A startling debut noir. A Trail of Blood on the Snow is a chilling exploration of masculinity, madness, and the harrowing legacy of abuse.

"He remembers me. He remembers the screaming and the blood on the snow. He remembers everything, I can tell."

Rex is 41. Halfway to death and no happier for it. Any promise of a better life got stifled decades ago, when Rex was a limping school kid and Max was the school bully.

Then, a chance encounter. Max standing smug and handsome at a gas station with his oh-so-perfect family.

Rex secretly follows them home. Watches them. Thinks about his own miserable life. What Max did to him, and how a real man would claim revenge.

Rex acts.

Is this the making of a monster, or the breaking of a man?

Silently, digitally, a boy takes apart your family

Tom's a regular teenager – sullen, anxious, super-smart, feeling safe within his bedroom and wedded to his screen.

On a packed train, a London commodities trader gets under his skin.

The trader's got a fine wife, two kids, a yappy dog, big house, annual bonus. Tom hacks him. The trader's hardware becomes stuffed with dangerous, damaging images. Call it collateral damage.

Hacking is what Tom does. He's got control of the keyboards of key players in the fossil fuel industry. If he doesn't bring down the grid, who will?

Roads and trainlines lead the main players to a violent confrontation in the brutalist surrounds of London's Barbican Centre. Government agents work to prevent a global blackout. Tom's set to save the planet.

Who will win?

“An imaginative debut” – Sharma Taylor

“Damion Spencer is a voice to look out for” – Irenosen Okojie

A Barbican First debut

The Devil's Horsewhip is a startlingly fine novel-in-stories about Caribbean folklore, superstitions and legends surrounding death by a writer whose prose judges at Wasafiri have described as vivid and with a spectacular voice.

At the pinnacle of the pandemic—a year already punctuated with daily funeral processions—a Jamaican expat gets an envelope covered in red writing from his doctor. It sends him into a mad tumble between bad omen days and fever dream nights until all that he thinks about is that bitter day in the Jamaican White River Valley, where he and other teenagers escaped a double-cutlass-wielding madman out for blood. But death is not one to give up easily. The years are not long enough, neither is fleeing across continents too far for death's spite and all the worse duppies not to come knocking.

Who will cheat death a second time?

A Christian woman who decides to sleep with an obeah man's monkey. The man with the answer to whether Haitian voodoo is stronger than obeah. A woman who knows how to mourn a dead baby. Or the ones who know how to trap a rolling calf, outrun a three-foot horse, and battle a Chinese duppy and win.

If you're superstitious or wary of those who are, come read these sticky tales spun in barbwire.

When it comes to memoir, Miranda Miller is an incorrigible novelist. Viola, three years old in 1953 when guests gather in her parents' London home to watch the Queen's coronation on TV, is not Miranda. Yet character and author share the same age, the same home, the same parents and three brothers, the same friends and fears and love of books and breathless adventures in her native city.

When I Was brings all the family members centre stage, each character opening their consciousness to reveal a multi-faceted study as life presses in on a family's hopes and dreams.

The novel whisks us through 1950s London, in a tale as true as a novelist can make it. The twists of its drama, as a young girl forges her way into being, let you into secrets of resilience and love.

What if the end of the world is the best thing that's never happened?

'A REMARKABLE AND PEERLESS READ.' Morning Star

'GRIPPING, FUNNY AND HOPEFUL.' The Times

'WILDLY IMAGINTIVE.' Scotland on Sunday

In the central Scottish town of Dundule, residents of the Busy Bee Flats – Donna and her eight-year old daughter, dour ex-miner Douglas, big Giorgio the chip shop fryer, young druggies Tam and Mac – struggle like everyone else.

Then the lights go out.

Winter, and it’s a global blackout.

Now’s the choice. Go wild and raid the streets, or come together and build something new in the ruins of the old.

But there's no paradise yet. Botched deals, armed survivalists and dwindling resources threaten to destroy progress. And the occasional screech of a fighter jet reminds them that nuclear oblivion still looms…

Disnaeland mixes tenderness with broad comedy during the end times. Shifting from the deeply personal to the visionary, D.D. Johnston brings us an extraordinary and prophetic novel.

Some blogger reaction:

‘A brilliant exciting roller coaster ride... the best dystopia I have ever read.’ @ladyreading365

‘Refreshingly original… thought provoking… surprisingly uplifting. I laughed, I cried… and I enjoyed the ride.’ @librarylove2781

‘What a read! Heart-breaking but heart-warming, morbid but hopeful.’ @herandherbooks

‘It took me exactly one chapter to be obsessed with this book... quirky, morbid, uplifting and hilarious.’@mybloodybookstsagram

‘Laugh out loud funny with great characters.’ @candygirl73reads

‘Memorable characters and an interesting set up… one of my top dystopian books.’ @whatyoutolkienabout

‘The novel’s radical premise is elevated by vividly drawn characters and its compassionate and hilarious storytelling.’ @reecetagram

‘Disnaeland is as witty and warm as it is dark and dingy.’ @swordinthesloan

'Sharp-witted humour and a writing style that reminded me of Christopher Brookmyre, I was engrossed in this distinct wee novel.’ @pap3rcut__