Louise Welsh – författare

An anthology collection of 100 scary stories to read with the lights on, selected and introduced by award-winning author Louise Welsh.Haunted houses, mysterious counts, weeping widows and restless souls, here is the definitive anthology of all that goes bump in the night. Hand-picked by award-winning author Louise Welsh, this beautiful collection of 100 ghost stories will delight, unnerve, and entertain any fiction lover brave enough...Here are gothic classics, modern masters, Booker Prize-winners, ancient folk tales and stylish noirs, proving that every writer has a skeleton or two in their closet.The all-star cast of authors inlude: Hilary Mantel, William Faulkner, Kate Atkinson, Henry James, Kazuo Ishiguro, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Franz Kafka, Ruth Rendell, Edgar Allan Poe, William Trevor, Helen Simpson, Haruki Murakami, Dylan Thomas, Bram Stoker, H.P. Lovecraft, Lydia Davis, Sir Walter Scott, Annie Proulx, Bram Stoker, Angela Carter and Stephen King.

THE TIMES CRIME BOOK OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR THE McILVANNEY PRIZE'I doubt I'll read a better book this year' Val McDermid'Compelling, immersive and brimming with life' Graeme Macrae BurnetAuctioneer Rilke has been trying to stay out of trouble, keeping his life more or less respectable. Business has been slow at Bowery Auctions, so when an old friend, Jojo, gives Rilke a tip-off for a house clearance, life seems to be looking up. The next day Jojo washes up dead.Jojo liked Grindr hook-ups and recreational drugs - is that the reason the police won't investigate? And if Rilke doesn't find out what happened to Jojo, who will?Thrilling and atmospheric, The Second Cut delves into the dark side of twenty-first century Glasgow. Twenty years on from his appearance in The Cutting Room, Rilke is still walking a moral tightrope between good and bad, saint and sinner.

THE TIMES CRIME BOOK OF THE YEARSHORTLISTED FOR THE McILVANNEY PRIZE'Superb' The Times Crime Book of the Month'A hardboiled gem' Guardian'I doubt I'll read a better book this year' Val McDermidAuctioneer Rilke has been trying to stay out of trouble, keeping his life more or less respectable. Business has been slow at Bowery Auctions, so when an old friend, Jojo, gives Rilke a tip-off for a house clearance, life seems to be looking up. The next day Jojo washes up dead.Jojo liked Grindr hook-ups and recreational drugs - is that the reason the police won't investigate? And if Rilke doesn't find out what happened to Jojo, who will?

'Unputdownable' Sunday Times'I was hooked from page one' GuardianWhen Rilke, a dissolute auctioneer, comes upon a hidden collection of violent and highly disturbing photographs, he feels compelled to discover more about the deceased owner who coveted them. Soon he finds himself sucked into an underworld of crime, depravity and secret desire, fighting for his life.

A TIMES BEST NEW CRIME FICTION OF THE MONTHJim Brennan is flying high. Against all odds, he is a big man at the university, tipped for the head job and an office at the top of the ivory tower. He has a beautiful, accomplished wife and two healthy children. Jim drives an Audi, and his dog is a pedigree bichon frisé. Not bad for the son of a hardman who grew up in a room and kitchen. But for every person who's watched his progress and wanted to hitch a lift, there's someone else desperate to drag him back down. When his son Elliot is arrested on drugs charges, Jim is approached by men he thought he had left safely in his past. Their demands threaten his family, students and reputation.As the pressure mounts, Jim discovers he is more like his father than he thought. The question is, how far will Professor Jim Brennan go to save the life he built?

Jim Brennan is flying high. Against all odds, he is tipped for the head job at Glasgow's prestigious university; an office at the top of the ivory tower. Not bad for the son of a hardman who grew up in a room and kitchen.When Jim's son Elliot is arrested on drugs charges, he is approached by men he thought he had left safely in his past. Their demands threaten his family, students and reputation. The question is, how far will Professor Jim Brennan go to save the life he built?

It's hard to be good when living is expensive. And times are tough on the streets these days. Luckily for Rilke at Bowery Auctions the demand for no-questions-asked cash is at an all-time high, and business is booming. When Rilke hears his old acquaintance Les is fresh out of prison, his inclination is to stay well out of his way. Letting sleeping dogs lie is one thing - but when one of Bowery's customers winds up dead on their tarmac, Rilke needs a bit of help from his friends to tidy things up. If only his friends didn't have such a habit of making things worse.

It's hard to be good when living is expensive. And times are tough on the streets these days. Luckily for Rilke at Bowery Auctions the demand for no-questions-asked cash is at an all-time high, and business is booming. When Rilke hears his old acquaintance Les is fresh out of prison, his inclination is to stay well out of his way. Letting sleeping dogs lie is one thing - but when one of Bowery's customers winds up dead on their tarmac, Rilke needs a bit of help from his friends to tidy things up. If only his friends didn't have such a habit of making things worse.

London, 1593. A city on edge. Under threat from plague and war, strangers are unwelcome, suspicion is wholesale, severed heads grin from the spikes on Tower Bridge. Playwright, poet and spy, Christopher Marlowe walks the city's mean streets with just three days to find the murderous Tamburlaine, a killer escaped from the pages of his most violent play.Tamburlaine Must Die is the searing adventure of a man who dares to defy both God and the state and whose murder remains a taunting mystery to the present day.

William Wilson is a conjuror fallen on hard times. So when he gets booked for a string of gigs in Berlin, he is hoping his luck is on the turn. Amongst the showgirls, the tricksters and the femmes fatales of Berlin's caberet scene, William can abandon his heart, his head and, more importantly, his past. But somehow secrets have a habit of catching up with him. Louise Welsh's contemporary tale is her riches and most macabre yet, and The Bullet Trick will keep you guessing till its final explosive flourish.

Some secrets are best left buried . . .Knee-deep in the mud of an ancient burial ground, a winter storm raging around him, and at least one person intent on his death: how did Murray Watson end up here?

Jane and Petra have been together for six years and after deciding to have a child, they move to Petra's hometown, Berlin. But things do not quite go according to plan. Jane, at six months pregnant, finds herself increasingly isolated and preoccupied with the monuments and reminders of the Holocaust which echo around the city - imagining the horrors that happened in the spaces around her. She becomes uneasy in the apartment and conceives a dread of the derelict backhouse across the courtyard. She also begins to suspect their neighbour, Alban Mann, of sexually assaulting his daughter, and places a phone call to the police which holds more significance than she can ever have known . . .

'A taut thriller so involving that I missed my bus stop!' Woman & Home'I read it in two sittings, pausing only to sleep and dream about it. Gripping, perfectly paced and beautifully written' ERIN KELLYA pandemic called 'The Sweats' is sweeping the globe. London is a city in crisis. Hospitals begin to fill with the dead and dying, but Stevie Flint is convinced that the sudden death of her boyfriend Dr Simon Sharkey was not from natural causes. As roads out of London become gridlocked with people fleeing infection, Stevie's search for Simon's killers takes her in the opposite direction, into the depths of the dying city and a race with death. A Lovely Way to Burn is the first outbreak in the Plague Times trilogy. Chilling, tense and completely compelling, it's Louise Welsh writing at the height of her powers.

'Enthralling and scary' Sunday Mirror'A cracking good story' ScotsmanMagnus McFall was a comic on the brink of his big break when the world came to an end. Now, he is a man on the run and there is nothing to laugh about.Thrown into unwilling partnership with an escaped convict, Magnus flees the desolation of London to make the long journey north, clinging to his hope that the sickness has not reached his family on their remote Scottish island.He finds himself in a landscape fraught with danger, fighting for his place in a world ruled by men, like his fellow traveller Jeb - practical men who do not let pain or emotions interfere with getting the job done.This is a world with its own justice, and new rules.Where people, guns and food are currency.Where survival is everything.

'A vivid, action-packed journey through a post-apocalyptic world. Terrifying and touching in equal measure, the novel is a love story, an adventure, a road movie, a family drama and a murder mystery rolled into one' The Times ScotlandIt is seven years after the Sweats wiped out most of the world's population. Survivors settled on the Orkney Islands are trying to build a new society but their world crashes for a second time when the islands' teenagers vanish. Stevie and Magnus are the only ones who can bring them home.Stevie hasn't been back to the mainland since she escaped to the islands after a desperate flight north from London. Magnus never saw himself leaving either. After all, what's left for him there? But Shug was born on the islands and has never known anything different; has never left them. Until now.And what starts out as a journey to bring home some young people intent on adventure soon turns into a race against time to find Shug before he comes down with the Sweats. Or worse. A pacy, page-turning ride through a post-apocalyptic world, No Dominion sets the pulse racing and doesn't let up until the last thrilling page.'No Dominion gripped me and broke my heart in equal measure' VAL MCDERMID