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Q & A with Zoran Drvenkar, author of SORRY: The new thriller that 'surprises, shocks and thrills from start to finish' (Sunday Express) What did you want to be at 5, 13 and 20 years of age? I was mainly struggling with trying to be myself, so I really didn’t think much about being someone else. I started reading at 5 and that’s when the world opened for me. When I was 13, I wrote my first poem. Kitsch met hormones whilst connecting frontally with drama. I loved it and I felt like a genius, almost untouchable. Soon I turned to horror stories and left poems that rhymed behind as soon as I opened my first Bukowski. Other kids open beer bottles, cigarette packs, dirty magazines, I was addicted to books from day one and Bukowski was a nice step in the right direction. From 15 until 22, I was copying everything I read, learning the trade from writers by mimicking them and slowly, very slowly finding my own voice. My head was a melting pot, all the stories I have read were tumbling around in there and something new surfaced on paper.   What prompted you to write your first novel? There were so many books and ideas and plot twists planted in my brain, that I had to do something - rob a bank, start a cooking class, climb a mountain. I never finished school and hated the time it stole from me as much as I hated the thought to be interested in things you cannot be interested in when you are 12 - like chemistry and mathematics and why a curve does this and that and why worms have their heads next to their asses. After reading every book that came close to me I turned very fast onto the road of writing. I was allowed to think and write and express what I wanted, without limits, without rules. I could bleed out my heart or I could be cruel as hell. It was possible. You can’t say no to that. Read More

Photo of Ovret, courtesy of Visit Sweden So many books are based on real places, but how often do you get a chance to visit them? I’ve lived in London, so recognized the parts of town Monica Ali wrote about in Brick Lane. I’ve travelled to Edinburgh and seen the steep side streets Ian Rankin have described so well in his Rebus books.   Fjällbacka of Camilla Läckberg's brilliant books, however, was a complete unknown to me, despite being a huge fan of her books. I’ve been reading all her books with images in my head that were a mix of the televised Henning Mankell-books and islands I’d been to myself. What a lovely place it turned out to be, though! I can see why Ingrid Bergman spent all her holidays there. Read More

Oxford, 1583. A place of learning. And murderous schemes.  England is rife with plots to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and return the country to the Catholic faith. Defending the realm through his network of agents, the Queen’s spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham works tirelessly to hunt down all traitors.  His… Read More

Match the fact to the correct team member and win a copy of 5 of our latest proofs, so you can read them months before they’ve even hit the shops! From the left: Sacrilege by S.J. Parris, The Schemer by Kimberley Chambers, A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming, Portrait of a Spy by Daniel Silva and The Key by Simon Toyne Which member of the Killer Reads team... ... has shared the screen with Al Pacino? ...sang in a national Australian campaign about saving water? ...is married to a TV book club pick author? ...was once a tudor model? ...saw the Dalai Lama on the way to KFC? ...has eaten a tarantula? ...set up their own charity in Uganda? ...has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro? Read More

Tom Knox My car was stuck in the forest. The forest was in the middle of a desert. The nearest people who could help me lived in a village a few miles through the trees, beyond the Moche pyramids; unfortunately, these forest gypsies had a ferocious reputation - for shooting unwanted intruders. I stared at my Toyota Hilux, lodged in the Peruvian sand. The sun was going down. The evening was already chilly. I began to wonder if I’d taken my determination to research my thrillers, as authentically and thoroughly as possible, just a little too far. Read More

 This week saw the launch party for PANTHEON, the explosive new World War Two thriller by No. 1 bestseller Sam Bourne (the pseudonym of award-winning journalist and presenter of Radio 4’s The Long View, Jonathan Freedland). https://s23783.p595.sites.pressdns.com/pantheon/ It’s a page-turning, thoroughly-researched thrill-ride that… Read More

Hello – and welcome! You’re in for a treat now: the world’s very first glimpse of the trailer for THE KEY, from the author of SANCTUS, the biggest selling thriller debut of 2011… Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjikOo5GfEw… Read More

This is what it’s like to be at the centre of a high-stakes five-way literary auction. It’s  The Twilight Zone. ©Casey Crafford I’ve been watching a lot of the original series recently, ostensibly research because my character in the new novel gets night fears from one particular episode featuring Talky Tina, the murderous living doll. And, you know, I had to watch the rest of them to put it in context. But it’s exactly that, like stepping into another dimension, where everything is topsy turvy and beyond imagination. Because it’s really, really weird to have publishers wooing you. Normally the writer is cast in the role of Jehovah’s Witness or Avon Lady, trying to impress the publisher or agent just enough to get inside the door, so you can launch into the full song and dance routine. An auction, on the other hand, is a literary dating show; The Bachelorette of Letters. How ever will I choose from all these smart, witty, wonderful suitors phoning me to tell me how much they love the book? Swoon. Blush. Flutter fan made from previously rejected manuscripts coquettishly. That same small, nasty part of me that snipes doubt at every sentence as I’m writing it, put forward the thought that it was some elaborate and vicious hoax by my agent, Oli Munson, hiring actors to play frankly unrealistically enthusiastic editors and put up fake websites that looked like The Bookseller with ridiculous soundbites about my novel, The Shining Girls, being “the book of the fair”. Nice try, agent guy. Read More

A fantastic online experience to share with you all today – a virtual tour of The Pendleton, an  apartment block standing at the address of 77 SHADOW STREET. A place with a dark and disturbing past. A place where every 38 years a terror descends on anyone who stays… Read More

Here’s Stuart’s plan:‘For a writer, there’s nothing quite like a good excuse to get out of the house, and this one’s perfect. Not only do we all get to raise money for a really important cause, we get to go out and tour Aberdeen, poke our noses into… Read More

A body is found in the sweating heat of an Alabama night; headless, words inked on the skin. Detective Carson Ryder is good at this sort of thing – crazies and freaks. To his eyes it is no crime of passion, and when another mutilated victim turns up his… Read More