid, Irvine Welsh and Ian Rankin. He’s taught creative writing and been writer in residence at various institutions, and has been an arts journalist for twenty years. Doug is a songwriter and musician with five albums and three EPs released, and he plays drums for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, a band of crime writers. He’s also player-manager of the Scotland Writers Football Club. He lives in Edinburgh.

Posted in Random Things Tours

The Guests by Agnes Ravatn

Posted on by thelotusreaders


It started with a lie…
Married couple Karin and Kai are looking for a pleasant escape from their busy lives, and reluctantly accept an offer to stay in a luxurious holiday home in the Norwegian fjords.


Instead of finding a relaxing retreat, however, their trip becomes a reminder of everything lacking in their own lives, and in a less- than-friendly meeting with their new neighbours, Karin tells a little white lie…


Against the backdrop of the glistening water and within the claustrophobic walls of the ultra-modern house, Karin’s insecurities blossom, and her lie grows ever bigger, entangling her and her husband in a nightmare spiral of deceits with absolutely no means of escape…

This is a slow burn novel, with a cast of characters that I wasn’t even sure I liked, yet somehow it gets under your skin. It says a lot about the way we want others to perceive us and how appearances can be deceptive. Karin works in local government, in the planning office, and her husband Kai is a joiner by trade and has his own business. Iris, a woman Karin once knew and dislikes, has offered Kai the job of renewing some steps on the jetty of her family’s holiday home. It’s in a very exclusive area of the Norwegian Fjords that’s a playground for the upper middle classes. From the start Kai seems more comfortable about accepting the holiday for what it is – an experience they’d never afford themselves and they might as well enjoy it. Karin is more conflicted and not just because the owner is Iris. Iris found herself a very rich husband, who started out selling solar panels. Karin’s discomfort worsens when she finds out how Mikkel has made his fortune. He invented a search engine with an algorithm that sorts and compiles publicly available data into a report to inform the potential buyer of a new home. However, instead of the usual data we’re used to on RightMove or Zoopla, this provides information that seems a little more intrusive. With the touch of a button the potential buyer can find out:

Salaries, professions, nationalities. Political leanings, religious affiliations, previous convictions, plus links to any social-media profiles they might have. The average grades and results of any national examinations in all schools within the catchment area. The ethnic composition of each individual class at each individual school and nursery in the area. A pie chart showing annual salaries within the neighbourhood, all handily compiled in one diagram. And all of this within a radius of your choosing!

Karin is horrified by the implications of the search. It means people can avoid having neighbours of a different ethnic origin if that’s important to them. They can make sure their children are mixing with others of the ‘right’ class and educational attainment. It allows people’s prejudices to determine their postcode and creates upper class enclaves that exclude people like her and Kai. The children of the buyers would be brought up to look down on others and believe that any weakness in life warrants contempt. There’s a wonderful line where Karin comments on how incredible it is to start your working life selling solar panels and ending up pushing social segregation. While out walking along the water’s edge, Karin comes across some other cabins and a man fishing. As she nears him he tells her she’s on private property. Karin turns back, seething about his rudeness, but she has also recognised him as the author Per Sinding. She hasn’t read any of his novels but she has read and enjoyed those of his wife, Hilma Ekhult. Karin believes Ekhult is a wonderfully authentic author, the ‘real deal’. So when they bump into them later while out on the boat, Karin has a moment of madness and tells the couple that she and Kai own the house and claims to have invented the property search engine she despises. Now seen as the ‘right sort’ of people, they are invited for dinner and now the couple must keep up the pretence.

The tension is incredible as these couples continue to meet. Even just Karin’s internal tension as she veers between thinking she’s getting one over on the famous couple but perhaps underneath she wants to be accepted by them. Kai is a more laid back character, going along with the ruse but really not bothered by what these people think of him. In fact he and Per get along rather well, but would they if they’d met in different circumstances? I was on tenterhooks waiting to see if Karin would break, but in her paranoia she starts to suspect everyone. She views their holiday home on GoogleEarth and sees Kai’s van there, but how could it be? The picture is months ago. Could he have known Iris before they ‘accidentally’ met? The twists are great and though I didn’t like the characters I was fascinated by the way they interact with each other and on what terms. This is beautifully written and very psychologically astute, and the author has her finger on the pulse of modern society’s preoccupations, goals and rules of engagement. If like me you enjoy people, society and how we fit together (or don’t) then this is a great read for you.

Meet the Author

Agnes Ravatn is a Norwegian author and columnist. She made her literary début with the novel Week 53 in 2007. Since then she has written a number of critically acclaimed and award-winning essay collections, including Standing, Popular Reading and Operation Self-discipline, in which she recounts her experience with social-media addiction. Her debut thriller, The Bird Tribunal, won the cultural radio P2’s listener’s prize in addition to The Youth’s Critic’s Prize, and was made into a successful play in Oslo in 2015. The English translation, published by Orenda Books in 2016, was a WHSmith Fresh Talent Pick, winner of a PEN Translation Award, a BBC Radio Four ‘Book at Bedtime’ and shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the 2017 Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year. Critically acclaimed The Seven Doors was published in 2020. Agnes lives with her family in the Norwegian countryside.

Posted in Random Things Tours

Halfway House by Helen Fitzgerald

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Way back in 1997, I started my first job in the mental health field as a support worker for social services. My role was spread between the day centre and the community, covering several of the halfway houses that supported people coming from a period in hospital and back into their lives. I remember being daunted when taken to one of these houses for the first time, not because I was scared of all people with mental health issues, but because there were five men living in the house and I was just a 24 year old little 5 feet 2 inch scrap who suddenly felt like they knew very little! So I felt a very personal sense of trepidation for Lou O’Dowd who travels across the world from Australia to Edinburgh for a job with the organisation SASOL. Her new life will mean living with her cousin and working shifts at a halfway house for high risk offenders including two killers, a celebrity paedophile, and a paranoid coke dealer. After orientation, Lou will be on shift alone dealing with these offenders with little more than her own instinct to guide her. What could possibly go wrong?

I love that Helen Fitzgerald writes characters like Lou O’Dowd. She doesn’t worry about whether the reader will like her heroine or not – I did feel a strange affection for her if I’m honest. She is controversial in a lot of ways. In Australia she has been living on a sugar daddy’s generosity, depending on him for the roof over her head and a monthly allowance that’s enough for her not to work. She has never really known what she wants to do with her life so has jumped at the opportunity to be sheltered by someone else’s money. When this relationship comes to a disastrous end she has no choice but to find a job and with zero skills, Edinburgh seems like a great opportunity. She seems to veer between low confidence and an almost cocky attitude that’s veering on the reckless. Her inability to direct her own life suggests feelings of inadequacy, but when she takes on her job in Edinburgh she really doesn’t seem to comprehend the potential risks of her role. On her first day in Edinburgh she goes out to see her cousin’s play at the matinee and meets a charming man who’s intelligent and personable. He also shares Lou’s attitude to risk, suggesting sex in alleys or doorways rather than either of their homes. It’s as though Lou has met the male version of herself: charming, unpredictable and addicted to taking risks. When she finds out he’s one of the heirs to a Scottish estate she starts to wonder whether they could be more than a quick fling?

As the book builds towards Lou’s solo shifts at the halfway house, I felt so nervous for her. It also felt like the employer didn’t prepare new staff anyone near enough, just one shadow shift then in at the deep end. I didn’t do night shifts, but the thought of staying up all night as the only person in a house of murderers and sex offenders made me jumpy. To the extent that I dreamt people had broken into my own house one night over Christmas. I loved the way Helen mixed the mundane domesticity of working in a place like this, with the fear and all out horror that could potentially take over. On her first shift Lou takes it upon herself to clean the kitchen and throw out the broken crockery. This might seem like a sensible and industrious job to start with, but it takes a senior worker to point out that this isn’t Lou’s home, it’s the resident’s home and their belongings that she’s thrown out. It’s a line a lot of people would have crossed, but takes away the resident’s agency. It would have been better to try and include them. There’s the evening ritual of cocoa for each resident, but it has to be to perfectly timed in order to interrupt one resident’s suicide ritual. These are the extremes a job like this entails, but it’s only the beginning.

There’s still humour to be found though, laced with a few moments of disgust as Lou realises why one of the residents is happy to be roomed in the basement and another’s seemingly excited leg movements, turn out to be the wrong kind of excited. However, with one resident owing money to the type of people who won’t mind being repaid one body part at a time, another just waiting for Lou to drop her guard and close her eyes and one she thought she could trust, displaying his dangerous side and the depths he’s willing to plumb to scratch a powerful itch! By the final showdown my heart was racing, I was holding my breath and had to go make myself a cup of tea at 4am because I needed to finish, but I also needed a comforting brew. This was another great thriller from Helen and Orenda Books and I heartily recommend it for those who like their heroines less than squeaky clean and their danger very real.

Available now from Orenda Books

Meet The Author

Helen FitzGerald is the bestselling author of thirteen adult and young-adult thrillers, including The Donor (2011) and The Cry (2013), which was longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and adapted for a major BBC drama. Her 2019 dark- comedy thriller Worst Case Scenario was a Book of the Year in the Literary Review, Herald Scotland, Guardian, Sunday Times, The Week and Daily Telegraph, shortlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and won the CrimeFest Last Laugh Award. The critically acclaimed Ash Mountain (2020) and Keep Her Sweet (2022) soon followed. Helen worked as a criminal-justice social worker for over fifteen years. She grew up in Victoria, Australia, and now lives in Glasgow with her husband.

Posted in Random Things Tours

Upstairs at The Beresford by Will Carver

Posted on by thelotusreaders

“The entrance to Hotel Beresford is art deco. Strict lines, geometry and arches showing cubist influence. The monochrome carpet screams elegance as it leads towards the desk that stretches the length of one wall, marble with chrome embellishments. Or, at least, it once looked that way. Back when writers and poets and dignitaries roamed the hallways and foyer. It still feels lavish. Glamorous, even. But faded. And a little old-fashioned.”

Ever since I read The Beresford I’ve been wondering what was going on through the other entrance. The entrance merely hinted at in one of it’s scenes. If what was going on up there was more weird or dangerous than the apartments at the front, I dreaded to think! In my review for the first book I wrote about the Dakota Building in New York City, because my mind kept drifting towards it while reading. It has just the atmosphere for this particular den of iniquity, it has a brooding sense of menace or presence of evil. Yet inside it reminds me of the Chelsea Hotel, a NYC landmark where in the mid Twentieth Century writers, musicals and artists lived. Arthur Miller, Bob Dylan, Arthur C. Clarke, Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick all inhabited the hotel in the 1960’s.

“Each floor looks the same yet somehow has its own unique landscape; it’s known for something particular. A celebrity affair. A mysterious death. A legendary party. Rumours that a serial killer crashed there between sprees. Rock stars smashing up rooms. Writers creating their masterpieces. Some is legend, much is true. All is talked about. With fondness, fascination and morbid curiosity.”

The author tells his story through a series of fascinating characters who live or work in the building. A young boy called Otis who lives on the seventh floor with his parents, who are constantly at war. Sam is an angry man who lets everyone feel his displeasure, often taking out his anger on wife Diane and son, Otis. Diane is turning tricks while Sam is at work in order to have an escape fund, often leaving Otis hanging round the building trying to avoid what’s going on. His favourite place to hang out is at their neighbours, but knows his mum would go crazy if she found out. Neighbour Danielle is a jazz singer with a voice so smokey it immediately conjures up exactly the kind of bar that would employ her. She likes to sit on her couch, under the window with one leg dangling out into the street. Along the corridor are the Zhaos, a sweet Chinese couple who also like to dangle out of their window, smoking something a little stronger than Danielle. Then, living in the penthouse on the top floor, is Mr Balliol. He owns the building and has the disconcerting ability to know everything that’s going on in the rooms he rents out and often sidles up to guests and his staff with no warning or sound. His unique staff are working on a business conference which will keep the hotel busy for a couple of days, but today is going to be an unusual day. Many different rumours swirl around the Beresford Hotel, some more fantastical and darker than others. It’s had more than it’s fair share of deaths, some accidental and some less so. Today is going to test the people who dismissed those darker rumours as impossible. Anything is possible at The Beresford Hotel.

“Peeling paint and faded hopes. Much like Carol. Carol seems to age with the building. For every strip of wallpaper that gets ripped or falls away, Carol gets another wrinkle. When the front facade gets uplifted with a new paint job or some detail on the masonry, Carol turns up with a Botoxed forehead or facelift. But not from a reputable surgeon. From somebody she saw advertising in the back of a magazine.”

Of all the characters I was absolutely transfixed by hotel manager Carol who seems like part of the building. She is that wonderful mix of unobtrusive, but yet ever present when needed, that all the best hotel employees have. No one notices the person who quietly sits in her office or on reception, but Carol has an uncanny way of knowing most things that go on in the hotel. She can probably guess at the rest, but doesn’t share Mr Balliol’s seemingly supernatural abilities. She has the world weariness of having seen it all before; most guest’s behaviour is not as unique as they would like to think. So she’s adept at covering up minor indiscretions all the way up to the accidentally dead: the husband who’s beaten his wife for years and finally gets his comeuppance, a solo sex game gone wrong or prostitutes- who end up accidentally dead more than most. Nothing much surprises Carol, even if a business conference does turn into a wild party or bacchanalian orgy. Yet behind the secret door to her inner office we see a softer Carol, perhaps the real woman beneath he hard nosed employee. It’s clear she’s suffered a loss. One guest who has spied Carol’s profile on a website has noticed this crack under the surface:

“He remembers Carol’s profile among the twenty that he settled on. He could see her former beauty, but this isn’t about going deeper than the surface, it isn’t some outreach programme. It isn’t benevolence or sensing someone’s spirit. Danny can see that Carol is broken. And he likes that. She had loved somebody so completely and then they died, and she has never recovered.”

Her soulmate and husband Jake is almost fatally injured in an accident and hasn’t come out of a coma since and as the weeks go on she begins to realise that the Jake she knew and loved was gone. His body was here, but not his mind, and the more time that passes the more it dawns on her that he is going to need help with his most basic human functions – he will have to be fed and piss into a bag for the rest of his life, if it can be called that. In desperation she calls on God, she will do anything if it will save the man she loves. God doesn’t answer. Yet bargaining is her only hope and if God won’t answer ……

Will Carver is one of the most unique writers I’ve ever read and this latest novel is no exception. He understands human nature. Not that all of us are checking into hotels and choking the life out of prostitutes, but he gets the smallest most innocuous and innocent thoughts as well as the darker side of our nature. His narrative voice is conspiratorial, it lets us into every corner of the hotel and also gives us curious little asides about the world we live in. Many of the speeches are recognisable as things we’ve thought and said about the absurdities and horrors of our world.

I loved his insight into writing through the character of I.P. Wyatt who also lives on the seventh floor and is struggling with that difficult second novel after a very successful first. His words are probably self-reflexive – where an author writes their own experience of writing the novel into their novel – although I do hope Carver isn’t applying Wyatt’s method.

“Some days he writes without breathing for hours, others he spits four perfectly formed words onto the page. And each evening, he deletes everything. He can’t stay in love with his words. He had it so perfect. Anything less than that and he will be chewed up by the press and readers and strangers online who just want to vomit vitriol with no personal consequence. Even if he can replicate the quality of that last book, it won’t be that book, that surprise success. And too much time has passed now. It will never live up to the hype. He should have just churned something out quickly. Something that could be torn apart that he wouldn’t care about.”

Carver has taken the age old tale of the Faustian pact and brought it up to date, into the 21st Century where despite all the advances in science and technology there are still terrible events we can’t control. As we all know, especially if we’ve watched Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s film Bedazzled, making that sort of bargain or deal rarely benefits the desperate petitioner. The brilliance of Carver is that when we think we’ve worked out what’s going on, just like the twelve elite businessmen at their conference find out, a whole new level opens up before us. This is a daring novel, with a deep vein of human emotion at the centre. Yet it’s also playful, thrilling and dangerously dark indeed. If you’re not convinced by me then I’ll let Carver persuade you in his own words.

“When you watch a television soap opera, things are hyperreal. It’s unfathomable to have that many murderers and fraudsters and adulterers living on one street as part of one of three largely incestuous families. Life isn’t like that. Things don’t happen in that way. Hotel Beresford makes television soap operas look like a four-hour Scandinavian documentary about certified tax accountancy.”

Published 9th November 2023 by Orenda Books

Meet the Author

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 Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. Hinton Hollow Death Trip was longlisted for Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize, and was followed by four standalone literary thrillers, The Beresford, Psychopaths Anonymous, The Daves Next Door and Suicide Thursday. Will spent his early years in Germany, but returned to the UK at age eleven, when his sporting career took off. He currently runs his own fitness and nutrition company, and lives in Reading with his children.

THE BERESFORD is currently in development for TV.

If you would like to get in contact, I can usually be found on TWITTER/X @will_carver but who knows how long that will last..?

You could always check out my website where you can join the MAILING LIST to stay updated with deals and competitions and which EVENTS I will be attending throughout the year. (There are also many hidden easter eggs within the site, just as there are in my books. Feel free to click around and see what you find.)

Recently, I have also become a podcaster and present the LET’S GET LIT podcast with fellow writer SJ Watson, where we discuss books and writing each week while sharing a drink. (Find us wherever you get your podcasts from.)

Oh, and just in case TWITTER implodes, I can also be found here…

FACEBOOK – @WillCarverAuthor

INSTAGRAM/THREADS – @will_carver

BLUE SKY – @willcarver

Posted in Publisher Proof

Bone Rites by Natalie Bailey

Posted on by thelotusreaders

“I collected the first bone when I was twelve… Such a tiny little bone, more like a tooth. I only kept it to keep him safe.” Kathryn Darkling, imprisoned in Holloway, is facing death by hanging for her vengeance killing. Haunted by a spirit, she still hopes to perform the ancient black magic that will free her soul, or her struggle to punish the mighty will have been in vain. Will the love of her life come to her aid? Or can she find a way to escape her fate?

Bone Rites is a dual timeline story, split between the early 1900s and 1925 when Kathryn Darkling is in Holloway, the women’s prison, where she awaits the date of her own execution, by hanging. While waiting Kathryn starts to tell her story to a priest, assigned to hear her final words and offer solace as she awaits death. She begins with the first time she found a bone and performed a rite, then works her way through to her training as a doctor in Edinburgh. All the while she is developing her practice of performing bone rites, a black magic focused on freeing her soul. As she tells the stories of her bones, I started to wonder about her version of events. Clearly she’s an incredibly intelligent and determined woman and I admired that, but should I be taking the owned of a convicted murderer? Is she a reliable narrator? She seems to be slipping into madness as the tale goes, but does that mean everything she’s telling us is a lie? The thing I most enjoyed was getting inside Kathryn’s head and trying to work out what makes her tick, rather like holding a counselling session with this imaginary character. As we drifted back into her early childhood, I became won over by this obstinate little girl who won’t be deterred from her purpose. We learn about how tough her upbringing was, alongside her little brother Freddie. I love a dark story with a sense of foreboding and I thought this was perfectly pitched for a Halloween read. It’s not a traditional ghost story but Kathryn is certainly haunted, like many of us are by our pasts. I thought the book perfectly fitted it’s timelines, one before and one after WW1 considering how much change and trauma happened in-between. I also enjoyed the LGBTQ+ representation in the novel, it’s fascinating when authors ‘write back’ to a time where minority groups are under represented. All in all this was a well- written piece of historical fiction with a rather macabre edge and an admirable heroine.

Out on Nov 1st from Aurora Metro Books

Meet the Author

Natalie Bayley is author of ‘Bone Rites’, ‘Lolita’s Daughter’, ‘The Secret Life of Grandmothers’, ‘The Witch Who Saved Paris’ and ‘The Lady Lyttle Murder Mystery’ series. Her dark thriller ‘Bone Rites’ was selected for the 2019 Blue Pencil long list, went on to be shortlisted for the 2021 Blue Pencil First Novel Award and was long listed for the 2021 Caledonia prize before becoming the Winner of the Virginia Prize for Fiction. Natalie lives in NSW, Australia and enjoys ocean swimming and whispering to cats. Born in the UK, she’s been in sunny Australia since 2000. Her books are always about justice and how a seemingly powerless underdog can always find a way to fight back. My spooky historical fiction novel, BONE RITES, won the prestigious Virginia Prize for Fiction and is being published by Aurora Metro books October 2023. Enjoy!

Posted in Random Things Tours

Mr Hammond and the Poetic Apprentice

Posted on by thelotusreaders

What were our great poets before they were great? Long-time NHS doctor Mellany Ambrose has penned a historical novel about the time John Keats spent training in medicine before he chose to follow poetry. She discovered Keats had been apprenticed to an apothecary surgeon a few miles away from where she was working as a GP and it sparked her curiosity.


“Why hadn’t he become a doctor? How would such a supposedly sensitive individual react to the horrors of medicine in an era with no anaesthesia, antibiotics or antisepsis?” Mellany asks, explaining, “I’d struggled in our modern era; his was far worse. In my first week as a nineteen-year-old medical student, I had to dissect a body. I felt unable to process the shock and enormity of it and wrote a poem to help me cope. Did he write poems to express his emotions as I had? And what would it have been like to have the young Keats as your apprentice?”


The story is set in 1814. Thomas Hammond is an apothecary surgeon whose apprentice is eighteen-year-old local orphan, John Keats. Thomas sees John as a daydreamer who wastes time reading. Thomas failed to save John’s mother four years earlier, and when John criticises Thomas’s methods tempers flare on both sides. Despite their differences, Thomas and John begin to develop a grudging respect for each other with Thomas seeing a humanity in the way John relates to patients. Their relationship deepens into one more resembling father and son while Thomas’s true son, Edward, disappoints his father. Thomas realises John is gifted and would make a skilled surgeon, but to help John succeed Thomas must confront his own past mistakes. On the verge of qualifying as a surgeon, John unexpectedly abandons medicine for poetry, ending all Thomas’s hopes. Thomas is devastated and struggles to find meaning in his life and work. As he faces one final challenge, can the master learn some valuable lessons about life from his poetic apprentice before it’s too late?

Out now from Troubadour Publishing

Meet the Author

I worked as a hospital doctor and general practitioner in the NHS for nearly 30 years. My interest in Keats’s medical career arose when I discovered he’d trained as an apprentice close to where I was working as a GP. I spent many happy hours researching in the British and Wellcome Libraries and visiting sites related to Keats’s life and Georgian era medicine.

 

See my website mellanyambrose.com for more on Keats and the history of medicine

Instagram @mellanyambrose

Twitter @mellanyambrose

Posted in Random Things Tours

The Murmurs by Michael J Malone

Posted on by thelotusreaders

I quickly became fascinated with this mix of historical fiction, psychological suspense and the paranormal. We meet Annie Jackson as she tentatively starts her new job in a nursing home in the West End of Glasgow, hoping to get her life back on track. Annie suffers with terrible nightmares where she’s stuck in a car underwater. She also has the sensation that someone is holding her head under water until her lungs feel ready to burst. She also has debilitating headaches and she can feel one threatening as her new manager introduces her to resident Steve. Then something very odd happens, as a blinding pain in Annie’s head is followed by Steve’s face starting to shake, then reform. A whispering sound begins in her head and she sees Steve as a skull, followed by a vision of him falling in his room and suffering a debilitating stroke. She desperately wants to tell him but how can she without seeming like a lunatic? He becomes agitated and upset, as Annie starts to describe the layout of Steve’s bathroom and he asks her to stop. As she’s sent home from another job she starts to think back to her childhood and the first manifestations of her debilitating problem. Annie survived the terrible car accident that wiped her childhood memories and killed her mother. This strange supernatural phenomenon is why Annie is alone and struggles to make friends. These are ‘the murmurs’.

I felt so much compassion for Annie, as the story splits into two different timelines: we are part of Annie’s inner world as a child, but also 0in the present as fragments of memory slowly start to emerge. We also go back even further to the childhood of Annie’s mother Eleanor and her two sisters Bridget and Sheila. We experience their lives through other people’s stories and written correspondence, especially that of a nun who also works in a residential home. I enjoyed how this gave me lots of different perspectives and how the drip feed of information slowly made sense of what was happening in the present day. Different revelations have a huge effect on the adult Annie and because her memories have been buried for so long she experiences the shock and surprise at exactly the same time as we do. This brings an immediacy to the narrative and I felt like I was really there alongside her, in the moment. With my counselling brain I could see a psyche shattered by trauma, desperately looking for answers, she is piecing herself back together as she goes.

Teenage Annie had a similar vision about a girl called Jenny Burn, who went missing never to return. The murmurs awakened when her mum’s sister Aunt Sheila came to visit them. She tried to openly discuss an Aunt Bridget who also had a ‘gift’ but has ended up in a home. Eleanor, Annie’s mother, asks Sheila to leave, but it’s too late because Annie has already seen that her aunt is dying of cancer. Annie evades her mum and makes her way to the hotel, the only place Sheila can be staying. Unfortunately, Jenny is working on reception. Annie can see her climbing into a red car and she desperately wants to warn her, but she knows she’ll come across as a crazy person. Eleanor is desperately looking for a way to deal with her daughter, she’s a person of importance in the church and she can’t be seen to have a daughter who has visions. Pastor Mosley has Eleanor exactly where he wants her. There’s a control and fanaticism in him that scared me much more than Annie’s murmurs. When Eleanor takes Annie to the pastor, he demonstrates his control by holding her head firmly under his head as he prays for her. When she almost faints, he’s convinced there’s a demon in her. Annie is scared of him, she gets a terrible feeling about him but doesn’t know why. Religion is portrayed as sinister and controlling, with fervent followers who never question, but live in the way they’ve been instructed is Christian? story takes an interesting turn when Annie’s brother Lewis, a financial advisor, becomes involved with the church once more and it’s new pastor Christopher Jenkins, the son of their childhood neighbour. He’s revolutionised the church and through the internet he’s turning it into a global concern. He’s not just interested in saving souls though, he’s also amassing money from his internet appeals. He also seems very interested in meeting Annie.

As the book draws to a close the revelations come thick and fast as both past and future collide. The search for Aunts Bridget and Sheila seems to unearth more questions than answers. Annie finds out that Jenny wasn’t the only woman who went missing in Mossgaw all those years ago. As she starts to have suspicions about her childhood home, Chris seems very keen to draw her back there. Might he be planning a huge surprise? I was a bit confused at first with all these disparate elements, but as all the pieces started to slot together I was stunned by the truths that are unearthed. Then as Annie’s childhood memories were finally triggered I felt strangely terrified but also relieved for her all at once. I hoped that once she’d regained that past part of herself she would feel more confident and free, despite the strange gift she seemed to have inherited. Maybe by facing the past and leaning in to her relationship with her brother, she might feel more grounded and strong enough to cope with her ‘gift’. I thought the author brought that compassion he’s shown in previous novels but combined it with a spooky edge and some intriguing secrets. I really loved the way he showed mistakes of the past still bleeding into the present, as well as the elements of spiritual abuse that were most disturbing. This book lures you in and never lets go, so be prepared to be hooked. Michael Malone is a natural storyteller and the fact this is billed as Annie Jackson Number One makes me think there may be others. I certainly hope so,

Out Now from Orenda Books.

Meet the Author

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. Other published work includes: Carnegie’s Call; A Taste for Malice; The Guillotine Choice; Beyond the Rage; The Bad Samaritan; and Dog Fight. His psychological thriller, A Suitable Lie, was a number-one bestseller, and the critically acclaimed House of Spines and After He Died soon followed suit. Since then, he’s written two further thought-provoking, exquisitely written psychological thrillers In the Absence of Miracles and A Song of Isolation, cementing his position as a key proponent of Tartan Noir and an undeniable talent. A former Regional Sales Manager (Faber & Faber) he has also worked as an IFA and a bookseller. Michael lives in Ayr.

Posted in Publisher Proof

The Zebra and Lord Jones by Anna Vaught

Posted on by thelotusreaders

Autumn, 1940. As the Blitz rages in London, Lord Ashburn (known as Lord Jones) is conducting some family business in the capital. As he walks the streets of Knightsbridge he finds himself confronted with an amazing and incongruous sight; a zebra and her foal are sharing the sights and sounds of the city. They have have escaped from London Zoo after their enclosure is damaged. A strange but unforgettable connection is formed between Lord Jones and the animal, who begins to follow him. The instant connection sparks a rebellion in him and he can’t leave her, so decides to do the unthinkable instead. He takes the zebra and her foal, Sweetie, back to his family’s estate in Pembrokeshire.

These beautiful and exotic animals arrive at Cresswell Manor in rural Wales and immediately start working their magic. Slowly, they start to transform the lives of those who live on the estate. Lord Jones seems inspired and has a thriving sense of purpose for the first time in his life. He finds the courage to put some distance between himself and the family that have always treated him with coldness and disdain. Strangely he finds himself forming a friendship with Anwen Llewelyn, the feisty and independent housekeeper at Cresswell, while all the time these wise creatures look on…

I love books that are hard to pigeonhole into one category and this is a mix of personal growth, historical fiction, romance, and a sprinkle of magic realism. Anna Vaught seems to choose these fascinating and unusual events in history to explore a familiar trope from a unique perspective. Half of the appeal is in the beautiful way she writes, something that grabbed me with her novel Saving Lucia. The Zebra and Lord Jones is a simple boy-meets-girl, but made magical by the dangerous backdrop of bombs falling from the sky and one man’s destiny with two zebras. The zebra’s escape from London Zoo is part of historical record, but with her unique style and talent Anna uses this one event to explore so many aspects of life. She weaves these strands together, slowly creating a tapestry of love and loss, threaded with some much needed hope.

I had so much empathy for Lord Jones, who contracted polio as a child and has always had a limp. His aristocratic family have looked down on him all his life, withholding love and physical affection. In this historical period, the aristocracy in this country really were dreadful. Many were instrumental in the plan to appease Hitler prior to WW2 and Lord Jones’s father was friends with Mosley and his wife Diana Mitford, even attending their wedding at Joseph Goebbel’s home in Germany. The way they’ve treated their son has left him depressed and with low self-esteem. Despite being tremendously privileged materially he is emotionally malnourished and desperately in need of a focus, preferably something he can become good at and build his confidence. It is perfect timing for these beautiful creatures to appear in his life and his plan to take them back to Wales with him is his first confident and decisive step into a new way of living. A more hopeful one.

Hope is a precious commodity at this point in the war and it isn’t just London where people are in need of a magical uplift. Anna has woven some of these characters into her story, such as Ernest the evacuee, Talbot the dedicated zookeeper and his counterparts in Germany. All of them are just trying to live their ordinary day to day lives in extraordinary times. There’s even an unexpected cameo from the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haille Selassie. Most interesting of all to me is Anwen, who has a keen sense of justice and a fierceness that I admired immediately. The characters are the stars of this particular show and they are a joy, including Lord Jones and his slow transformation into a different man. At the centre, drawing all of these people together, are the beautiful zebras Mother and Sweetie, who feel like characters in their own right.

I love magic realism, it’s one of those genres that make me a little bit giddy when I’m reading. It’s possibly the closest thing an adult reader can have to the stories we encounter as children that fill us with wonder. It has a different effect to all out fantasy because it creates what I call ‘literary glimmers’ – those shimmery moments of wonder amidst the drudgery and routine of the everyday. The contrast between the magic and the ordinary, elevates the themes and emotions of the story. The narrator is also playing with the reader, they walk us through the story showing us what happens like a puppeteer, deciding what to show us and when to draw the curtain. They display a giddiness and excitement at what’s happening, as they place in front of us a new snippet of gossip or historical document. It’s as if they’re discovering it at the same time we are, so we’re inspired by their immediacy and excitement. It’s as if they run up to us, waving a letter and saying ‘wait till you hear this!’

I felt inspired by this childlike curiosity and I found myself actually smiling on the outside at the playful details, ghosts, owls and zebras communicating with humans. I felt comforted, provoked, happy and full of hope about life, which is a gift in itself. The backdrop is hard hitting. I’ve always remembered the Stephen Poliakoff piece Glorious 39 because it depicted people in London queueing up to have their animals put to sleep and our main character Anne feeling unable to part with their cat. I’d never seen this depicted in a war drama before or after, so to see it as part of the narrative here made it real for me. I couldn’t imagine letting go of my animals even for the war effort and it made me think about the all domestic sacrifices being made for the public good. This historical detail, as well as the changes being made at the zoo, were so important to include, but absolutely heartbreaking to read. This is the hard part of surrendering to her mix of reality and fairy tales, but it was beautifully offset with the humour around Operation Zebra too. In all this is a wonderful tale, told by a unique and playful writer at her most skilful.

Thanks to Renard Press for inviting me to join the tour. The book is out on 27/9/23. You can buy The Zebra and Lord Jones

http://www.annavaughtwrites.com for recent articles and news!

Meet the Author

Anna’s next publication is her new novel, Saving Lucia, about the Honourable Violet Gibson who tried to kill Mussolini; this will be published by Bluemoose Books in April, 2020. Anna also publishes her first short story collection in September 2020; this is Famished and published by Influx Press. At the time of writing, Anna has three further books in the area, various short fiction coming and is writing a new book. She is an English teacher, tutor and mentor to young people, volunteer with young people, editor, short fiction writer, creative writing tutor and copywriter. She currently lives in Wiltshire, with her husband and three boys.

Posted in Publisher Proof

The Mystery of Yew Tree House. The Detective’s Daughter Series – Book 9

Posted on by thelotusreaders

As Stella Darnell arrives at Yew Tree House, it seems like an idyllic little place to spend the summer. Like any village, Bishopstone has it’s past and a dark side lurking beneath the surface. The holiday is a trial of sorts for her, partner Jack Harmon and his seven-year-old twins, Milly and Justin, not forgetting Stanley the dog. Stella‘s thoughts and feelings around a more permanent living arrangement with Jack is always changing, but what better way to trial the arrangement? As they disembark and start to explore it’s clear that the house is a little dilapidated once you look closer. Stanley and Millie, both as lively and full-on as each other, are soon tramping round the garden making discoveries. The house belongs to the Stride family, two sisters Stevie and Rosa live in the annex while eking out their state pension by renting the main house for holidays. Perpetually single, the two women can’t afford to run Yew Tree House, but can’t afford to leave either. It’s clear that some parts of the house are past their best, but cleaning company owner Stella, can see past that and once the place has had a good scrub it will be adequate for a family holiday. However, the house has a complex history, especially the period during WW2 when Stevie and Rosa were girls, living with mum Adelaide and an evacuee called Henry. Their Dad Rupert is called up but loses his life at Dunkirk, leaving his family to make their own way in the midst of rationing and the bombings while their house is also used as a meeting place for the Home Guard. When Millie is exploring one day she finds an old pill box in the garden (a concrete guard post or dug-out from where volunteers would defend the coastline) putting past and future on a collision course. Inside is a skeleton, with a hole in it’s skull that’s been caused by serious force. Jack and Stella may have fallen upon a murder mystery for their popular podcast, but as the aged vicar glares at them from his cemetery across the road, it could be that not everyone wants the truth to be discovered.

This is a book within a series based around Jack’s true crime podcast and I would recommend reading the others to better understand the relationships in this story. I felt I connected better with the wartime section of the story and I think it was because regular readers will know these characters well. Jack is rather blindly optimistic about their first family holiday, leaving readers and Stella as the more doubtful parties on this journey, especially when we meet the redoubtable Milly. Despite being of primary school age, Millie is possibly in charge of every room she walks in and if I were Stella, I’d be imagining what this exuberance might look like when ramped up by teenage hormones! A terrifying thought. I didn’t pick up the chemistry between Stella and Jack at first, but they clearly have a joint passion for solving mysteries and presenting true crime stories that’s rather infectious. I really liked the fact that both characters were connected to the area, bringing an added element to their sleuthing as I felt they had a stake in the village’s history and a real thirst for the truth. I thought the author created an interesting balance, not only between the two timelines, but with a contrasting lightness and shade of the plot. Family life is very lively and full of fun, especially with Stanley’s antics, and there was an almost Famous Five style coziness to the mystery. However, as foreshadowed by the glowering vicar in the book’s opening, there are darker undertones that become even more pronounced as we travel back to the 1940’s.

War isn’t the only cloud over Rosa and Stevie’s family, there is a missing girl too and the anxiety felt by Adelaide Stride about her two girls is very real. I felt Adelaide’s uneasiness around some of the guard, who move freely around the downstairs at night. The house is split between normal family life upstairs, with the realties and tension of war downstairs. There’s a sense this is men’s business and the presence of them in her family home must have added to her worries about her girls. Can Adelaide trust them? It seems clear she has her instincts and one character definitely raised her hackles (and mine). Tension and suspense build in both timelines, with some creepy moments but the wartime sections were the more disturbing. The present day sections have plenty of humour, the directness and attitude of Miliie, as well as plenty of twists to keep the reader on their toes. The fact that some of the characters from the 1940’s still live in the vicinity added to the tension towards the end of the book, as I wondered if any of them were still a danger in the present day. What might they do to keep certain secrets buried? Stella and Jack would need to keep their little family safe, all the while uncovering a tale that holds the heartbreak and tragedy of WW2, alongside a vengeful and murderous secret.

Meet the Author

Lesley Thomson was born in 1958 and grew up in London. She went to Holland Park Comprehensive and the Universities of Brighton and Sussex. Her novel A Kind of Vanishing won The People’s Book Prize in 2010. Lesley combines writing with teaching creative writing. She lives in Lewes with her partner.

Posted in Random Things Tours

The Opposite of Lonely by Doug Johnstone

Posted on by thelotusreaders

As many of you know I am a super fan of Doug Johnstone and particularly his Skelf series of novels, based in Edinburgh and following a family of women, running both a funeral home and a private investigation business. I love the Skelf women because they’re feisty, original, intelligent and incredibly compassionate. This is his fifth in the series and I’m in constant fear of it ending, though if it did this wouldn’t be a terrible way to bow out. In fact this may be the best in the series so far. As usual there’s an eclectic mix of people and cases. Dorothy is investigating a suspicious fire at an illegal traveller’s campsite, but also takes a grieving homeless man under her wing. Jenny is tasked with finding her missing sister-in- law who fled with the body of Jenny’s violent ex-husband Craig. Meanwhile, Hannah meets a women astronaut and is asked to investigate potentially dangerous conspiracy theorists who think she has returned from space ‘changed’. Add to that the new idea of water cremations, funerals for the lonely, strange happenings in space, a body lost at sea and a sexually adventurous man in a rabbit mask and you have all the ingredients to keep a Skelfaholic like me very happy indeed.

I love the Skelf’s outlook on life and other people, it chimes so well with my own family’s philosophy and is such a welcome change from the perspective of our current government. There’s an acceptance of others, whatever way they choose to live or love. They treat people with respect, in whatever circumstances they find themselves. There’s no judgement, something I especially love in Dorothy. She seems to have a knack for reading people and knowing when they’re trustworthy. She has a great track record too, having brought both Archie and Indy into the fold when both were in straitened circumstances. She has moments of exasperation when investigating, especially when she tries a pub local to the traveller camp where a fire happened. When gauging local feeling about the travellers she ends up in a long debate on their behaviour, most of which she dismisses as bigotry, but also their opinion of people ‘on benefits’, refugees, drug takers and women of easy virtue. They are the Daily Mail brought vividly to life and Dorothy notes how easy it can be for someone her age to accept the media narrative and become entrenched in their views. She doesn’t want to be like that and she’s certainly not going to be welcomed back to this pub. Jenny feels much the same.

‘everyone just trying to get to the end of the day and hoping tomorrow would be a little brighter. We didn’t need our homes torched, our dead ex-husbands disappearing, all the hate and bullshit in the world coming to kick us in the arse’.

This outlook also feeds into the sense of place Johnstone creates, something that made me drive around Edinburgh while on holiday earlier in the year. I wanted to get an idea of where these characters lived and was ecstatic to be able to walk on The Links, where Dorothy used to walk their dog and once encountered an escaped jaguar! He describes the strange juxtapositions in Edinburgh, something that happens in all big cities placing very different people up against each other. I was horrified to read once that there’s a street in NYC separating Harlem from the Upper West Side where the life expectancy differs by thirty years when you cross the street. As Dorothy and Archie drive out to Muirhouse she notices the stately home hidden by a high hedge from a caravan park, a halfway house for prisoners next to a posh golf course. It’s not planned of course, but it’s how all big cities grow and develop over time. However, what seems universal is that ‘the poorest people got the shitty end of the stick’ especially in Muirhouse. Johnstone’s current affairs and issues are bang up to the minute, here police officers become implicated in one of their cases. As the women meet for breakfast and a catch up, Jenny observes that cops tend to ‘circle their wagons’ when they’re accused of wrongdoing, especially sexual assault. She references the hundreds of sexual assault cases against police officers and the force’s mishandling of them, or even covering them up.

It’s wonderful to see Jenny in a calmer place, despite the ghost of her ex still hanging over her as she tries to find his sister. Her friendship with Archie, their mortuary assistant, has steadily become a regular part of her life. It feels like unofficial therapy, taking a long walk every couple of weeks and randomly choosing somewhere to eat. There’s something about Archie’s presence that seems soothing and she just enjoys sharing space with him. There’s nothing dramatic or addictive about it. Hannah has noticed them getting closer and observed that it seemed to have pulled her mother together somehow.

‘Maybe all you need is a friendly face once in a while, someone to listen to your bullshit and not judge. Hannah had read once about a man who succumbed to suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge. He left a note at home before walking there, which said that if one person smiled at him on the journey, he wouldn’t jump. Maybe all we need is a smile to stop us jumping’.

Hannah and Indy are tested a little by their new connection to Kirsty, an inspirational woman astronaut she met after her talk at the National Museum of Scotland. Kirsty invites Hannah and Indy to dinner where they meet her partner Mina. Mina is concerned about men who troll Kirsty online and at events, fuelled by a conspiracy theory that something happened to her on the International Space Station. Whether they think she’s had the alien probe up the butt or just some kind of first contact, the phrase used is that she ‘came back wrong’. Mina tells them they’ve had people outside the house, going through their rubbish and they’ve been doxxed. When Mina gets Hannah alone she asks her to do a little digging and to keep an eye on Kirsty. She’s been different since she came back, Mina explains and she’s worried that Kirsty is in danger. This had a strange dynamic to it and I was concerned that Hannah and Indy might be in danger too. I loved the theme of loneliness and dislocation, particularly the idea for The Lonely Funeral, sparked by the story of a middle aged woman who had no family or friends to make arrangements. Dorothy’s thinking had been inspired by projects in the Netherlands and New Zealand where they research the deceased and get a poet to write about them for the funeral. Dorothy has negotiated with the council so that the Skelf’s can carry out the funerals for the basic budget set aside. Brodie, the homeless man Dorothy meets and decides to help, tells her a moving story that I think explains how we all feel at times. I’ve certainly felt it in the depths of grief. It’s about a whale oceanographers had detected with a call that registered 52hz, a pitch that’s higher than other whales. It had no idea that other whales couldn’t hear it and it had spent decades singing out to no one. This story brought a lump to my throat and I’m not surprised that it touches Dorothy too. She decides then and there that Brodie is going to fit in.

It’s not everyday that the heroine of a book takes a walk into the woods to check out a mausoleum, taking the time to think about her father and how much she’s struggled since his death. Then in the next moment, stumbles upon a dogging scene, with one young woman and a quartet of men masked as a badger, deer, rabbit and fox. These juxtapositions keep the reader on their toes, we never really know what might come next or how it might make us feel. Johnstone can take us from tears to gallows humour in a couple of sentences. As he closes the book, with the first of the Skelf’s lonely funerals, Dorothy speaks on behalf of the man in the coffin who they hadn’t known anything about except his name and where he was born. She echoes Hannah’s astronaut friend, whose experience in a solar storm was both spiritual and grounding all at once. What she talks about is connection, in the E.M. Forster sense to ‘only connect’. To connect with others is the most vital thing we do in life. Connectedness is perhaps the best choice of word when trying to work out the opposite of loneliness. She talks about how we tend to close down as we age, to shut off from the world. I’ve observed this with people and noted recently the important of older people connecting with their younger family members using WhatsApp or Snapchat and how it brings daily joy to them, something those that who choose to dismiss new technology miss out on, to their detriment. We need to connect, both with the world we live in and with the people around us. We need to stay part of this great ‘human experiment’ in order to carry on living as fully as possible, for as long as we’re granted.

‘The idea of an impartial, unconnected observer watching the world was totally wrong. We’re all up to our necks in the universe, we can’t be separated from it’.

Out 14th September 2023 from Orenda Books

Doug Johnstone is the author of fifteen novels, most recently The Space Between Us (2023). Several of his books have been bestsellers, The Big Chill (2020) was longlisted for the Theakston Crime Novel of the Year, while A Dark Matter (2020), Breakers (2019) and The Jump (2015) were all 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 two decades including festivals, libraries, universities, schools, prisons and a funeral directors.

Doug is a Royal Literary Fund Consultant Fellow and works as a mentor and manuscript assessor for many organisations, including The Literary Consultancy, Scottish Book Trust and New Writing North. He’s been an arts journalist for over twenty years and has also written many short stories and screenplays. He is a songwriter and musician with six albums and three EPs released, and plays drums for the Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers, a band of crime writers. He’s also co-founder of the Scotland Writers Football Club.