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Thomas & Mercer

What You Did by Claire McGowan

‘A brilliant, breathless thriller that kept me guessing to the last shocking page’

—Erin Kelly, Sunday Times bestselling author of He Said/She Said

What You Did
By Claire McGowan
Thomas & Mercer / 1 August / Kindle £3.98 / hardback £18.89 / paperback £4.99

A vicious assault. A devastating accusation. Who should she trust, her husband or her best friend?

It was supposed to be the perfect reunion: six university friends together again after twenty years. Host Ali finally has the life she always wanted, a career she can be proud of and a wonderful family with her college boyfriend, now husband. But that night her best friend makes an accusation so shocking that nothing will ever be the same again.

When Karen staggers in from the garden, bleeding and traumatised, she claims that she has been assaulted by Ali’s husband, Mike. Ali must make a split-second decision: who should she believe? Her horrified husband, or her best friend? With Mike offering a very different version of events, Ali knows one of them is lying, but which? And why?

When the ensuing chaos forces her to re-examine the golden era the group shared at university, Ali realises there are darker memories too. Memories that have lain dormant for decades. Memories someone would kill to protect.

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‘A knockout new talent you should read immediately.’ - Lee Child

‘One of the very best novels I’ve read in a long while... astonishing, powerful and immensely satisfying.’
- Peter James

‘Plenty of intrigue makes this a must read’ - Woman & Home

‘A great novel that happens to be a crime novel....A winner’ - Mark Lawson, Radio 4 Front Row

’McGowan’s pacy, direct style ensures that the twists come thick and fast.’ - The Irish Times

‘Taut plotting and assured writing’ - Good Housekeeping

’A gripping yarn you will be unable to put down’ - The Sun

TALKING POINTS

  • Should we keep the same friends all our lives?

  • What does modern friendship mean? Competitive friendship /frenemies

  • Envy and how it can ruin your life, especially between friends, and how it can be sparked off by social media posts, the pressure to have a perfect life

  • Being an outsider at an Oxbridge University - what it was like going to Oxford as a state-school pupil from Northern Ireland

  • What it’s like writing about sexual assault in the wake of Me Too – the responsibility to get it right

  • The beta marriage - so much pressure to ‘have it all’, is it good to have a ‘crash and burn’ marriage so that you can learn what you really want from life and love, and do it right next time?

  • Traditional gender roles – the benefits of being raised by a working mother and a father who did most of the childcare and housework (very unusual in rural Ireland in the 80s)

  • The joys of having platonic male friends – going to an all-girl convent school and then an old-fashioned university I didn’t have male friends until I was in my twenties. They now enrich my life in all sorts of ways

  • What’s it like to experience loneliness as a young person and the shame and stigma attached to this, and how to build a friendship group from scratch

  • The best way to be dumped – why ‘ghosting’ should be banned and why we should bring in a ‘dating charter’ for etiquette in these days of Tinder and online hook-ups

  • Is divorce contagious? – when I got divorced at the age of 31 I was the third in my close group of six friends to break up within less than a year

  • How illness helped me find my dream job

ABOUT CLAIRE MCGOWAN

Born in Northern Ireland in 1981, Claire McGowan studied in Oxford then lived overseas in France and China. She is the author of standalone thriller The Fall, and the Paula Maguire series, including The Lost, The Dead Ground, The Silent Dead, A Savage Hunger, Blood Tide, and The Killing House. The Paula Maguire series was optioned by the BBC in 2014. A ten-part radio drama written by Claire was broadcast on Radio 4 in early 2019, and as a screenwriter she was selected as the 2017/18 Nickelodeon International Writing Fellow.

Claire set up the Crime Thriller Writing MA at City University, London, and has also taught for the Arvon Foundation, Guardian Masterclasses and at many literary festivals.

As Eva Woods, she has published four women’s fiction novels, including the bestselling How To Be Happy.

More information is available from: www.ink-stains.co.uk and you’ll find Claire on Twitter at @inkstainsclaire 

Claire is available for interview, features and events.

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Her Last Move by John Marrs

“One of the most exciting, original thriller writers out there. I never miss one of his books.” - Simon Kernick

‘Whatever you do, don’t read this in the dark, or on your own…’  - Cara Hunter, author of Close to Home, on Her Last Move

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Her Last Move by John Marrs
Thomas & Mercer | Paperback | 8 November 2018 | £8.99 |e-Book - £3.98

She’s chasing a killer. He’s watching her every move.

He hides in the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment. Each kill is calculated, planned and executed like clockwork.

Struggling to balance her personal and professional life, young DS Becca Vincent has landed the biggest case of her career—and she knows that it will make or break her. But she can’t catch the culprit alone. Together with facial recognition expert Joe Russell, she strives to get a lead on the elusive murderer, who is always one step ahead of them.

Time is not on their side. The body count is rising, and the attacks are striking closer and closer to home. Can Becca and Joe uncover the connection between the murders before the killer strikes the last name from his list?

Talking points

  • Her Last Move is the first book to use a Super Recogniser (a small branch of the Met manned by coppers who never forget a face) as a main character.

  • Joe Russell is a gay male detective, deliberately written in as non-cliched a way as possible –

  • not hiding his sexuality, married to another guy.

  • This is John’s fifth book and the first that hasn’t been written on a commuter train – he has now given up journalism to write full time.

  • John’s publishing journey - from self-publishing to deals with Thomas & Mercer (Amazon Publishing).

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John Marrs is the author of #1 bestsellers The One (soon to be made into a film with Urban Myth Films), The Good Samaritan (shortlisted for the Dead Good Reader Awards 2018), When You Disappeared, and Welcome to Wherever You Are. After working as a journalist for 25-years interviewing celebrities from the world of television, film and music for national newspapers and magazines, he is now a full-time writer. 

Her Last Move is dedicated to John’s late father, Charlie, who was a police officer for 25 years.

Follow him on Twitter @johnmarrs1 Facebook: @johnmarrsauthor Instagram: @johnmarrs.author
website: johnmarrsauthor.co.uk

Selected Praise for The One

‘A dark thriller for the Valentine's Day skeptic.’ – New York Post

‘Intriguing premise from the always-excellent Marrs…this is gripping from the start and full of surprises, this kept us up long after lights out’ 4**** – Heat Magazine

‘Brilliantly inventive thriller, The One is a must-read for anyone who’s ever braved the dating pool’ – Good Housekeeping

‘A page-turning psychological thriller with a difference, this is guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat.’ - Irish Examiner

‘I couldn’t put it down.’ - Woman’s Weekly

‘This will have you gripped’ – Woman’s Own

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To Die In Vienna by Kevin Wignall

“The master of the thoughtful crime thriller.”
— Paul Finch, bestselling author of Strangers

Published in paperback by Thomas & Mercer on 14 June 2018 at £4.99

Freddie Makin is a surveillance expert. He spies on his targets; he follows their every move; he never asks questions about who’s paying him and why. To Freddie it’s just a job – until someone is sent to kill him.

To Die in Vienna by Kevin Wignall

To Die in Vienna by Kevin Wignall

For a year he’s been watching a Chinese academic whose life seems almost suspiciously normal. But now that he’s on the run from whoever wants him dead, he knows he must have seen something incriminating. The only trouble is, he has no idea what. Is the CIA behind all this – or does it go higher than that? Do they know Freddie’s no stranger to undercover intelligence himself? And what about Marina Mikhailova, the academic’s mysterious chess partner – is she in danger too, or is she not to be trusted?

As he’s forced into a lethal game of cat-and-mouse across Vienna, Freddie knows one thing for sure: his only hope for survival is to find out what he’s seen and use it to his own advantage – before his pursuers find out the whole truth about him.

Kevin Wignall is a British writer, born in Brussels in 1967. He spent many years as an army child in different parts of Europe and went on to study politics and international relations at Lancaster University. He became a full-time writer after the publication of his first book, People Die (2001). His other novels are Among the Dead (2002); Who is Conrad Hirst? (2007), shortlisted for the Edgar Award and the Barry Award; Dark Flag (2010); Hunter’s Prayer (2015), which was made into a film directed by Jonathan Mostow and starring Sam Worthington and Odeya Rush; A Death in Sweden (2016); The Traitor’s Story (2016); and A Fragile Thing (2017).

Of the recent film deal Kevin said: "I was in the enviable but difficult position of having two great film offers for this project, but everyone at Focus Features and Nine Stories was so passionate about the book it was an easy decision in the end, not least because Jake Gyllenhaal is such a terrific actor."

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Rogue by J. B. Turner

A deep-state US organisation has a top-secret kill list - and a popular senator is on it.

Rogue - An American Ghost Thriller: Book 1 - By J. B. Turner
Thomas & Mercer | 7 June 2018 | Paperback £8.99 | Ebook £3.98 | Audiobook £12.89

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Nathan Stone was killed in action while serving as a covert CIA operative. Or so everyone thought. In reality he’s become a ghost, a black-ops asset with a new identity and controlled by a secret government organisation. The Commission has one aim: to hunt down and assassinate anti-establishment enemies of the state.

Its number-one target is Senator Brad Crichton, an ambitious politician with growing support. Stone is ready to take him out, but his plan is soon compromised when the Commission’s kill list is leaked to a journalist—whose own name is on the list too. And when the journalist tries to alert the senator, he is found dead in suspicious circumstances. Stone is closing in on Crichton, but must act swiftly to reach him before the truth does.

He knows that one wrong foot will put him in the firing line. But where national security is at stake, the hunter can quickly become the hunted.

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About J. B. Turner

J. B. Turner is the author of the Jon Reznick series of conspiracy action thrillers (Hard Road, Hard Kill, Hard Wired, Hard Way, and Hard Fall), as well as the Deborah Jones political thrillers (Miami Requiem and Dark Waters). He loves music, from Beethoven to the Beatles, and watching good films, from Manhattan to The Deer Hunter. He has a keen interest in geopolitics. He lives in Fife, Scotland with his wife and two children.

@jbturnerauthor / jbturnerauthor.com / www.facebook.com/jbturner.thrillerwriter

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In For The Kill by Ed James

A university student is found strangled to death in her bedroom, but when the embattled DI Simon Fenchurch is called in to investigate, the case strikes dangerously close to home.

In For the Kill - A DI Fenchurch novel - by Ed James
Thomas & Mercer | 19 April 2018 | Paperback £4.99 | Ebook £3.98

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On the surface, the victim was a popular, high-performing student. But as secret grudges against her emerge, so too does evidence that she was living a double life, working on explicit webcam sites for a seedy London ganglord. Everyone Fenchurch talks to knows a lot more than they’re willing to tell, and before long he’s making new enemies of his own—threatening to push him and his family past breaking point.

With too many suspects and not enough facts, Fenchurch knows his new superiors are just waiting for him to fail—they want him off the case, and off the force for good. His family is in more danger than ever before. So how deep is he willing to dig in order to unearth the truth?

About Ed James

Formerly an IT manager for a bank, Ed began writing on planes, trains and automobiles to fill his weekly commute to London. He now writes full-time and lives in the Scottish Borders, with his girlfriend and a menagerie of rescued animals.

In For The Kill is the fourth novel in his latest series, set on the gritty streets of East London and featuring DI Simon Fenchurch, a detective with little to lose.  Kill with Kindness, the fifth in the series, is out in August 2018.

Ed’s self-published Scott Cullen series features a young Edinburgh detective constable investigating crimes from the bottom rung of the career ladder he’s desperate to climb. The first book, Ghost in the Machine, has been downloaded over 400,000 times, hitting both the Amazon UK & US top five.

Ed is currently writing a series of FBI thrillers set in Seattle, USA.

edjamesauthor.com / @edjamesauthor / facebook.com/EdJamesAuthor

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