Dead Ink Books – serie

Qianze has not seen her father in eleven years, since he walked out of her life the night of her fourteenth birthday and disappeared without a trace. But then she gets a call-there is a man on the porch of her childhood home, and he's asking for her. This man isn't the Ba Qianze remembers: he is much older, more fragile, and worst of all, haunted by a half-forgotten prophecy.While Qianze wrestles with what she owes this near-stranger, Ba begins telling stories of his past. From his bloody days as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution to his mother's youth under Japanese occupation, he circles around the prophecy he came to deliver. Qianze has always longed to know more about her family history, but as Ba reveals a past far darker than she could have imagined, she finds herself plagued by strange visions-fox spirits trail her on her evening commute, a terrifying jackalope stalks her nightmares, and the looming prophecy slinks ever closer.Spanning decades and continents, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing is a dark, magical realist family saga that moves through the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the Cultural Revolution, and the present day to explore the effects of intergenerational trauma, the legacy of colonialism and inescapability of fate in stunningly rendered folklore.

A delightfully dark and ravenous tale of morality vs mortality, that asks what you'd sacrifice for your survival. Perfect for fans of Monika Kim and Sayaka Murata.Hannah is dying for a cure. After a decade subsumed by a cancer diagnosis, Hannah is now thirty, existing in a hinterland between life and death. Her boyfriend Scott has become more of a carer than a lover, and - with no job, no plans, and no more options - she has resigned herself to no future.But then she's given the opportunity to join phase one of a clinical trial that might just save her. Almost immediately, she feels different; that evening, her appetite returns. And it keeps growing...Now Hannah is hungry for life.A committed vegetarian, Hannah suddenly finds herself craving meat - but her new hunger isn't limited to food. Now she wants everything. As new and suppressed desires surface she becomes reckless, destructive, and deceitful. It's the miracle drug she's been waiting for, but at what cost?This unique addition to the Weird Girl Lit tradition brings readers face to face with the visceral terror of being trapped in a body that has turned against itself. In a world where women are rewarded for their restraint, A Healthy Appetite introduces us to a character whose insatiable hunger is as vital for survival as the blood that runs through her veins.

Perthshire. 1957.The Camerons arrive from a tenement in Glasgow to run a remote Scottish youth hostel, unaware they are setting in motion a terrible chain of events that will reverberate through the decades.Siblings Alison and Ewan delight in swapping grey city life for the mountains and lochs surrounding Rannoch. Only their elder sister Moira understands their granny's dark looks and their mother's increasingly poor health. As the summer progresses and Mr Cameron's incendiary secrets begin to surface, the family's attempts to create a new life unravel - and then the adults make an unthinkable decision, one that wrenches the Camerons apart.It's 1982.Ewan is long estranged from his family. Now a celebrated artist working in burgeoning London, he is a world away from Rannoch. So why do his paintings return to the rugged landscapes and soaring birds of his youth? Four hundred miles north of him, in grey and rainy Cumbernauld, Moira knows that it is down to her to remedy the effects of their disastrous childhood before it is too late.The Windhover is an emotionally devastating story of lost children and misguided adults, tracing the shockwaves of lies and loss within one family and exploring whether redemption is truly possible when the betrayal runs so deep.

As Tess Bajac welds jagged scraps of salvage metal into brutal, beautiful forms, she dreams that her sculptures might one day move. Bibi Bloss is a dancer in search of sensation, her practice drifting from movement toward a more dangerous kind of performance - one etched directly into the body. When Tess and Bibi's paths cross, a partnership sparks which quickly becomes defined by obsession and need. As their collaboration grows more intense, both their work and relationship are remade in a dangerous new form. As Bibi pursues perfection, others join in her acts of risk and surrender. More blood is shed with each new work, culminating in a daring final performance that demands the ultimate sacrifice. Skin is a haunting exploration of artistic devotion and desire, a descent into the brutal intimacy between artist and muse, and an unflinching examination of how far the body - and the heart - can be pushed before it finally breaks.

From the bestselling author Tess Sharpe comes a new action packed, love-soaked thriller about two women whose lives—and hearts—are destined for each other.Murder either bonds you or breaks you. Rural PI Mel Tillman knows this well. She’s seen her fair share of bloody cases and botched cover-ups. But killing with someone? That is a different kind of mess all together, and Mel’s got real experience with it.No one’s heard from Toby Dunne since Chloe Harper’s sweet sixteen party—because the birthday girl and sixteen-year-old Mel buried him so deep in the backwoods, no one’s ever finding him. Mel loses little sleep over it—Toby had been terrorising them. What she does lose sleep over is Chloe, the girl with whom she survived that horrible night in the woods. Chloe, the girl she fell in love with. Chloe, the girl who disappeared and hasn’t been seen in more than six years.Tasked with locating Chloe by her family, Mel can’t resist the call of a good chase, or finding the one who got away with her heart (and with murder). When Mel finds an armed and vigilant Chloe living off-grid in a highly booby-trapped patch of Canadian wilderness, she realizes that Chloe had been expecting someone other than her ex to come looking for her. The thing that’s kept Chloe going for years is that she’s kept Mel safe by running. Now, the truth must come out as they run for their lives once again.Because when they buried Toby Dunne in the backwoods, they buried something else, too. Something Toby took. And the powerful family he stole it from? They’ll do anything to get it back.Twisty and razor-sharp, Tess Sharpe’s No Body No Crime is a heart-pounding thriller teeming with secrets, betrayals, and a star-crossed romance for the ages.

A Visitation of Spirits, is the powerful story of Horace Cross, a popular and highachieving sixteen-year-old boy, who wrestles with the guilt of discovering who he is, a young man attracted to other men and yearning to escape the narrow confines of Tims Creek. Raised on stories of prophets, revelations, and dreams, his internal struggles take shape in his mind as demons and angels battling for his soul, culminating in one night of horrible and tragic transformation. Horace seeks help from his cousin, Reverend James "Jimmy" Greene, but he finds himself ill-prepared to help the boy, plagued by demons of his own. And as Horace spirals out of control, Jimmy must ask himself what it says about him and his community that they cannot reconcile the spirits of the past with those of the future.Weaving the mythos and the hard realities of rural Black life and easily gliding between past and present, A Visitation of Spirits is a classic novel of growing up from a literary giant.Outsider Classics is Dead Ink's resurrection ground for the strange, the silenced, and the outcasts. This series exhumes lost literary voices that were ahead of their time to restore them to the cult status they always deserved. From forgotten masterpieces to once-censored provocations, each title is a reaction against the canon curated for readers who want to stray into the margins and away from the mainstream.

For years bonfires have been lit by superstitious villagers in the town of S—, intended to ward off the spirit of the man who was once their Laird. His widow still watches from the window of the big empty house on the hill. Isabel has heard the rumours about her husband, but only she knows what went on behind closed doors. Because behind every enigmatic man there is a woman with a heart full of secrets. It was decades ago that she left her grief-shadowed home in Portugal and began her search for her father. As her investigation led her to the rugged landscapes of Scotland, she couldn’t have foreseen the dark heart that was to win over her own. Misled into a loveless marriage and confined to a dark manor so unlike the sun-drenched home she left behind, she quickly came to know the sharp pulse of longing and the deeper wound of rejection. And then He arrived; a man so different from anyone she’d met before, a man the villagers feared, a man who evoked the burning desire in her husband that she had so ached for. A gothic tale of unrequited longing and unfathomable betrayal, In Your Heart a Devil beckons readers through unforgiving halls where servants whisper and shadows stir, into chambers where forbidden vows are bound in candlelight; and into the heart of a woman who is ready to emerge from her husband’s mythologised shadow to tell her own story.

A noirish near-future thriller about obsession, connection and penance, where human and machine bleed into one, for fans of J. G. Ballard and Joel Lane. When celebrated rally driver Teddy Moon suffers a career-ending crash in the foothills of Eryri, Wales, Lescure senior technician Jim Sorrel shoulders the blame. Cleared of criminal negligence but dismissed by his bosses, Sorrel goes to ground in London during a lethal heatwave. Here, Sorrel's guilt is only deepened by the disappearance of his young apprentice, Marcus - and by voices from the past haunting him through his phone. Then a lifeline: Teddy emerges from his coma and asks to see Sorrel in person. Because, Sorrel learns, Teddy has been dreaming of him. And now Teddy has an opportunity to discuss. At Teddy's behest, Sorrel takes a job couriering worldboxes - seamless, brushed-steel vessels - for well-paying, anonymous clients. It feels like another chance. A way for Sorrel to remake himself. But the worldboxes also seem to carry the threat of something incomprehensible, and soon even Sorrel's new beginnings falter as retribution draws near. Set against a background of unrelenting heat and oppressive surveillance, Wrecks drives readers towards a grotesque impasse, where blood and engine oil threaten to engulf us all.

Sometimes your possessions own you. Delve into twelve terrifying stories that reimagine a tradition that stretches back over a century to W.W. Jacobs’ ‘The Monkey’s Paw’. Discover the antique brooch possessed by a malignant spirit; the sewing needle that demands a bloody sacrifice; a cardboard cutout animated by the restless dead; a secret so unholy that even its likeness has the power to send people mad. Unhallowed Gifts proves that fear comes in many forms – and not all gifts are given with your best interests in mind. Featuring stories by: Paul Tremblay, Charlie Higson, Evelyn Hollow, Eric LaRocca, Daisy Johnson, Laura Purcell, Jeremy Dyson, Muriel Gray, Robert Shearman, Lucie McKnight Hardy, John Langan, and Matt Hill.

A chilling Korean revenge novel, blending crime and horror, about a mother whose grief transforms her into a murderous bloodsucker and the detective on her trail, for fans of Kanae Minato, Cheon Seon-ran, and Yoko Ogawa.A male victim, posing as if in prayer, burnt beyond recognition but otherwise intact. No traces of the assailant.Detective Jin-seon Noh is called to the scene but soon discovers this case is unlike anything she's seen before. The man was killed with startling force and drained of his blood. Jin-seon learns that the victim had recently been accused of stalking his ex-girlfriend, and as more men turn up murdered, a pattern begins to emerge: all of these men are guilty of heinous crimes against women. Buried underneath a mound of soil on a mountain top, Geum-hong had woken up transformed. Now her senses are vivid, she has phenomenal strength, and her appetite is deadly. The last thing she can recall of her old life is grief. Before losing consciousness, she'd been scattering the ashes of her only daughter, who was brutally murdered by her ex-boyfriend. Geum-hong has no idea how long she's been simmering beneath the earth, in fact, the confines of linear time no longer mean much to her. All she knows is that despite her transformation, her rage remains... As Jin-seon falls deeper into the case and more impossible details emerge, she can't silence the question creeping into the back of her mind: would it really be right to thwart this dealer of dark justice? Leaping between a diverse cast of female perspectives, Mothersucker is a propulsive, lacerating exploration of power and bigotry, which examines the monsters that make us and the monsters we become.

In 1817, two German scientists travelled across Brazil and into the Amazon gathering flora and fauna to study and display in Europe. Among the collection they brought to the Bavarian court were two Indigenous children. The children's images became widespread, but little was known about the children themselves. Despite the scientists' detailed records about many of the plant and animal specimens, they only noted the children's tribes: the girl was a Miranha, and the boy, a Juri. After a few months, the children died in Germany, far from anyone who knew their names. Dancing delicately between history and legend, The Jaguar's Roar weaves together the perspectives of all those tied up in the Miranha girl's fate, from her German captors, to the mythic jaguar she conjures for protection, to the anguished modern day bystander who stumbles across her sketch in a museum. This incandescent novel explores the impact of colonialism on memory and belonging, forcing readers to confront Brazil's suppression of its Indigenous history. Juliana Barbassa's vivid translation of Verunchuk's poetic novel makes a lasting contribution to world literature.