Archives de catégorie : Fiction

TWENTY YEARS TOGETHER de Tom Rob Smith

A shattering and beautiful love story, the most personal and powerful piece of storytelling by New York Times bestselling author of Child 44 and The Farm.

TWENTY YEARS TOGETHER
by Tom Rob Smith
Simon & Schuster, Spring 2026
(via Aaron Priest Literary)

Danny and Luis have been a couple for twenty years. Piece-by-piece, they’ve built a life together. They’ve created a home. They’ve comforted and held each other up through challenges and tragedies. They’ve shared happiness and they’ve shared joy.

The one thing they didn’t have was the one thing that, when they first met, was denied them: the possibility of marriage. They’ve witnessed the weddings of their friends, but the law was clear and would not recognize the union of two men.

But the law has now changed. Marriage, for the first time, would be legal. So while celebrating the 20th wedding anniversary of their close friends, Danny realizes he’s ready for more from his relationship with Luis. He wants them to be married.

He wants to declare their shared past as the start of their renewed future. He proposes to Luis, and the moment he does, he risks everything they’ve built falling apart.

Deeply felt and remarkably tender, TWENTY YEARS TOGETHER is a profound exploration of the bonds we create with each other, of the tension between living authentically against the expectations of family and community, and, most of all, of desire, romance and love.

Tom Rob Smith is the New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Child 44 trilogy. Child 44 itself was a global publishing sensation, selling over two million copies. Among its many honors, it was longlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Prize and won the CWA Steel Dagger Award and ITW Award for Best First Novel. His novel The Farm was a number 1 international bestseller and the first crime thriller to be longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Tom also writes for television and won a Writer’s Guild Award for best adapted series and an Emmy and Golden Globe for best limited series with American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace. His recent original series Class of 09 was released on Hulu in the USA and Disney Plus around the world. The Farm is currently being adapted as a series for the BBC and Swedish Broadcaster SVT.

THE NIGHTLESS CITY de Callum McSorley

The first in a new series of historical thrillers set in nineteenth-century Japan, from the prizewinning author of Squeaky Clean.

THE NIGHTLESS CITY
by Callum McSorley
Pushkin Press, September 2026

Tokyo, 1886.

Chino Kunio, a male courtesan in Tokyo’s infamous Yoshiwara neighbourhood, the Nightless City, discovers his one and only client, a British diplomat, dead and himself in the frame for the man’s grisly murder.

Trying to save Chino from the judicial blade are his friend, samurai rebel turned reckless drunk Shimura Shingo, police inspector Tokuda Reiji, and the victim’s wife, Fiona Gordon, a Scottish teacher living a stifled life in the foreign concession, who is seeking her own answers.

But as more foreigners are slain, dredging up the shadow of shipwreck that led to a diplomatic scandal, Chino’s only hope may be to escape the Nightless City for good, before it explodes into violence between belligerent westerners and nationalist bully boys.

Callum McSorley is a writer based in Glasgow, where he grew up. His debut thriller, Squeaky Clean, the first book in the Alison McCoist thriller series, was published to great acclaim and went on to win the prestigious McIlvanney Prize for best Scottish Crime Book of the Year. THE NIGHTLESS CITY is the first in a new series of historical thrillers set in nineteenth-century Japan.

ALL AT SEA de Jonathan Whitelaw

A destination murder-mystery – think Below Deck meets Knives Out. Perfect for all fans of Only Murders In the Building.

ALL AT SEA
by Jonathan Whitelaw
HarperNorth, publication date TBC
(via Northbank Talent Management)

Howie Temple is down on his luck and desperate for cash. A once promising action movie star, he now lives off a crumbling reputation. On his way to film a new reality TV show, which casts a team of c-list celebrities as crew aboard a luxury yacht, he meets fellow contestant, influencer-of-the-moment Cassandra Troy. The duo take an immediate dislike to each other.

After a hectic first day of filming, the pair are shocked discover that the captain of the ship has been murdered – locked in his control room, slumped over the wheel, a knife in his back. Convinced by the show’s ever-opportunistic director to keep the cameras rolling, the pair team-up to hunt the murderer.

Will the show make Howie and Cassandra bigger stars than they could ever dream of? And can they crack the case before the killer strikes again, or will they go down with this sinking ship?

Jonathan Whitelaw is a Scottish writer and journalist based in Canada, and he’s also a regular host at book events and panels, as well as a regular arts reviewer on BBC Radio Scotland’s Afternoon Show. Jonathan is a leading author in the cosy crime market. His latest series, Bingo Hall Detectives, is published by HarperNorth. There are currently two books in the series, The Bingo Hall Detectives (2022) and The Village Hall Vendetta (2023), the first of which awarded the Gilpin Hotel Prize for Fiction at this year’s Lakeland Book Awards.

STALEMATE de Mary Newnham

Piglet if written by Dolly Alderton, STALEMATE is a testament to the fact that your coming-of-age story can begin whenever you choose, be that in your 30s, 40s or beyond.

STALEMATE
by Mary Newnham
Hodder & Stoughton, January 2026
(via Northbank Talent Management)

Awkward secondary school Physics teacher, Amy and her gym bro fiancé, Josh are in no rush to make it to the altar.

The couple are content with their quiet life in the slow lane. Until they’re coerced by Josh’s family into getting married much earlier than anticipated.

There’s just one problem: after ten years of dating, their sex life has completely dried up.

As time ticks closer and closer to the big day, Amy scrambles to cross everything off her to-do-list… including Josh.

Mary Newnham is a British female fiction writer. Mary found her love for writing when she started blogging about Bloody Marys. Her film production degree led her into the world of advertising, where she worked in the film department at a Soho ad agency. For a brief time, she lived in Australia as a constantly sunburnt producer before returning to England. She currently writes and records The Quack, a weekly blog featuring true stories and witty observations. Mary has an MA in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes. She lives solo in Jericho, Oxford. She doesn’t own a cat.

CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS WITH STRANGERS de Krista Diamond

A modern literary noir in the tradition of Bret Easton Ellis for fans of A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan, the LA stories of Emma Cline, and Uncut Gems.

CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS WITH STRANGERS
by Krista Diamond
Simon & Schuster, Fall 2026
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS WITH STRANGERS follows a Las Vegas wildlife photographer who, while moving to Los Angeles to become a paparazzo, loses his relationships, his morals, and eventually his tether to reality.

A Los Vegan itching for LA, Ben is an amateur wild-life photographer and busser in a diner where tourists come to recreate a movie scene starring Jack Whitlock, “the last real movie star.” He meets a man who promises money as a paparazzo, which he likens to wildlife photography, inciting Ben to move to LA. The job is a thrill; high that he chases to increasingly damaging ends.

A year and a half later, Ben—broke, single, and receiving increasingly credible death threats from a pop star’s stans—is desperate for a win. And when scandalous photos of Jack Whitlock leak, and Ben becomes obsessed with being the first photographer to break new photos of Jack. He follows leads through the absurd horrors of celebrity LA, dodging close encounters with fans, weaving his way back to Las Vegas and the desert of his redemption or demise.

Krista Diamond is a Black Mountain Institute PhD fellow in creative writing at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Her writing has been supported by Bread Loaf, Tin House, the Nevada Arts Council, and has appeared in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Slate, Longreads, Hazlitt, Catapult, Joyland, and elsewhere. The opening of CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS WITH STRANGERS was longlisted for both the First Pages Prize and the Stockholm Writers Festival First Pages Prize.