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Here’s a look at what Jo Fletcher books have coming for you over the period January to June 2016! We’ll be bringing you our particular recommends of all publishers together by month of publication. Note: Publication dates are liable to change and some jackets are still to come… |
| *** More about Jo Fletcher Books *** | |
| *** See Other Publishers Jan-Jun 16 *** |
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Joe |
| The strangest memory of my childhood concerns my father’s disappearance. | |
| This is what I remember: | |
| It was late September. I was nine years old, and my sister Heather was seven and a half. Although summer was officially over and we’d been back at school for weeks, the weather continued warm and sunny, fall only the faintest suggestion in the turning of the leaves, and nothing to hint at the long Midwestern winter yet to come. Everybody knew this fine spell couldn’t last, and so on Saturday morning my mother announced we were going to go for a picnic in the country. |
*
My dad drove, as usual. As we left Milwaukee, the globe compass fixed to the dashboard – to me, an object of lasting fascination – said we were heading north-northwest. I don’t know how far we went. In those days, car journeys were always tedious and way too long. But this time, we stopped too soon. Dad pulled over to the side of a country road in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing but empty fields all around. I could see a farmhouse in the distance and some cows grazing in the next field over, but nothing else: no park, no woods, no beach, not even a picnic table.
‘Are we here?’ asked Heather, her voice a whine of disbelief.
‘No, no, not yet,’ said our mom, at the same moment as our dad said, ‘I have to see a man about a horse.’
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PROLOGUE |
| EVA | |
| I want to wake up in a city that doesn’t sleep— | |
| Good old Frankie-boy. Untroubled by urban transformation, as long as there was a stiff drink waiting for you when you woke up. | |
| Vic Thorn rubbed his eyes. | |
| In thirty minutes the automatic alarm signal would rouse the early shift from their beds. Strictly speaking he couldn’t have cared less. As a short-term visitor he was largely free to decide how he was going to spend the day, except that even guests had to adapt to a certain formal framework. Which didn’t necessarily mean getting up early, but they woke you anyway. |
*
If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere—
Thorn started unfastening his belt. Because he thought staying too long in bed was degrading, he didn’t trust anyone else’s automatic devices to allow him to spend as little time of his life as possible asleep. Particu- larly since he liked to decide for himself who or what summoned him back to consciousness. Thorn loved turning his music systems up to the max. And he preferred to entrust his wake-up call to the Rat Pack, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis Junior, the disreput- able heroes of times past, for whom he felt an almost romantic affection. And up here nothing, nothing at all, was conducive to the habits of the Rat Pack. Even Dean Martin’s now famous observation that ‘You’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on’ was physically invalidated, and nor would the inveterate toper have been able to indulge his predilection for falling off his bar-stool and tottering out into the street. At 35,786 kilometres above the Earth’s surface there were no prostitutes waiting for you outside the door, just lethal, airless space. Read the rest of this entry »
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A Dragon’s Regret |
| Spiralling as he rose on the battering winds, the Dragon King – Omdorrréilliuc to the worshipful Eyrie People and, more familiarly, Driftwood to Kate Shaunessy – found the thermals that were capable of bearing his titanic mass aloft. On the beach below, every face gazed up in rapture. Kate realised she must look minuscule, waving goodbye from on high to the fast-disappearing Cill children. They included her friend Shaami, and the special one who was already taller and more knowing than the others, the new Momu, who was gazing heavenwards with those big golden eyes. The pain of leaving them, knowing she might never see them again, felt like a cold splinter of iron impaled in Kate’s heart. But all too soon they were gone, the beach reduced to a snowflake of brilliant white before it too was lost behind the clouds that were materialising against the up-thrust mountains. | |
| The dragon’s voice remained a rumble as deep as thunder even when it addressed Kate mind-to-mind: <Weep not for others but for yourself in your coming ordeal.> |
*
‘I’ll still miss them terribly.’
<The heart is a poor guide to reason.>
‘Ah, sure, and where would we be without it?’
<Safer, perhaps. And besides, they no longer need your help.>
‘No. They have a new young Momu to guide them.’
<And who in this war-torn world will guide you when you have proven yourself so refractory to common sense?>
‘I know I’ve been unreasonable, but I’m back now. I do so hope that we remain friends. Please tell me where we are headed?’ Read the rest of this entry »
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Prologue |
| The clouds parted, and just for a moment, the winter sun shone down on the smooth snow. What might have been tracks were now no more than ridges on a blue-white surface. A depression suggested that there might be a cave in the hillside, but it had long since been snowed in. The hills, solid and silent, looked down on houses that had once stood in defiance of nature; havens of warmth and safety in the unforgiving land. | |
| Now they were just empty. | |
| A strong gust rolled down into the valley, lifting white flakes from the ground and up, up, into whirling clouds of crisp, sparkling specks. | |
| They settled on roofs already covered in sheets of ice. They danced around black, barren branches. |
*
They covered frozen purple and grey fingers of dead men strewn about between the houses with arms stuck out at odd angles. Severed limbs draped in tendrils of black, frozen blood poked out of drifts. Where there were faces, they were carved in frost and horror. Read the rest of this entry »
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Here’s a look at what Jo Fletcher books have coming for you over the period July to December 2015! We’ll be bringing you our particular recommends of all publishers together by month of publication. Note: Publication dates are liable to change and some jackets are still to come… |
| *** More about Jo Fletcher Books *** | |
| *** See Other Publishers Jul-Dec 15 *** |
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www.tompollock.com (The authors site & blog) |
| www.skyscraperthrone.com | |
| @tomhpollock | |
| Trope-forging urban fantasy author of the London-based adult / YA Skyscraper Throne trilogy |
About (from Jo Fletcher Books / the author himself):
Tom Pollock is a graduate of the Sussex University Creative Writing Programme, and a member of the London-based writers’ group The T-Party. A longtime fan of science fiction and fantasy, Tom Pollock has spectacularly failed to grow out of his obsession with things that don’t, in the strictest sense of the word, exist. He has his master of fine arts degree from Sussex University and also holds a master’s degree in philosophy and economics from Edinburgh University. He has lived everywhere from Scotland to Sumatra, but the peculiar magic of London has always drawn him back.
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One |
| The school’s entrance hall was smaller than I remembered, but then, the last time I had been there, more than fifteen years ago, I’d been only ten and easily intimidated – I had changed since. But even so, I wasn’t looking forward to this visit. | |
| My heels announced my progress as I walked across the tiled expanse of the lobby towards the woman waiting to greet me. | |
| Miss Mitchell was everything one would expect of the head- mistress of an all-girls’ private school: tall and buxom with a ruddy complexion and short, wild, wavy hair. The expression ‘jolly hockey sticks’ could have been made for her, although from the tightness at the corners of her mouth I could see that any jollity she had this afternoon was forced. |
