Oslo, 2018. Former long-distance runner Sonja Nordstrøm never shows at the launch of her controversial autobiography, Always Number One. When celebrity blogger Emma Ramm visits Nordstrøm’s home later that day, she finds the door unlocked and signs of a struggle inside. A bib with the number ‘one’ has been pinned to the TV. Police officer Alexander Blix is appointed to head up the missingpersons investigation, but he still bears the emotional scars of a hostage situation nineteen years earlier, when he killed the father of a five-year-old girl. Traces of Nordstrøm soon show up at different locations, but the appearance of the clues appear to be carefully calculated … evidence of a bigger picture that he’s just not seeing… Blix and Ramm soon join forces, determined to find and stop a merciless killer with a flair for the dramatic, and thirst for attention. Trouble is, he’s just got his first taste of it…
Introducing The Telephone Call by Michael Pakenham. A thriller I’d have been happy to review but my calendar was full. So instead I’m hosting a promo for the book and a chance to win a copy of the paperback. Have a read and see if it grabs you.
The Telephone Call
When Rosemary Sherwood overhears a disturbing conversation between her husband, Harry Sherwood and an unknown caller, she has no idea that her life’s about to change forever. Fleeing to France for fear of her own safety, Harry threatens to kill their son if she ever dares to breathe a word of anything she overheard.
Torn between hiding out in France and re-connecting with her estranged son, Rosemary returns to England twelve years later believing that she and her son are now out of danger…
A web of deceit and lies has been woven over the years to cover up the antics of Harry and his friends, who are no strangers to violence and murder and who will stop at nothing to ensure they aren’t exposed.
Private Detective Daniel Appleman takes on the case, but can he track down these men before they wreak havoc on the Sherwood family?
Giveaway to Win 5 x Paperback copies of The Telephone Call (UK Only)
*Terms and Conditions –UK entries welcome. Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below. The winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
Michael Pakenham is part of a well-known Irish literary family. Generations of his family lived at Langford Lodge on Loch Neagh outside Belfast. His father was killed in the Second World War and the estate was sold. His mother then took Michael and his sister to Tucson Arizona until the end of the war. On returning to England, his mother bought a farm in Hampshire and Michael has lived in the county ever since. Having served in the Grenadier Guards – the fourth generation to do so – Michael returned to take over his mother’s farming enterprises until he sold his farming interests in 1990 and started his writing career. This will be his eighth book and the second in the Daniel Appleman series. He lives outside Winchester with his wife. He has three children and a string of grandchildren.
You’ve never met the other wives. None of you know each other, and because of this unconventional arrangement, you can see your husband only one day a week. But you love him so much you don’t care. Or at least that’s what you’ve told yourself.
But one day, while you’re doing laundry, you find a scrap of paper in his pocket—an appointment reminder for a woman named Hannah, and you just know it’s another of the wives.
You thought you were fine with your arrangement, but you can’t help yourself: you track her down, and, under false pretenses, you strike up a friendship. Hannah has no idea who you really are. Then, Hannah starts showing up to your coffee dates with telltale bruises, and you realize she’s being abused by her husband. Who, of course, is also your husband. But you’ve never known him to be violent, ever.
Who exactly is your husband, and how far would you go to find the truth? Would you risk your own life?
LAURIE STERNE feels like he’s been cut adrift in space. His father has been shot dead, caught in the crossfire of a gangland war that has also claimed his boss’s life. Laurie is a refugee who lost his adoptive mum years before and doesn’t know where he was born, let alone who his birth parents were. But he’s not alone in the world: someone is trying to kill him.
This is London, 2050, a dumping ground for climate refugees and dissidents. Gangs rule, murder goes unpunished and the police make sure you can’t escape.
In his struggle to stay alive, he finds an ally: his former boss’s secret daughter. But with the killer predicting his every move, is the man without a past being betrayed by the woman who seems to offer him a future?
Rocks and Flowers in a Box (Lorna & Tristan Series #2)
The wedding bells for Lorna and Tristan Blake toll doom right as the honeymoon begins with an unexpected turn in Tristan’s health. While World War II winds down, Lorna receives a letter from the War Department informing her that the brother she thought killed in action is still alive. She is overjoyed, but his return will dredge up a devastating secret about their parents’ tragic death –a secret that could destroy her new marriage and threaten her husband’s physical and mental well-being. What unfolds is balancing act of keeping the faith and shattering the pieces of the life she’s worked so hard to put back together.
Cynthia Hilston is a thirty-something-year-old stay-at-home mom of three young kids, happily married. Writing has always been like another child to her. After twenty years of waltzing in the world of fan fiction, she finally stepped away to do her debut dance with original works of fiction. Visit her website at http://www.cynthiahilston.com for more information.
In her spare time – what spare time? – she devours books, watches Doctor Who and Game of Thrones, pets her orange kitty, looks at the stars, and dreams of what other stories she wishes to tell.
Five different people. Five separate lives. Sixty minutes to bind them for ever.
Hassan, Jim, Shuna, Dan and Nadia come from very different worlds. If life were straightforward, their paths would never cross. But our lives are rarely that simple and, as the clock ticks away the minutes of a single hour on a July morning, fate draws all five together in a headlong rush towards disaster.
Who are the heroes and who are the villains?
Tony Salter’s latest novel leaves us guessing right up to the last page.
Bex Ellman and her friends are in hiding, sheltered by the resistance.
With her family threatened and her friendships challenged, she’s looking for a
way to fight back. Ketty Smith is in London, supporting a government she no
longer trusts. With her support network crumbling, Ketty must decide who she is
fighting for – and what she is willing risk to uncover the truth.
The Battle Ground series is set in a dystopian near-future UK, after
Brexit and Scottish independence.
Rachel Churcher was born between the last manned moon landing, and the first orbital Space Shuttle mission. She remembers watching the launch of STS-1, and falling in love with space flight, at the age of five. She fell in love with science fiction shortly after that, and in her teens she discovered dystopian fiction. In an effort to find out what she wanted to do with her life, she collected degrees and other qualifications in Geography, Science Fiction Studies, Architectural Technology, Childminding, and Writing for Radio.
She has worked as an
editor on national and in-house magazines; as an IT trainer; and as a freelance
writer and artist. She has renovated several properties, and has plenty of
horror stories to tell about dangerous electrics and nightmare plumbers. She
enjoys reading, travelling, stargazing, and eating good food with good friends
– but nothing makes her as happy as writing fiction.
Her first published short
story appeared in an anthology in 2014, and the Battle Ground series is her
first long-form work. Rachel lives in East Anglia, in a house with a large
library and a conservatory full of house plants. She would love to live on
Mars, but only if she’s allowed to bring her books.
Multi-award winning series, published in more than 10 countries, movie rights optioned!
Welcome to a world like no other!
Philip is a good boy, a really good boy, who accidentally gets sent to Hell to become the Devil’s heir. The Devil, Lucifer, is dying and desperately in need of a successor, but there’s been a mistake and Philip is the wrong boy.
Lucifer has no other choice than to begin the difficult task of training Philip in the ways of evil. Philip is terrible at being bad, but when he falls in love with the she-devil Satina and experiences the powerful forces of love and jealousy, the task becomes much easier.
Philip finds both friends and enemies in this odd, gloomy underworld–but who can he trust, when he discovers an evil-minded plot against the dark throne?
The Great Devil War is a gripping and humorous tale about good and evil seen from a different perspective, making the reader laugh and think. It’s filled with biblical and historical characters and set in a world beyond your wildest dreams. Or nightmares …
Demon’s Fire
is the third instalment in the crime thriller series featuring DS Taylor
Nicks and DC Marcus Black.
The City had barely
settled back to normal when the sky turned orange as flames licked upwards and
smoke billowed out from a quiet industrial estate in Edinburgh.
Blood-curdling
screams of those trapped within were muffled by the sound-proofed room as the
women climbed desperately over one another to try and escape, their efforts
futile against their prison walls, their captors slain where they sat, bullet
holes in their heads.
Human trafficking,
prostitution, drug dealing, kidnapping, violence and murder hidden in plain
sight in Edinburgh City Centre.
Drug dealer
Burnett’s grip on the city has no limits, and he will stop at nothing to ensure
that remains the case.
Nicks and Black
struggle to secure evidence against him within the confines of the law, but an
enemy of Burnett, hell-bent on revenge, doesn’t have to play by their rules.
A thrilling story of
crime and retribution, good versus evil, Demon’s Fire will have you on the edge
of your seat as the tentacles of despair take hold of your emotions.
Hearts are broken and others mended as the tale gathers momentum, the lives of the officers forever entwined by fate.
The prose poems in I Can See The
Lights are earthy and raw, but also incredibly sensitive. It’s pretty
much guaranteed that more than one of them will bring you to tears. Characters
are vividly brought to life, and stark but warm environments evoked in a down
to earth, yet almost painterly manner by Russ Litten’s uncompromising voice.
Tales of home, of un-belonging, of strife
at sea – of a northern city’s beating heart. Told in a mesmeric, stripped-down
tone, this collection is a work of genius.