When a water-borne blight hits a small community on a remote Scottish island in C.A. Fletcher’s Dead Water, its initial inconvenience soon grows into a nightmarish ordeal as the outwardly harmonious fabric of the community is irreversibly torn apart. Meet wooden automata, sentient weather, talking cats, compellent inks and a host of colourful characters in Neil Williamson’s Queen of Clouds, the prequel to his debut novel The Moon King. When Billy Braid is sent to the Sunshine City of Karpentine, he never expected to find love, get embroiled in Machiavellian intrigues or become instrumental in saving the city from misbehaving weather. Lorraine Wilson’s debut novel This Is Our Undoing, biologist Lina Stephenson has found refuge in the remote Rila Mountains. When an old enemy dies, Lina’s dangerous past resurfaces. Trapped with her vulnerable sister alongside the dead man’s family, Lina is facing pressure from all sides. But the forest is hiding its own threats and as a catastrophic storm closes in, Lina realises there’s a high price to be paid to save her family.
