Forthcoming Books from Oneworld

 

January 2025

The dead won’t stay silent forever… Clara Woods has a secret. At the bottom of the garden is a flowerbed, long overgrown, where her murdered husband rests in peace – or so she always thought. Then the girls arrived. Lily and Violet, her adolescent nieces, are recently orphaned and in urgent need of care. Raising teenagers is certainly not what Clara had envisioned for herself, but they come with a hefty sum attached. There is only one problem: both girls are untrained witches. Lily can literally see how people feel. And young Violet can see the dead man wandering at the bottom of the garden. In fact, she can see all the dead and call them back. Soon, Clara finds herself surrounded by apparitions – and two girls who know far more about her dark past than they should. A war is waging in this house, and only one side can win… At The Bottom of The Garden is by Camilla Bruce. 

March 2025

March 2025

A Proper Mother is by Isobel Shirlaw. Ever since an ominous palm-reading on her honeymoon, Frankie has suspected that her youngest son, Michael, is different. From an early age he sees things no one else can. As he grows up – academically gifted, a musical prodigy and with an unshakeable religious faith – his mother can no longer deny there is something strange about him, or that it frightens her.  It is only when Frankie learns Michael is sliding into drugs and violence that she realises she can't keep ignoring the past. But by confronting her destructive marriage and her own responsibility for all that has gone wrong, she begins to see there is something darker at play. 

May 2025

A Deceit of Lapwings is by Steve Burrows. Three murder scenes; two causes of death; one body. It is a case that would challenge Domenic Jejeune even under the best of circumstances. But his DCS’s temporary absence means that Jejeune must work under Marvin Laraby, an ex-superior with whom he has a particularly fractious history. Jejeune and Laraby must work together to discover why a ruthless land contractor would want to invest in new bird migration software, and what possible interest the death of a birding app developer could be to the British intelligence services. With the appearance of Lindy’s ex boyfriend disrupting Jejeune’s private life, and Danny Maik dealing with divided loyalties, is this the case that finally defeats Domenic Jejeune?

Forthcoming Books from Oneworld Publishing (Incl Point Blank Books)

January 2024

Hotel Arcadia is by Sunny Singh. Sam is a war photographer, famous for her hauntingly beautiful pictures of the dead. After a particularly gruelling assignment she checks into a luxury hotel, hoping to unwind with a few days of solitude. Abhi, the hotel manager, never wanted to be a hero; he just wants to avoid disappointing his father and brother any more than he has already. When they find five-year-old Billy alive under the bodies of his dead parents, Abhi and Sam are forced to work together to protect him from the mounting violence. As the threat of danger moves closer, the bond between this unlikely trio grows ever stronger. If they make it out alive, none of them will ever be the same.

February 2024

 

A Nye of Pheasants is by Steve Burrows. When a street brawl abroad turns deadly, Danny Maik faces a charge of manslaughter, but when evidence emerges that he may have planned the victim’s murder, he is looking at the death penalty. His only hope is reaching out to those he can trust back in the UK. In Norfolk, Maik’s replacement is trying to resurrect his career after a catastrophic error caused injury to a fellow officer. DCI Jejeune should be monitoring his new charge’s progress closely, but he is distracted by Danny’s plight. Others are watching, though, and they are disturbed by what they’re seeing. With the situation heading to a fatal climax, Jejeune must decide whether his duty lies with his old partner or his new. The fate of both men lies in his hands. But he can help only one.

March 2024

She closed her eyes, knowing that the moment he had a name, she would be unable to pretend any longer that this child was not her son. Ever since an ominous palm-reading on her honeymoon, Frankie has suspected that her youngest son, Michael, is different. From an early age he sees things no one else can. As he grows up – academically gifted, a musical prodigy and with an unshakeable religious faith – his mother can no longer deny there is something strange about him, or that it frightens her.   It is only when Frankie learns Michael is sliding into drugs and violence that she realises she can no longer ignore the past. But by confronting her destructive marriage and her own responsibility for all that has gone wrong, she begins to see there is something darker at play. A Proper Mother is by Isobel Shirlaw.

April 2024

Step forward Daphne Devine - you are about to change the course of the war  June 1940. As World War Two rages, Daphne Devine remains in London, performing each night as assistant to stage magician Jonty Trevelyan, aka the Grand Mystique. Then the secret service call. For, aware of Hitler’s belief in the occult, the war office has set up a hidden cohort to exploit this quirk in the enemy’s chain of command. Daphne and Jonty find themselves far from the glitz and glamour of the theatre, deep inside the lower levels of Wormwood Scrubs prison. Here, they join secret ranks of occultists, surrealists, and other eccentrics co-opted to the war effort. There is one goal: to avert invasion on British shores. Soon Daphne realises she must risk everything if there is any chance of saving her country… The Grand Illusion is by Syd Moore.

June 2024

The Vengeance is by Saima Mir. Two years into running her organised crime syndicate in the north of England, Jia Khan stumbles on a notebook her father - the previous Khan - kept on arrival from Pakistan in the 1970s. And what Jia finds in the journal sends her deep into the family's past. But once the sleeping dogs from those years are woken, they are set for attack. Meanwhile, Jia struggles to control unrest amongst those that oppose her. Worst of all, Jia must unravel a puzzling but terrible warning - one of her staff lies brutally slain, his corpse displayed in her garden despite her sophisticated security... Could a traitor be part of her inner sanctum?

Books to look forward to from Point Blank (Oneworld Publishers)

January 2018

SEE NO EVIL.  Eyes missing, two bodies lie deep in the forest near a small Swedish town.  HEAR NO EVIL.  Tuva Moodyson, a deaf reporter on a small-time local paper, is looking for the story that could make her career.  SPEAK NO EVIL.  A web of secrets. And an unsolved murder from twenty years ago.  Can Tuva outwit the killer before she becomes the final victim? She'd like to think so. But first she must face her demons and venture far into the deep, dark woods if she wants to stand any chance of getting the hell out of small-time Gavrik.  Dark Pines is by Will Dean

February 2018

Back Up is by Paul Colize.  Berlin, 1967: four members of the British rock band Pearl Harbour die at the same time but in separate locations. Inexplicably, the police conclude natural causes are to blame.  Brussels, 2010: A homeless man is hit by a car outside the Gare du Midi, leaving him with locked-in syndrome, able to communicate (sometimes) by blinking.  An Irish journalist's interest is piqued. How did the members of Pearl Harbour die, and how is this linked to the homeless man in Brussels?

March 2018

When a helicopter explodes, leaving behind a dead client and colleague, Tom Winter, head of security for an elite Swiss bank, teams up with the mysterious Egyptian businesswoman Fatima to follow the money trail through Switzerland and from there on a whistle-stop chase around the world.  With the NSA watching their every move, it's not long before Winter, a former special forces commander, and Fatima realise that in fact they are the hunted, not the hunters, and that their very survival depends on Tom's coolness and quick thinking.  Damnation is by Peter Beck.

Chief Inspector Domenic Jejeune hopes an overseas birding trip will hold some clues to

solving his fugitive brother's manslaughter case. Meanwhile, in Jejeune's absence his long-time nemesis has been drafted in as cover to investigate an accountant's murder. And unfortunately Marvin Laraby proves just a bit too effective in showing how an investigation should be handled.  With the manslaughter case poised to claim another victim, Jejeune learns an accident back home in Britain involving his girlfriend, Lindy, is much more than it seems. Lindy is in grave danger, and she needs Jejeune. Soon, he is faced with a further dilemma. He can speak up on a secret he has discovered relating to Laraby's case, knowing it will cost his job on the north Norfolk coast he loves. Or he can stay silent, and let a killer escape justice. Turns out that sometimes the wrong choice is the only one there is.  A Shimmer of Hummingbirds is by Steve Burrows

The Parentations is by Kate Mayfield.  Eighteenth-century London and the lives of the sisters Fitzgerald, Constance and Verity, become entwined with the nearby Fowler household. For Clovis Fowler, whose unearthly Nordic beauty belies a ruthless thirst for power, and husband Finn, a Limehouse thief, have agreed to provide safe harbour to a mysterious baby.  The puzzling phenomenon binding them close arose unexpectedly from deep within the savage but beautiful landscape of Iceland, where a hidden pool of water grants those who drink from it endless life. But those who sip from the waterfall discover all too quickly that immortality is no gift.  To preserve the life of this strange baby from those who wish him harm means that all concerned must remain undiscovered for more than two hundred years. And, as the centuries creep thither, one in their enclave proves more menacing than those who pursue them. Worse, the life-giving pool that sustains them all, runs dry...

May 2018

It's summer in Adders Fork. The sun is out, the sky is blue and things are going swimmingly for Rosie Strange, thank you very much. The Essex Witch Museum has been re-launched with a new Ursula Cadence wing and picnic grounds.  Then developers roll into the sleepy village to widen the road. When the centuries-old Blackly Be boulder, said to mark the grave of a notorious witch but now in the car park of the Seven Stars, is moved, all hell breaks out. Within hours a slew of peculiar phenomena descends and, when a severed head is discovered atop the boulder, the locals can take no more and storm the Museum to demand someone take action.  Can Rosie and Sam unravel the mystery? And what of the ancient treasure that could drastically change someone's fortunes and offer a motive for murder?  Strange Fascination is by Syd Moore

Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru is by Karen Lee Street.  Philadelphia, early 1844. As

violent tensions escalate between `nativists' and recent Irish immigrants, Edgar Allan Poe's fears for the safety of his wife Virginia and mother-in-law Muddy are compounded when he receives a parcel of mummified bird parts. Could his nemesis have returned to settle an old score?  Just as odd is the arrival of Helena Loddiges, a young heiress who demands Poe's help to discover why her lover died at the city's docks on his return from an expedition to Peru. Poe is sceptical of her claims to receive messages from birds and visitations from her lover's ghost. But when Miss Loddiges is kidnapped, he and his friend C. Auguste Dupin must unravel a mystery involving old enemies, lost soulmates, ornithomancy, and the legendary jewel of Peru

June 2018

If secrets could be taken to the grave many, of us would have an ear to the ground. But as Alexander, Earl of Greengrass, discovers one clear Sunday morning late in November, death is a most efficient way of revealing the cavern of cover-ups in a guilty conscience. Caught with his trousers down in Spire village graveyard whilst his faithful wife was playing the organ inside the church, this wealthy landowner meets a gruesome end.  Luckily pet portraitist Susie Mahl is on hand to sort things out, as she's been recently commissioned to paint Situp, the aristocratic ash-grey deerhound at the village's Glebe House. Susie discovers an unexpected zest for truth and an awesome nosey parker instinct, and soon the newly appointed Pet Detective is digging out the truth with a dogged determination.  A Brush with Death is by Ali Carter.

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A Siege of Bitterns with Steve Burrows

Today’s guest blog is by Steve Burrows who is the author of the novel A Siege of Bitterns. It was named Globe and Mail 100: Best Books of 2014, won the 2015 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel and was shortlisted in 2015 for the Best Mystery Kobo Emerging Writer Prize.

Having spent a long time shaping their novel into a complex, multi-layered story, considering how they can condense it into a tiny fraction of its original size probably isn’t high on any writer’s list of priorities. But perhaps it should be.

When I looked down the ‘to-do’ list my publisher sent me in the lead up to the release of my first novel, A Siege of Bitterns, one item set the alarm bells ringing immediately; produce a series of synopses that captured the essence of the work. And do it in ever-decreasing word counts. Five-hundred, one hundred and twenty-five, thirty, even. Imagine it, a tweet to convey the major points of a full-length novel. It would be easier to create a cast of a hundred and forty characters for your novel.

So where to start? Clearly I had to outline the book’s scope. The series sub-title helped. But A Birder Murder Mystery still left plenty of ambiguities. Are the birders the murderers, or the murdered? Both? Neither? And what about the birding aspect? Do readers need to be birders to enjoy this murder mystery? (No). Do they need any special knowledge about birds or birding? (Again, no.) Is it primarily a murder mystery, then, with birding as merely a sub-theme? (Exactly. Glad you asked.)

After that, it was a case of trying to anticipate what people might want to know about my book. But, of course, this varies wildly from reader to reader. I have a friend who always reads the last page of a mystery first. He wants to know whether the resolution is worth the effort of getting to it. (For the record, I don’t understand this approach either, but I saved him the trouble in this case, and simply told him the answer was a resounding YES). Other friends wanted to know whether the book contained gratuitous violence (no), excessive foul language (no) or sex (yes, in that each character has one).

Still others had specific questions about a particular aspect of the book. Why, for example, did I choose to set my novel in a picturesque seaside village on the north Norfolk coast? There was a reason; three of them, in fact, but they are inextricably tied to other aspects of the story, and offering any sort of a lucid explanation would run well beyond my allotted word counts.

Most, though, acknowledged that the engine of a good murder mystery is a compelling plot, filled with twists and turns and surprises. How did mine stack up? If there’s a formula for answering this in a hundred and forty characters or less, I never found it. All I could do was ask people to read the book and let me know. Many have. I hope you will, too.

In the end, I decided to concentrate my synopses mostly on the characters. After all, if things continue to go well (three Birder Murders completed already, and another three commissioned), it’s the characters who are going to endure, with whom the readers are going to connect, and in whose lives they are going to invest their leisure-reading hours. So I told people about the young transplanted Canadian Detective Chief Inspector, who has achieved marvelous things already in his short career but now must prove himself all over again to a bunch of skeptical, seasoned coppers in his new posting. And how this task is made all the more difficult since he would really rather be birdwatching than solving crimes. I moved then to the main character’s girlfriend; smart and sassy and very much in love with her man, even if she’s totally befuddled by this birding nonsense of his. The birding doesn’t make much sense to the older sergeant assigned to the new DCI, either. But he recognizes a special talent when he sees one, and he’s prepared to give his new boss all the support he can. He’ll even introduce him the ways and by-ways of the local area as a bonus. The protagonist’s DCS is a smart, savvy politico who recognizes the benefits of having a poster-boy media star on her crew, and so is prepared to indulge his eccentric lines of questioning and his ever more eccentric theories. But not indefinitely.

In the end, I never did manage to convey all this in the thirty words that were allotted to me, or even in one hundred and twenty-five, or five-hundred. But I hope I’ve just demonstrated how it might be done in seven hundred and fifty.

A SIEGE OF BITTERNS by Steve Burrows is published by Point Blank, paperback £7.99.

Domenic Jejeune is a reluctant police hero but an enthusiastic birdwatcher. After he's promoted to a post in the heart of Britain's birding country, his first case involves the murder of an environmentalist. Torn between loyalties to his job and his hobby, Jejeune faces mistrust from his colleagues and self-doubt as he works to solve the case.

More information about Steve Burrows can be found on his website. You can also follow him on Twitter @birddetective and find him on Facebook.

Breaking News !! Oneworld launches new crime imprint!

Oneworld launches new crime imprint

Oneworld is to launch a crime imprint, POINT BLANK, in Spring 2016.  The list, curated by editor Jenny Parrott, will encompass literary crime, thrillers and psychological suspense by UK and international writers.

In the opening salvo is FRENCH CONCESSION by Xiao Bai (February), a bold and smokily atmospheric Chinese noir set in the underworld of 1930s Shanghai, and the paperback of A Yi’s A PERFECT CRIME, described by the Wall Street Journal as a ‘psychological probe into a pathological mind’.

These are followed by two original debuts: A SIEGE OF BITTERNS (April) by Steve Burrows, winner of the 2015 Arthur Ellis Crime Award, is a tightly-plotted ‘birder murder’ set in Norfolk and featuring a police detective with a passion for bird-watching, who finds murder won’t let him be.   More fowl play will be revealed in Burrows’ A PITYING OF DOVES (June) and A CAST OF FALCONS (September).

In April, Karen Lee Street’s trilogy opens with EDGAR ALLAN POE and the LONDON MONSTER, in which Poe joins forces with his famous literary creation, C Auguste Dupin, to unravel the mystery of a real-life cause-celebre that scandalized 18th-century London, when an unknown assailant stalked well-to-do young women attacking their clothing and derrieres.

The paperback of Ryan Ireland’s BEYOND THE HORIZON, described by Shortlist as ‘mythical, dangerous and deeply unsettling’, is out in February, and Ireland’s thrilling second novel GHOSTS OF THE DESERT, in May.

Acquisitions for 2017 include THE WATERS AND THE WILD by DeSales Harrison, a sophisticated literary psychological suspense story about a dead girl and a mysterious poem; THE PICTURES by Guy Bolton, a twisty noir set against the golden age of Hollywood, with a studio ‘fixer’ being asked to gloss over a murder; a commercial paranormal witch-hunting trilogy (STRANGE MAGIC, STRANGE TRICKS, STRANGE FEAR) by Syd Moore, featuring an Essex girl sleuthing real-life witching mysteries from yesteryear; THREE ENVELOPES by Nir Hezroni, a scarily gripping story from Israel of a psychopathic Mossad agent; LOLA by Melissa Scrivner Love, a taut thriller in which a woman gang leader fights to stay alive in South Central LA; and BACK UP by Paul Colize, a bestselling French novel about a British rock group who meets a sticky end on tour in Berlin.

Jenny Parrott comments:

‘Novels published by Point Blank will be exciting reads. As an imprint the plan is to take a global and eclectic view, concentrating on literary novels but sneaking some commercial reads under the wire too. We won’t be afraid of a challenging or experimental novel, or a work in translation, as long as the book promises something special. Our aim is to be ground-breaking as regards content or style, or to offer an unusual take on a familiar crime genre. Most of all, we want to publish compelling crime, mystery and suspense novels that readers will eagerly devour and then want to recommend to their friends.

’Marketing will include POINT BLANK crime presenters, samplers and book proofs, as well as social media campaigns using the hashtag #pointblank, which will include giveaways, author chats and pre-pub extracts.

For further information, contact:

Margot Weale at Oneworld

Tel: 020 7307 8908     mweale@oneworld-publications.com

@oneworldnews