Archives de catégorie : Frankfurt 2023 Adult Fiction

THE BEHOLDERS de Hester Musson

The gothic historical debut of 2024.

THE BEHOLDERS
by Hester Musson
4th Estate, January 2024
(via Mushens Entertainment)

June, 1878. The body of a boy is pulled from the depths of the River Thames, suspected to be the beloved missing child of the widely admired Liberal MP Ralph Gethin.

Four months earlier. Harriet is a young maid newly employed at Finton Hall. Fleeing the drudgery of an unwanted engagement in the small village where she grew up, Harriet is entranced by the grand country hall; she is entranced too by her glamorous mistress Clara Gethin, whose unearthly singing voice floats through the house. But Clara, though captivating, is erratic. The master of the house is a muchlauded politician, but he is strangely absent. And some of their beautiful belongings seem totell terrible stories.

Unable to ignore her growing unease, Harriet sets out to discover their secrets. When she uncovers a shocking truth, a chain of events is set in motion that could cost Harriet everything, even her freedom…

Hester Musson studied English Literature at Bristol University and has a Masters in drama from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. While pursuing an acting career, her day jobs included working in TV as a freelance autocue operator. She currently writes for Art Fund, the national charity for art, and its magazine Art Quarterly, and blogs for a nature conservation and rewilding organisation in Devon.

THE SHADOW KEY de Susan Stokes-Chapman

From the best-selling author of Pandora.

THE SHADOW KEY
by Susan Stokes-Chapman
HarperCollins, TBC
(via Mushens Entertainment)

Meirionydd, 1783. Henry Talbot has been dismissed from his post at a prestigious London hospital. The only job he can find is as a physician in the backwaters of Wales where he can’t speak the language, belief in myth and magic is rife, and the villagers treat him with bewildering suspicion. When Henry discovers his predecessor died under mysterious circumstances, he is determined to find answers.

Linette Tresilian, the unconventional mistress of Plas Helyg, lives a lonely life. Her father is long dead, her mother haunted by demons which keep her locked away in her room, and her cousin treats her with cool disdain – she has had no choice but to become fiercely self-reliant.

Linette has always suspected something is not quite right in the village, but it is only through Henry’s investigations that the truth about those closest to her will come to light…a truth that will bind hers and Henry’s destinies together in ways neither thought possible.

Susan Stokes-Chapman was born in 1985 and grew up in Lichfield, Staffordshire. She studied for four years at Aberystwyth University, graduating with a BA in Education & English Literature and an MA in Creative Writing.

RED RABBIT d’Alex Grecian

From bestselling author Alex Grecian comes a folk horror epic about a ragtag posse that must track down a witch through a wild west beset by demons and ghosts—and where death is always just around the bend..

RED RABBIT
by Alex Grecian
Tor Nightfire, September 2023
(via The Gernert Company)

Sadie Grace is wanted for witchcraft, dead (or alive). And every hired gun in Kansas is out to collect the bounty on her head, including bona fide witch hunter Old Tom and his mysterious, mute ward, Rabbit. On the road to Burden County, they’re joined by two vagabond cowboys with a strong sense of adventure – but no sense of purpose – and a recently widowed schoolteacher with nothing left to lose. As their posse grows, so too does the danger. Racing along the drought-stricken plains in a stolen red stagecoach, they encounter monsters more wicked than witches lurking along the dusty trail. But the crew is determined to get that bounty, or die trying. Written with the devilish cadence of Stephen Graham Jones and the pulse-pounding brutality of Nick Cutter, Red Rabbit is a supernatural adventure of luck and misfortune.

Alex Grecian is the New York Times bestselling author of The Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad series: The Yard and its sequels The Black Country, The Devil’s Workshop, The Harvest Man, and Lost and Gone Forever; as well as the contemporary thriller The Saint of Wolves and Butchers, and the ebook The Blue Girl. He has also written multiple award-winning graphic novels, including Proof, and Rasputin.

“This is a book I’m going to be pressing into the hands of every reader I know. It’s an epic, sometimes brutal, sometimes tender, but always surprising gallop of a book, populated by characters I found myself caring deeply about. RED RABBIT was impossible to put down.” —Kelly Link, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist Get In Trouble

“Echoing True Grit, The Good Lord Bird, and any number of classic tales of terror, Alex Grecian’s RED RABBIT is a riotous, Boschian, gun-slinging marvel.” —Laird Hunt, author of In the House in the Dark of the Woods

HERE IN THE DARK d’Alexis Soloski

A young theater critic is drawn into a dangerous game that blurs the lines between reality and performance. A gripping debut from the New York Times theater critic.

HERE IN THE DARK
by Alexis Soloski
Flatiron, December 2023
(via The Gernert Company)

Vivian Parry likes the dark. A former actress, she now works as the junior theater critic at a major Manhattan magazine. Her nights are spent beyond the lights, in a reserved seat, giving herself over to the shows she loves. By day, she savages them, with words sharper than a knife. Angling for a promotion, Vivian reluctantly agrees to give an interview in which the conversation, with a stranger who seems to know her work, reveals secrets she thought she had long since buried. When her interviewer disappears soon thereafter, she learns from his devastated fiancé that Vivian was the last person to have seen him alive. When the police refuse to investigate, Vivian assumes the role of amateur detective. . As she nears the final act of this investigative ruse, she finds that the boundaries between theater and the real world are more tenuous and more dangerous than even she could have believed. Gripping, propulsive, and shot through with menace and dark glamour, HERE IN THE DARK takes us behind the scenes of New York theater, lifting the curtain on the lies we tell ourselves and each other.

Alexis Soloski is a prize-winning New York Times theater critic and a former lead theater critic at the Village Voice. She has taught at Barnard College and at Columbia University, where she earned her PhD in Theater. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

“From its very first page to its final revelation, Here in the Dark will possess you with a mix of acerbic wit and Highsmithian invention. You’ll be thrilled by the ways Soloski takes the novel of suspense and turns it into a meditation on seeing and being seen, knowing and being known, judging and being judged. » —Isaac Butler, author of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act

« A moody, taut dose of noir, Here in the Dark is a poised, daring debut—the kind of novel I relish and can’t get out of my head, evoking the work of icons like Megan Abbott and Margaret Millar in its hypnotic prose and mesmerizing characters. Readers will not forget Vivian Parry—and they won’t want to. » —Alex Segura, bestselling author of Secret Identity

“Hitchcock meets a slippery metatheatrics of power, performance, desire, and escape. This is a novel – and a protagonist – who moves with a precious velocity, constantly choosing the most dangerous move and bringing us careening after.” —Jen Silverman, author of We Play Ourselves

WO DIE GEISTER TANZEN de Joana Osman

Three generations linked by a yearning to put down roots a colourful novel based on the author’s family history.

WO DIE GEISTER TANZEN
(Where the Ghosts Dance)
by Joana Osman
C.Bertelsmann/PRH Germany, August 2023

Jaffa is Sabiha and Ahmed’s home. It is where they’re raising their sons, and where they have opened their own cinema, so that they can sit in the back row and cry at Shirley Temple movies. But when Israel declares independence in 1948 and the Arab-Israeli war breaks out, the family is forced to flee. They embark on an Odyssey that takes them first to Lebanon and then to Turkey. As they search for a new home, all they find is derelict temporary housing and states that refuse to accept them. They grieve for the dead, but never lose their lust for life – not to mention their sense of humour.

Seventy years later, Osman travels to Israel in search of her family’s past. Who were these two people, who raised her father on the run? What was the trip like which invisibly, but decisively, affected her own youth?

Fiction and biography merge as Osman seeks to salvage her family’s story – an imaginative and delightfully funny novel, where the ghosts of the past come to dance.

Joana Osman, born in 1982, is the daughter of a Palestinian father and German mother. After studying American studies, theatre and history of art, she co-founded Peace Factory, a Middle East peace movement, in 2012. She is now a novelist, lecturer and storytelling coach, and lives near Munich with her family. Her debut novel, « Am Boden des Himmels » (« The Bottom of the Sky »), appeared in 2019.