PUBLICATION DATE: 29 JANUARY 2026 PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £ 9. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS
The year is 2082. Climate collapse, famine and war have left the world in ruins. In the shadow of the Alpha-Omega regime – descendants of the super-rich architects of disaster – sixteen year-old Boo Ashworth and her uncle risk everything to save what’s left of human knowledge, hiding the last surviving books in a secret library beneath the streets of Hobart.
But Boo has a secret of her own: an astonishing ability to memorise entire texts with perfect recall. When the library is discovered and destroyed, she’s forced to flee – armed with nothing but the stories she carries in her mind, and a growing understanding of her family’s true past.
Hunted and alone, and with the help of some unlikely allies, she must fight to save her loved ones – and bring hope to a broken world.
The paperback is 283 pages. Genre is sci-fi, cli-fi and dystopian.
Blurb:
When the past lies buried beneath the waves, and the present hides behind a veneer, what power do we have over the future?
As high-flying energy magnate, Parsley Ringland, prepares for maternity leave, tragedy strikes. She passes out after a health complication and wakes up elsewhere. In the tower that sustained the life she had once known.
As she fights to protect herself and her unborn child, Parsley begins to fear for humanity itself. She is faced with an impossible dilemma. Does she keep the world in comforting darkness? Or expose a cruel truth that might destroy it?
Is it better to endure a terrible truth than to lounge inside a lie?
Price: £20.00 Fiction: FICTION / Fantasy / Historical Product format: Hardback ISBN: 978-1-80552-020-7 Pages: 336 Imprint: FLAME TREE PRESS
Blurb
Mairead and Constance, two powerful witches, meet in the early days of the 1745 Jacobite uprising. While the men of the village are away fighting, the villagers face threats from both the Black Watch and raiders, and the women are confronted with their vulnerability. They enlist the help of Nicnevin, fae queen of witches, to bring men made of earth to life to help protect their village. But just who do they need protection from? And what will happen when the village men return?
When her cousin gets kidnapped by a dastardly trickster, Luzia is forced to sell herself in servitude to the Eoi in exchange for his life. But the terms of the deal turn out to be much more complicated than she ever imagined…
Luzia N.E. Drainway never really thought too much about the Astrosi. They lurk above and below Bastion City – a giant multileveled megalopolis she calls her home – and they tend to keep to themselves. On the rare occasions they use their magics to meddle with human affairs, most people with an ounce of sense steer clear of whichever unfortunate soul happens to be their victim. Luzia is far too dedicated to repairing and maintaining the frequently-damaged Bastion to pay them much attention, and prefers to ignore the Astrosi just like everyone else.
That disregard gets blown out of the water when a rogue Astrosi and nefarious trickster named Carrion kidnaps her nephew and sells him to the Eoi, one of the Astrosi courts.
With no other options to save her nephew, Luzia trades her life for his and finds herself in service to the Eoi. Unfortunately for her, Astrosi logic is acrobatic in ways even the most devious human mind can barely comprehend. It’s not until the deal is struck that she realizes she’s trapped in the most abstruse verbal contract imaginable. She is essentially conscripted into their ranks, and her devotion to her city becomes stretched to breaking point by her new masters’ orders.
As she struggles under this weight, she begins to uncover the secrets of the Astrosi people – the internal battles for power between the two kingdoms, the never-ending conflict between them, the trickster Carrion who somehow bridges that gap, and the very nature of the Bastion itself.
PUBLICATION DATE: 10th APRIL 2025 PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £ 9. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS
LIVING FOREVER CAN BE LETHAL…
Ruth is a law-abiding elder, working out her national service, but she has secrets. Her tireless research into the disease that killed her young daughter had an unexpected outcome: the discovery of a vaccine against old age. Just one jab a year reverses your biological clock, guaranteeing a long, healthy life.
But Ruth’s cure was hijacked by her colleague, Erik Grundleger, who hungers for immortality, and the SuperJuve – a premium upgrade – was created, driving human lifespan to a new high. The wealthy elite who take it are dubbed Supers, and the population begins to skyrocket.
Then, a perilous side-effect of the SuperJuve emerges, with catastrophic consequences, and as the planet is threatened, the population rebels, and laws are passed to restore order: life ends at 120. Supers are tracked down by Omnicide investigators like Mara … and executed…
Mara has her own reasons for hunting Supers, and she forms an unlikely alliance with Ruth to find Grundleger. But Grundleger has been working on something even more radical and is one step ahead, with a deadly surprise in store for them both…
Ex-British Army officer Joe Llewellyn is captain of the Shantivira, the alien space station secretly protecting the Earth from invasion. After Joe reveals the Shantivira’s existence to the UN, everyone wants a piece of him. Except his mother. They’re no longer speaking.
But it’s not only Joe’s relationship with his mam which is in jeopardy. His alien bosses have given him an ultimatum: either he persuades Earth’s authorities to completely restructure the global economic system – to distribute resources fairly without exceeding ecological boundaries – or the space station will be reallocated to another, more deserving planet.
With vicious, cannibalistic space pirates prowling the galaxy, brutally stripping and enslaving entire worlds for profit, Joe can’t afford to fail.
This third instalment of The Shantivira fantasy solarpunk series is a must-read for fans of Becky Chambers, Ben Aaronovitch, Ursula Le Guin, Doctor Who and anyone who enjoys supernatural sci-fi.
Book will be available for purchase on 4th May at these places
Fay Abernethy left the UK twenty-five years ago, seeking adventure.
When not diving with sharks or falling off horses, she worked as an engineer in the automotive industry. Later, she started her own translating business and settled down in Germany with the man of her dreams.
Pre-children, they explored the Alps together – on foot in summer and on skis or snowshoes in winter. She now lives the life of a respectable citizen, having discovered that being a parent is the greatest adventure of them all.
I reviewed this book when it was first published last year. The paperback was recently published so I’m sharing the details and my review as part of the tour to celebrate the paperback publication.
Since the hardback was published last year the following has happened:
WINNER of the Cultura’s Best Fiction Book of 2023 (France’s biggest book chain), plus Crime Fiction
Book of the Year at seven different festivals
High-spec signed paperback with foil and embossing
NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER in France with seven hardback reprints and counting…
Johana has been shortlisted for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger
FIRST in a new series set in Sweden – The Lidingö Mysteries
Book details
Publication Date: 7 November 2024
Format: Paperback
Price: £ 9. 99
Publisher: Orenda Books
Description
Art expert Emma Lindahl is anxious when she’s asked to appraise the antiques and artefacts in the infamous manor house of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, on the island of Storholmen, where a young woman was murdered nine years earlier, her killer never found.
Emma must work alone, and with the Gussman family apparently avoiding her, she sees virtually no one in the house. Do they have something to hide?
As she goes about her painstaking work and one shocking discovery yields clues that lead to another, Emma becomes determined to uncover the secrets of the house and its occupants.
When the lifeless body of another young woman is found in the icy waters surrounding the island, Detective Karl Rosén arrives to investigate, and memories of his failure to solve the first case come rushing back. Could this young woman’s tragic death somehow hold the key?
Battling her own demons, Emma joins forces with Karl to embark upon a chilling investigation, plunging them into horrifying secrets from the past – Viking rites and tainted love – and Scandinavia’s deepest, darkest winter…
Born in Marseille, France, and with a degree in Political Science, Johana Gustawsson has worked as a journalist for the French and Spanish press, and television. Her critically acclaimed Roy & Castells series, including Block 46, Keeper and Blood Song, won the Plume d’Argent, Balai de la découverte, Balai d’Or and Prix Marseillais du Polar awards, and is now published in 23 countries. A TV adaptation is currently under way in a French, Swedish and UK co-production. The Bleeding was a number-one bestseller in France, receiving critical acclaim across the globe, and Yule Island has won multiple awards, including Book of the Year with France’s biggest retailer, Cultura, and has been optioned for the screen.
Johana lives in Sweden with her Swedish husband and their three sons.
Everything Is Better With Dragons 