Another bestseller for Peter James’ Roy Grace series with PICTURE YOU DEAD

PICTURE YOU DEAD – the 18th instalment of Peter James’ barnstorming Roy Grace series – has leaped to Number Three in the Paperback Fiction chart, and Number Four in the overall UK Bestsellers list, after only three days on sale.

 The Roy Grace series has continued to go from strength to strength in 2023, with the latest bestseller adding to the plaudits received for the third-year showing of the hugely successful ITV adaptation and the latest touring stage show, bringing WISH YOU WERE DEAD to audiences around the country.

 The GRACE momentum continues with a fourth season of the ITV show due on screens in 2024 and with all the episodes to date streaming on BritBox in many countries across the world. The WISH YOU WERE DEAD theatre production continues to tour the UK with further dates in Salford, Dartford, Southampton, Malvern, Birmingham, Sheffield, Southend, Worthing, Leicester and Woking.

 In PICTURE YOU DEAD, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace finds himself plunged into an unfamiliar world of fine art – and art forgery. Outwardly the fine art scene appears respectable, refined, above reproach. But beneath the veneer, he rapidly finds that greed, deception and violence walk hand-in-hand.

 Harry and Freya, an ordinary couple, dreamed for years of finding something priceless buried amongst the tat in a car boot sale. It was a dream they knew in their hearts would never come true – until the day it did… They buy a drab portrait for a few pounds, for its beautiful frame, planning to cut the painting out. Then studying it back at home there seems to be another picture beneath, of a stunning landscape. Could it be a long-lost masterpiece from 1770? If genuine, it could be worth millions. One collector is certain that the painting is genuine. Someone who will use any method he can to get what he wants and will stop at nothing.

 And Harry and Freya are about to discover that their dream is turning into their worst nightmare…

 Peter will be out to meet fans and sign more books again soon, with two headline events planned: ‘An Evening with Peter James’ at the Ropetackle Centre in Sussex on 3rd June, and ‘The Sinister Everyday: The Fact And Fiction Of Crime Writing’ at the inaugural Queen’s Reading Room Festival at Hampton Court Palace on the 11th of June.

 Five more books in the bestselling Roy Grace series have been signed up by Pan Macmillan, including the nineteenth Roy Grace story, STOP THEM DEAD, which will be published in the UK on 28 September 2023 and in the US on 24 October 2023.

 About Peter James

Credit: James Clarke

 Peter James is the international bestselling author of many award-winning novels, repeatedly occupying the Number One slot on the Sunday Times bestseller charts in both hardback and paperback. Peter writes both thriller standalones and the hugely popular Brighton-set Roy Grace series, now adapted for ITV.

 Peter’s books have been translated into thirty-eight languages, with worldwide sales of over twenty-one million copies and his Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series, set in Brighton, has given him 18 consecutive Sunday Times Number Ones. In 2015 WH Smith customers voted him the Greatest Crime Author of All Time and in 2016 he was awarded the coveted CWA Diamond Dagger, a lifetime achievement award for sustained excellence. In 2018 he received a Specsavers Honorary Platinum Bestseller Award. Peter James has also written two books based on true crime stories, with former senior detective Graham Bartlett.

  Successful nationwide tours of the stage plays of THE PERFECT MURDER (2014), DEAD SIMPLE (2015,) NOT DEAD ENOUGH (2017), THE HOUSE ON COLD HILL (2019) and LOOKING GOOD DEAD (2022) have packed theatres in dozens of British cities, and garnered magnificent reviews. The stage play of WISH YOU WERE DEAD is currently touring the UK. Several other Peter James novels are optioned for film and in further development.

 Praise for PICTURE YOU DEAD

 ‘Whether your loved one is a fan of Grace (either in the book or TV show format), or just loves a good police procedural, PICTURE YOU DEAD won’t disappoint.’ – Darren Hardy, Amazon Editors’ Choice

 ‘The latest instalment in the Roy Grace series of mystery novels is also a personal favourite. James is a solid writer – character, action, and plot are perfectly balanced in this fantastic and gripping novel. If you haven’t read Peter James, make 2023 your resolution to start.’ – Andrew Gulli, The Strand Magazine, ‘Top 25 Mystery Novels of 2022’

 Praise for Peter James

 ‘If you have never read Peter James’ crime thriller series about the Sussex detective Roy Grace, I would highly recommend you give it a try.’ – Queen Camilla, Press and Journal

 ‘Peter James is one of the most fiendishly clever crime fiction plotters.’ – The Daily Mail

 ‘Roy Grace ... is fast becoming one of the more memorable coppers in modern crime fiction ... A first class police procedural.’ – The Times

 ‘James just gets better and better and deserves the success he has achieved with this first-class series.’ – Independent on Sunday

 ‘Peter James is one of the best crime writers in the business’ – Karin Slaughter

 ‘Probably the closest we’ll get to a British Stephen King’ – The Financial Times

 ‘Peter James is one of the most fiendishly clever crime fiction plotters’ – The Daily Mail

 ‘In uncertain times, I always tend to fall back on old, familiar favourites, so I’ll be reading Peter James’ Roy Grace series. They are thrillers with enough drama to keep you guessing. Reading a well-crafted mystery gives me a sense of accomplishment – almost as if I’ve solved everything myself!’ – Emma Shacklock, Books Editor, Women & Home Magazine

 ‘Peter James is one of the best crime writers in the business’ – Lee Child

‘A master plotter.’ – The Bookseller

 ‘James has been compared with Stephen King, but in many ways he's better’ – Daily Express

 ‘This compulsive horror story is a tale of the search for immortality . . . I cannot remember when I last read a novel I enjoyed so much’ – Sunday Telegraph

 ‘A thought-provoking menacer that’s completely technological and genuinely frightening about the power of future communications’ – Time Out

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‘Lech, Prince, and the Nice Things’ by Rue Baldry wins Canada and Europe category in the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize

Photo credit: Rachel Gladwin

Rue Baldry’s short story ‘Lech, Prince, and the Nice Things’ has won the Canada and Europe regional category in the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is awarded annually for the best piece of unpublished short fiction from any of the Commonwealth’s 56 Member States, with regional winners each receiving £2,500 in prize money as well as publication in Granta Magazine, while the overall winner wins £5,000. This year there were a total of 6,642 entries from 56 Commonwealth countries, with 28 writers from 19 different Commonwealth countries making the final shortlists.

The overall winner is selected from the list of regional winners, and will be revealed on the 27th June 2023.  The other 2023 category winners are: ‘The Undertaker's Apprentice’ by Hana Gammon (Africa), ‘Oceans Away from my Homeland’ by Agnes Chew (Asian),‘Ocoee’ by Kwame McPherson (Caribbean), and ‘Kilinochchi’ by Himali McInnes (Pacific).

Rue’s story, ‘Lech, Prince, and the Nice Things’ is the story of a young plasterer working on a basement conversion who is lured to the upper floors of the building, where he finds the ‘nice things’ of the title, and commits acts of petty revenge on them.

The story began, Baldry says, during the spring of 2020, during the first UK pandemic lockdown and the Black Lives Matter protests. She says, ‘The neighbours on both sides of our terraced house were having major building work done. Unable to write, I started to think about the experiences of workers in the building trade, and other working-class jobs, who were being disproportionately exposed to the virus. At the same time I was reading a lot of posts about the subtle (as well as blatant) racisms experienced by People of Colour in the UK, which reminded me of experiences of friends.’

Katrina Best, the judge representing the Canada and Europe region, said that ‘Lech, Prince, and the Nice Things’ is ‘a genuinely surprising and unexpectedly moving story that explores such weighty – and timely – topics as racism, classism and inequality in modern-day Britain, yet is never heavy-handed thanks to the writer’s comedic sensibility and talent for observing the minutiae of everyday life. The writer’s considerable skill is evident in every element of this story, including deft observations, evocative descriptions, fully realised, complex and sympathetic characters, believable dialogue, and an expertly crafted narrative that is infused throughout with wry humour.’

On the judging process, chair of the judges Bilal Tanweer said that ‘it was both an agony and a pleasure to choose the overall winner from each region. All of the winning stories demonstrated impressive ambition and deep love for storytelling, combined with an intimate understanding of place and a real mastery of the craft. The judges were unanimous in their admiration of these stories and how they sought to tackle difficult metaphysical and historical questions.’

Rue’s debut novel, DWELL, is a moving coming-of-age and LGBT+  story, exploring themes of trauma, healing and belonging in the aftermath of World War One.

About Rue Baldry

Rue Baldry writes fiction and lives in York. In 2015, she was mentored by Ross Raisin as a Jerwood/ Arvon mentee. In 2017, she was the Bridge Awards/ Moniack Mhor Emerging Writer. Rue has come second in the Yeovil Prize, been shortlisted for the Flash 500 competition and longlisted for the Caledonian, Bridport, First Page and Women’s Prize Discoveries prizes. Twenty-four of her short stories have been published in journals including Ambit, Fairlight Shorts, Mslexia, Crossways, Litro, MIR Online, Postbox, The Incubator, The First Line and The Honest Ulsterman, and shortlisted in the Reader Berlin and Odd Voice Out competitions.

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Alan Parks shortlisted for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger at the CWA Daggers 2023

Credit: CWA

Congratulations to Alan Parks, whose novel MAY GOD FORGIVE has been shortlisted for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger at the Crime Writers’ Association annual Daggers Awards! The Steel Dagger recognises the best espionage, psychological, or adventure thriller of the year, and sees Alan nominated alongside Linwood Barclay, John Brownlow, M. W. Craven, Robert Galbraith and Ava Glass. The winner will be picked by a jury chaired by Corinne Turner, the managing director of Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, and announced at the CWA’s gala dinner on 6 July.

The Crime Writers’ Association is this year celebrating its 70th anniversary, and the Daggers are the oldest awards of the genre and among the most prestigious.

MAY GOD FORGIVE is the fifth title in Alan Parks’ highly acclaimed Harry McCoy series. It won the McIlvanney Scottish Crime Book of the Year award and was recently longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year (for which voting is still open to the public until this Thursday, 18 May).

After a fatal arson attack leaves tempers frayed in Glasgow, McCoy finds himself in a race against time to find the suspects before they turn up dead one by one. In 2022 MAY GOD FORGIVE was published in the UK by Canongate and in the US by Europa. The series is sold in more than ten countries around the world and the paperback was published in the UK last month. The next book in the series, TO DIE IN JUNE, will be released in the UK on 25 May.

Praise for MAY GOD FORGIVE

‘MAY GOD FORGIVE is the fifth instalment in a remarkable series that began with BLOODY JANUARY. The novels, as someone once said, can be read in any order; the important thing is to read them all.’ – Mark Sanderson, The Times

‘MAY GOD FORGIVE is a bleak and violent book, full of grisly details not for the squeamish, but also tenderness, poignance and hard-earned wisdom.’ – Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal

‘Noir has long been the dominant colour in the palette of such Scottish writers as Ian Rankin and Denise Mina, but Parks manages to find a deeper shade of black, only slightly attenuated by Harry's willingness to go far off the grid to extract a wee bit of justice. A must for those who take their noir straight, no chaser; others should keep the Pepto handy.’ – Bill Ott, Booklist

‘Enjoyably readable… Parks is a gifted story-teller’ – Allan Massie, The Scotsman

‘Harry McCoy is the brightest dark star on the Tartan Noir scene for some time and in future critics of Scottish crime fiction will surely be referring to the triumvirate of Laidlaw, Rebus and McCoy … MAY GOD FORGIVE is crime fiction which pulls no punches, powerfully told and, at times, heartbreakingly poignant. One of the crime novels of 2022.’ – Mike Ripley, Getting Away With Murder

About Alan Parks

Credit: Euan Robertson

Alan Parks worked in the music industry for over twenty years before turning to crime writing.

His debut BLOODY JANUARY was shortlisted for the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, FEBRUARY’S SON was nominated for an Edgar Award, BOBBY MARCH WILL LIVE FOREVER won the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original, the Prix Mystère de la critique in the foreign fiction category, and was shortlisted for the Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel and THE APRIL DEAD was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year. The latest Harry McCoy book, MAY GOD FORGIVE, was published in April 2022 and won the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year 2022. It has also been shortlisted for the 2023 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and longlisted for the 2023 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award . The Harry McCoy series is optioned for television.

Alan was born in Scotland and attended The University of Glasgow where he was awarded a M.A. in Moral Philosophy. He still lives and works in the city as well as spending time in London.

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THE WOMAN ON THE BRIDGE by Sheila O’Flanagan Is Number One on the Irish bestseller charts

Sheila O’Flanagan’s first foray into historical fiction, THE WOMAN ON THE BRIDGE, has stormed into the Irish bestseller chart, landing at Number 5 after its first three days on sale, and in its second week conquering the top spot!  

 Inspired by her grandmother’s story and set in 1920s Dublin, The Woman on the Bridge marks the start of an exciting new branch of Sheila’s work. THE WOMAN ON THE BRIDGE is published by Headline in the United Kingdom and Ireland and was launched at an event at Dubray Books in Dublin last week. Mobius publish the novel in the United States and Canada and the audio edition is narrated by Grainne Gillis.

 The novel has already been highly praised, with Electric Literature including it in ‘The Most Anticipated Irish Novels of 2023’, saying: ‘Braiding love, loss, and the sheer drama of war, O’Flanagan’s novel is redemptive in the way it peers into women’s lives, turns them right side up, and refuses to be forgotten.’ Peter Cunningham wrote in the Irish Independent that Sheila O’Flanagan ‘quickly establishes strong, credible characters and a clear sense of the city they live in… O’Flanagan’s legions of readers can look forward to yet another treat’ and Roddy Doyle praised THE WOMAN ON THE BRIDGE as ‘a great read… Winnie’s a great character, a terrific guide … She’s always real – she’s always human.’

Dublin. The 1920s. As war tears Ireland apart, two young people are caught up in events that will bring love, tragedy – and the hardest of choices. In a country fighting for freedom, it’s hard to live a normal life. Winnie O’Leary supports the cause, but she doesn’t go looking for trouble. Then rebel Joseph Burke steps into her workplace. Winnie is furious with him about a broken window. She’s not interested in romance. But love comes when you least expect it.

Joseph’s family shelter fugitives and transport weapons. Joseph would never ask Winnie to join the fight; but his mother and sisters demand commitment. Will Winnie choose Joseph, and put her own loved ones in deadly danger? Or wait for a time of peace that may never come? Ireland’s tumultuous independence struggle is the backdrop for an unforgettable story of courage and heartbreak, in which heroes are made of ordinary people.

Sheila is currently writing her next novel which will return to the present day, and will be published by Headline in 2024.

 About Sheila O’Flanagan

 Sheila O’Flanagan is an international bestselling novelist, with more than 9 million copies sold. Most of her novels have been immediate and long-lasting No 1s in Ireland, UK Top 10 Sunday Times Bestsellers and Kindle Bestsellers, and she is published in more than twenty languages around the world. She is the recipient of the prestigious Irish Tatler Literary Woman of the Year Award. Headline have acquired two new books from Sheila: THE WOMAN ON THE BRIDGE, a historical novel to be published in 2023 and a contemporary novel out in 2024.  

 Praise for THE WOMAN ON THE BRIDGE

 An Irish Independent 2023 pick

‘The people were entirely of their time and their struggles, but they could also be you or me, or anyone suddenly caught up in the sharpness of political disputes and the machinations of people and governments struggling for control.  It's the intimate stories painted on the wider canvas, and it brings history to life and into the home and the heart… filled with courage, heartbreak, optimism, and the strength of family bonds, both for good and ill.’ – Elizabeth Chadwick

‘A great read… Winnie’s a great character, a terrific guide. She brings us through big history but she has to feed the kids. She’s always real – she’s always human’ – Roddy Doyle

‘With a minimum of fuss, O’Flanagan quickly establishes strong, credible characters and a clear sense of the city they live in… O’Flanagan puts into play all the contemporary differences of class and political opinion, some of which are as fundamental today as they were a century ago… Whether Winifred and Joseph’s romance will survive in these circumstances is as fundamental to this warm-hearted story as are the survival prospects of the fledgling Free State. The emotional world of ordinary Dubs struggling to survive in a conflict whose consequences will take a century to resolve underpins this forthright tale of Ireland’s extremely complicated past. O’Flanagan’s legions of readers can look forward to yet another treat.’ – Peter Cunningham, Irish Independent  

‘This is historical fiction at its best. So often I find this genre focussing on a single woman, when in reality women's lives were more rooted in the home and their families. This beautiful story shows the true power and influence of so called “ordinary” woman. Women like Sheila’s grandmother might not have instigated history, but they were forced to react to it, so their stories take the true temperature of the times. It was unputdownable, full of poignancy, warmth and real and relatable women.’ – Kate Thompson

‘Utterly captivating, a novel that resonates as a piece of history and yet also as a modern story of love, war and how women will fight for the people they love.’ – Cathy Kelly

‘Sheila has always been one of my go-to authors and THE WOMAN ON THE BRIDGE does not disappoint, beautifully rich in historical detail and drama. An irresistible story of a country torn apart, the bonds of family, and the enduring power of love.’ – Carmel Harrington

‘Winnie’s development, both emotionally and politically, is interesting… [A] gripping novel… nuanced in its telling of Ireland’s seismic historical period.’ – Colette Sheridan, Irish Examiner

‘Inspired by the true story of O’Flanagan’s grandmother, THE WOMAN ON THE BRIDGE is about a young woman’s commitment to the fight for Ireland’s freedom. Braiding love, loss, and the sheer drama of war, O’Flanagan’s novel is redemptive in the way it peers into women’s lives, turns them right side up, and refuses to be forgotten.’ – Electric Literature, ‘The Most Anticipated Irish Novels of 2023’

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Shani Akilah shortlisted for the Writers’ & Artists’ Short Story Competition 2023

Shani Akilah’s story ‘A Short Trip to Tesco’ has been shortlisted for the Writers’ & Artists’ Short Story Competition 2023 after previously making the longlist.

Shani’s story was one of eight selected from a longlist of sixteen titles and over 850 entries to this year’s competition, themed around ‘Writing Love’. The shortlist was chosen by writer Naomi Booth.

Speaking about judging the competition, Naomi Booth said ‘It was a delight to read these short stories about love—in part because of their commitment to the surprising, the various, the ephemeral, and the difficult to articulate. There were brilliant stories in this longlist that focussed on the sharp and tender pain of lost loves; on the wordless dislocation of maternal love; on new friendships and the rush of fresh beginnings.’

‘A Short Trip to Tesco’ will appear in Shani’s upcoming debut short story collection.

About Shani Akilah

Shani Akilah is a 28 year-old Black-British writer from South London of Caribbean heritage (Guyana, Barbados and Jamaica). She is an avid reader and book blogger and was spotlighted as a ‘Key Black Influencer’ by DoubleDay Books.

 Shani is passionate about community and bringing people together and is the co-founder of Nyah Network, a book club for black women and is also the founder of contributor based platform, Bankra, that explored the navigated identities of black millennials.

 Shani loves travelling, and has spent significant time in Ghana as part of her studies. Shani has a Masters degree in African Studies from Oxford University with research exploring counter-diasporic return and issues of home and belonging amongst second-generation British-Ghanaians.

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