by L. G. Vey
Yvonne Singh
Zoe Mitchell
Coming Soon...
Starve Acre
Jonathan Buckley
Richard and Juliette Willoughby live in an old farmhouse somewhere in North Yorkshire. The place has been called Starve Acre since anyone can remember and there is a local story about there being ‘something’ buried in the field. A ‘something’ which prevents anything from growing there. Quite what it is varies from one person to the next – a witch, or some tool once used by a witch, or the rope used to hang a witch – but there is general agreement in the area that it is a place to be avoided. In fact, the locals blame Starve Acre for Juliette’s illness, a degenerative mental condition that has transformed her into a vacant, ghost-like shell of her former self.
A Dedicated Friend
Shirley Longford
Organ donation is in its infancy and Daisy Howard, who is giving a kidney to her aunt, is in the hands of a pioneering surgeon. After the operation, Daisy is desperate to get back to her family, yet the days go by and she remains in the hospital; meanwhile, an old friend keeps visiting with news of home, and Daisy becomes increasingly uneasy.
Plunge Hill: A Case Study
J.M. McVulpin
‘Dear Maurice, I’m writing to you by candlelight again. Another power cut. I had to carry the papers back and forth in the dark, tiny flames flickering in the stairwells… They’ve got the petrol generators running in Ward 7 and the noise they make is like a swarm of bees has got into the place…’
In 1972, during the chaotic days of miners’ strikes and the three-day week, Bridget ‘Brix’ Shipley moves to Plunge Hill to start her new job as a medical secretary at the local hospital. As she writes to Maurice, her younger brother, sick at home, it becomes clear that not all is well at Plunge Hill. There are frequent power cuts and she has to work by candlelight. While she’d hoped this might inspire some blitz spirit and solidarity between her, the other secretaries and the medical staff, she’s increasingly isolated and seemingly ignored by her co-workers.
Judderman
D.A. Northwood
London, early-1970s. In a city plagued by football violence, Republican bombings, blackouts and virulent racism, a new urban myth is taking hold. Among the broken down estates, crumbling squats and failed projects of a dying metropolis, whispered sightings of a malevolent figure nicknamed the Judderman are spreading. A manifestation of the sick psyche of a city, or something else?
The Castle
Chuck Valentine
Jon’s dad was something of a pioneer in 1972, after writing a new kind of book – a book where readers could make their own choices and choose their own way through the story. Unfortunately, the idea was ahead of its time and his father died without ever finding the success he deserved.
It’s the summer and, between signing on to the unemployment allowance, Jon’s moved back to his hometown to help his mum cope with her grief. Contending with his own grief, he loses himself in his father’s unpublished manuscripts. Fiction and reality blend perhaps a little too closely, and when he discovers a hidden appendix he finds that his father’s imagination was more terrifying and more powerful than he could have imagined.