Tag Archives: Orenda Books

Cover Reveal: Stop Dead, by Katrín Júlíusdóttir

Pub date: 21 May 2026
ISBN 13: 978-1-916788-96-1
EPUB: 978-1-916788-97-8
Price: £9.99

Buy Link:

https://geni.us/vJ4x

THE BOOK

Icelandic detective-in-training Sigurdís is studying criminal psychology in the US, but her plans are thrown into disarray when she discovers that her boss and mentor, Garðar, has been fired from Reykjavík CID over his investigation into Sigurdís’s father’s death.

Returning to Iceland to deal with the fallout, Sigurdís finds herself pulled into a disturbing case: controversial TV personality Olga Einars has been stabbed to death during the Reykjavík Marathon. Struggling to locate a runner waring the number 1407, who was seen near the murdered woman during the race, the police soon discover that several masked runners were wearing the same number.

As the mystery deepens, Sigurdís and her fellow detective Unnar soon learn exactly how unpopular Olga was – not just with the interviewees she humiliated on live TV, but with her own son, her business partner, a widower who insists that she had a hand in his wife’s death, and her ex-husband, who died in suspicious circumstances thirty years ago…

As her exploration into Olga’s past becomes ever darker and more harrowing, Sigurdís must also face the truth about her own father, while searching for an attacker who will go to any lengths to cover up their crimes…

THE AUTHOR


Katrín Júlíusdóttir is a former Icelandic politician, elected in 2003 and serving as Minister of Industry, Energy and Tourism, Minister of Finance and Economy and Social Democratic Alliance’s vice-chair until she retired from politics in 2016. Before she was elected to parliament, Katrín was an advisor and project manager at a tech company and a senior buyer and CEO in the retail sector, as well as the managing director of a student union at
Reykjavík University, where she studied anthropology and received an MBA. She is now managing director of Finance Iceland. Katrín won the Blackbird Award for best Icelandic crime debut for her first novel, Dead Sweet, in 2020, and it received immense critical acclaim, hitting the bestseller lists shortly after publication. In the UK, it was a Booksellers Circle Book of the Month and longlisted for the Waterstones Debut Novel Prize, debuting
at No. 15 on the Sunday Times bestseller list. Katrín was raised in Kópavogur, about fifteen minutes’ drive from downtown Reykjavík, and she now lives in the neighbouring town of Garðabær with her family. She is married to author Bjarni M. Bjarnason, who encouraged her to start writing, and they have four sons.

Cover Reveal: Under the Blazing Sun, by Jenny Lund Madsen

PUBLICATION DATE: 21 MAY 2026
HARDBACK ORIGINAL | £ 16. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS

Book Description


Hannah is miserable. Her love life is in ruins, her contract demands a sequel to her bestselling crime debut – and she’s out of ideas. After a mortifying TV interview, her agent ships her off to a sun-drenched Sicilian villa with a simple order: finish the book. No distractions. No excuses.

But inspiration doesn’t strike – murder does.

When a night out ends in murder, Hannah finds herself at the centre of a murder investigation … again. The police want her out of the way, and the only person who seems to believe her is a young but charming Italian police officer. That is, until she doesn’t.

Soon Hannah is chasing suspects, fleeing crime scenes, and doing whatever it takes to avoid becoming the next victim. She came to write a crime novel. Now she’s trapped inside one.


ABOUT JENNY LUND MADSEN


Jenny Lund Madsen is one of Denmark’s most acclaimed scriptwriters (including the international hits Rita and Follow the Money) and is known as an advocate for better representation for sexual and ethnic minorities in Danish TV and film. She made her debut as a playwright with the critically acclaimed Audition (Aarhus Teater) and her debut literary thriller,
Thirty Days of Darkness, first in an addictive new series, won the Harald Mogensen Prize for Best Danish Crime Novel of the year, was shortlisted for the coveted Glass Key Award, longlisted for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, and won the Crime Fiction Lover Award for Best Crime Book in Translation. She lives in Denmark with her wife and young family.

Cover Reveal: The Bone Mother, by Suzy Aspley

PUBLICATION DATE: 7th MAY 2026
PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £ 9. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS

Get your copy here: https://geni.us/6CRyhn6

Description

Martha Strangeways has settled into a quiet life in Strathbran, after the horrific events that traumatised the village a year earlier. But all this is
turned upside down when her friend at Glasgow CID, DI Derek Summers,
calls on her to help with a disturbing case: a human ear, with an unusual Celtic earring, has been found next to a railway line in the Highlands.

And when the body of a young woman wearing matching jewellery turns up
at a landmark church shortly after, the mystery deepens. Why has she been
laid out in a ritualistic fashion? Does her trek along the little-known
Cailleach Way have anything to do with her death? And who is running the
Facebook Group where she posted details of her journey to the shrine of
the Bone Mother goddess?

As Martha tries to unpick the threads, she finds herself entwined with a
ghost from her own past, and in conflict with the owner of a project that
threatens to destroy the goddess’s sacred land.

With Halloween approaching, and someone determined to protect the
goddess at all costs, can Martha and Summers catch the killer before they
strike again – and this time much closer to home…?

About the author

Originally from the north-east of England, former journalist Suzy Aspley has lived in Scotland for almost thirty years. She writes crime and short stories, often inspired by the strange things she sees in the landscape around her. She won Bloody Scotland’s Pitch Perfect in 2019 with the original idea for her debut novel and was shortlisted for the Capital Crime New Voices Award. In 2020, she was mentored by Jo Dickinson as part of the Hachette future bookshelf initiative. Crow Moon was longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award, and shortlisted for the Val McDermid Debut Award and the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize.

When she’s not writing, she’s either got her nose buried in a book, or is outside with her dogs dreaming up more dark stories. She lives in Stirlingshire with her family.

Dragon’s Comments

I really like the sound of this one, might have to get myself a copy for the book hoard.

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…

Continue reading “Extract Post: Sharks, by Simone Buchholz”

Extract: Tombstoning, by Doug Johnstone

PUBLICATION DATE: 12th FEBRUARY 2026
PAPERBACK ORIGINAL | £ 9. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS

Your best mate just fell off a cliff in mysterious circumstances. You
were the last person to see him alive. What do you do?

If you’re David Lindsay from Arbroath, you leg it – and don’t go
back. Not for fifteen years.

Then Nicola Cruickshank – yes, that Nicola, the girl you always
fancied but never had the guts to speak to – gets in touch. She
wants you back for a school reunion. At the very place it happened.
Of course you say yes. Not to lay ghosts to rest, but because you
still fancy Nicola.

The thing is, if you are David Lindsay, then returning to Arbroath
isn’t going to bring closure. Because when someone else tumbles
off the cliffs – an act the locals now call tombstoning – David has a
choice: run away again, or finally find out why people around him
keep dying…

Continue reading “Extract: Tombstoning, by Doug Johnstone”

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.

Continue reading “Review: The Hope, by Paul E Hardisty”

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…

Continue reading “Review: The Cure, by Eve Smith”