Review: Fresh Start, by Johnny Wortham

Price: £20.00
Fiction: FICTION / Science Fiction /
General
Product format: Hardback
ISBN: 978-1-78758-963-6
Pages: 336 pp

Description

A ship, a gun, and a nice teal robe to find one killer on a planet of
criminals: will Qays Mendoza get the answers he is looking for?
Qays Mendoza get the answers he is looking for?

On the edges of mankind’s domain there is a penal planet called Fresh Start
where a sentence is at best exile to five generations, but more likely death
in its harsh unforgiving wastes. It is to this planet the empire sends the
worst of the worst and it is on this planet that Qays Mendoza searches for
his old captain.

The galactic empire is falling, civilization contracts. Fresh Start is
abandoned. Without oversight, the planet is wild, without guards; the
Oubliette, the supermax prison on the supermax planet, lies open, and the
Butcher of Raznak, a killer worse than the one Qays seeks, is on the loose.
With the help of a street waif called Patience, Qays seeks answers. His soul
is stained with guilt and his spirit broken by complicity. Religion did not
have the answer; duty did not explain it. Birthright and station were not
enough. His answers lie somewhere on Fresh Start.

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Review: The Death of Shame, by Ambrose Parry

ISBN: 9781837263462
Publication date: 04/06/2026
Price: £9.99

Description

When you are a prisoner of your secrets, the death of shame is the only path to liberty.

Annabel Banks was promised work as a maid with a prestigious Edinburgh
family. But on her first day, she’s nowhere to be found. Concerned relatives
contact Sarah Fisher to help. Sarah might know her way around the city – its
light sides and dark – but soon she’ll discover the plight of dozens of girls
ensnared in its many brothels: lured, abused and left ruined in the eyes of the world.

Meanwhile, a prominent society figure throws himself from the Scott
Monument. Will Raven is asked to establish whether the death was suicide
or if someone else was involved.

Drawing upon real historical events, The Death of Shame takes the Raven and Fisher series into a treacherous labyrinth of shame and the pitfalls of a culture obsessed with moral purity.

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Review: The Tabby in Black, by Mandy Morton

Description

Chocks away! as our feline detectives investigate some sticky situations at the local chocolate factory in Catberry-on-the-Brink.
Up at the Manor House, the family is at war as dark secrets are uncovered in The Tabby in Black chocolate selection box.
Will Hettie and Tilly manage to reach the bottom layer before a murderer
strikes? Did Horace Catberry really choke on a Mog Nob biscuit? And will the
Goth Band Gums and Noses get to support The Travelling Whoopsies on their next tour?
Join Hettie and Tilly as they unwrap the mysteries swirling around the Catberry family in this bitter-sweet assortment of truth and lies

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Extract Post: Sharks, by Simone Buchholz

PUBLICATION DATE: 26th FEBRUARY 2026
PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £ 9. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS

In Wilhelmsburg, Hamburg’s so-called ‘problem area’, an American couple is found brutally murdered in a derelict house.

Prosecutor Chastity Riley is assigned the case and quickly finds herself waist-deep in a murky tangle of city planners, shady investors and vanishing officials. The gentrification machine is rolling on, and someone is sending a very clear message.

As November fog settles over the city, Chastity is coughing up blood, her personal life is a slow-motion disaster, and her former colleague, Faller, won’t stop interfering. But nothing’s going to stop her from cutting through the lies – not even the sharks circling ever closer…

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Review: The Hope, by Paul E Hardisty

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.

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Review: The Girl in the Tower, by Harrison Murphy

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?

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Blog tour review: Daughters of Nicnevin, by Shona Kinsella

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?

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Review: Terms of Service, by Ciel Pierlot

Release Date: 2025-09-23
Formats: Ebook, Paperback
EBook ISBN: 23rd September 2025 | 9781915998712 | epub | £4.99/$6.99/$7.99
Paperback ISBN: 23rd September 2025 | 9781915998309 | Trade paperback | £9.99/$18.99/$24.99

https://angryrobotbooks.com/books/terms-of-service/

Blurb

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.

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Review: The Cure, by Eve Smith

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…

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