Review: The Tainted, by Cauvery Madhavan

Fiction/historical
Paperback: 198 x 129
Print RRP: £9.99
Print ISBN: 978-1-9164671-8-7
Extent: 336
E-book ISBN: 978-1-913109-06-6
Publication: 30 April 2020

Its spring 1920 in the small military town of Nandagiri in south-east India.
Colonel Aylmer, commander of the Royal Irish Kildare Rangers, is in charge. A distance away, decently hidden from view, lies the native part of Nandagiri with its heaving bazaar, reeking streets and brothels.
Everyone in Nandagiri knows their place and the part they were born to play – with one exception. The local Anglo-Indians, tainted by their mixed blood, belong . . . nowhere.

When news of the Black and Tans’ atrocities back in Ireland reaches
the troops in India, even their priest cannot cool the men’s hot-headed rage.
Politics vie with passion as Private Michael Flaherty pays court to Rose, Mrs Aylmer’s Anglo-Indian maid . . . but mutiny brings heroism and heartbreak in equal measure. Only the arrival of Colonel Aylmer’s grandson Richard, some 60 years later, will set off the reckoning, when those who were parted will be reunited, and those who were lost will be found again.

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Review: Two Lives, by A Yi

Fiction: Crime & mystery fiction
Product format: Paperback
Price: £9.95; $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-78758-277-4

Seven stories, seven whispers into the ears of life: A Yi’s unexpected twists of crime burst from the everyday, with glimpses of romance distorted by the weaknesses of human motive. A Yi employs his forensic skills to offer a series of portraits of modern life, both uniquely Chinese, and universal in their themes.


FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing.
Launched recently in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and
the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

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Review: Blackwood, by Michael Farris Smith

Pub. Date: 19 March 2020
Price: £12.99
ISBN: 978-0-85730-390-5
Binding: Paperback

The small town of Red Bluff, Mississippi, has seen better days, but now seems stuck in a black-and-white photograph from days gone by. Unknowing, the town and its people are about to come alive again, awakening to nightmares, as ghostly whispers have begun to fill the night from the kudzu-covered valley that sits on the edge of town.
When a vagabond family appears on the outskirts, when twin boys and a woman go missing, disappearing beneath the vines, a man with his own twisted past struggles to untangle the secrets in the midst of the town trauma.

This is a landscape of fear and ghosts, of regret and violence. It is a landscape transformed by the kudzu vines that have enveloped the hills around it, swallowing homes, cars, rivers, and hiding terrible secrets deeper still. Blackwood is the evil in the woods, the wickedness that lurks in all of us

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Review: Chasing Solace, by Karl Drinkwater


Paperback
Published: 7th July 2019
I.S.B.N.: 978-1-911278-14-6

E-book
Published: 15th April 2019
I.S.B.N.: 978-1-911278-13-9

The legendary Lost Ships exist, and they harbour nightmarish horrors. Opal knows. She barely survived her first encounter with one.

Despite escaping, she failed to find what she was looking for: her lost sister. Now Opal must board a second derelict Lost Ship to seek answers, and it’s even more monstrous, a sickening place of death and decay. To make things worse, the military government wants her, dead or alive. Considering their reputation, dead may be better.

To find her sister, Opal will risk everything: her life, her blood, her sanity. There’s always a price to pay. Armed with her wits, an experimental armoured suit, and an amazing AI companion, she might just stand a chance.

CHASING SOLACE by Karl Drinkwater, is now available. Sequel to the sci-fi horror Lost Solace, where a lone woman explores a strange and terrifying spaceship recently returned from somewhere else. Hints of Aliens, Event Horizon, and Pandorum add to the suspense.

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