Sitting Down With Evil

West Belfast, 1972. The government has lost control. The streets of Northern Ireland are on fire, with violence escalating on both sides. Lance Corporal Owen Twill is snatched up by the IRA and held captive for ten days. On his release he leaves the army and returns to England, a broken and bitter man, obsessed with visiting revenge on the Provo commander responsible for his injuries.

It’s 2016, and one by one, members of Owen Twill's old unit are dying in suspicious circumstances. When he learns the dark secret behind his betrayal, a chain of events is set in motion, the aftermath of which is felt from Belfast to New York City.

As he tracks down former colleagues, he uncovers a powerful cabal with tentacles that reach to the corridors of Westminster. A conspiracy that pitches friend against friend in a battle to be the last man standing.

Sky High

Shrinking back into the thick Central America Jungle in an effort to obscure himself from the incoming gunfire, Christian Simpkins desperately tried to recall the details of his job description at the Foreign Office.

His errand to Belize was to simply liaise with a man acting as a mediator in discussions with neighbouring Guatemala, as there was a bit of a to-do regarding some recent border skirmishes. The events that soon unfolded, encompassed huge wealth to grinding poverty and orderly civility to outright anarchy. Traffickers, smugglers and bandits vied with overly enthusiastic security services. Jungle greens were the dress of the day, and among this chaos stood one nervous young man in a white linen suit, looking up to the sky above. A grand design was up there, and therein lay hope.

A conceptual novel woven around a novel concept. A sequel to Simpkins previous’ adventures in the Sahara.

Snuff

The story of a boy with a dysfunctional upbringing, who faces depraved acts of violence and criminality and is saved by adoption in London and evacuation to Derbyshire to avoid the blitz of WWII.

Thirty years on the searing drought of 1976 exposes two bodies under Ladybower reservoir. What’s the connection with the spate of murders in Sheffield?

Police Inspectors Hawk and Tony D both have buried secrets of their own. Can they work together to stop a serial killer?

One suspects, but the other knows the psychopath responsible.

Both face the gravest consequences if they can’t cover up their past deeds.

Just how far will two hardened streetwise detectives go to save themselves?

Sons and Mothers

The year was 1939 and soldiers were about to go to war. Constance Cummings, a sixteen-year-old beautiful but naïve young girl, was taken in by a conniving and duplicitous junior army officer who was already married with a family using a false identity.

With the false promise of later marriage and following a wager with his colleagues he lured the girl into a seedy room where he raped her.

She found herself to be pregnant and in 1940 she had a baby with an unknown father. Even though she had been duped and raped this was considered to be a disgrace and the child, a boy, was taken from her without her even being aware of his sex.

Meanwhile, some miles away the offender’s real wife gave birth to a son.

This is a story of their lives from that point on. Will Constance ever meet up with her son? Will the offender’s real wife ever realise what a dreadful man she had married? Will the two half-brothers ever meet and become friends?

Stars Aligned

When Emily moves halfway across the country to escape her abusive ex, Jason, she ends up landing her dream job and meeting her CEO and ideal man, Alex. Things are starting to look up for her and life is good. That is until she discovers Jason has followed her and is set intent on destroying everything she has achieved. She finds herself unwillingly working alongside Jason, and both under the management of Alex, who is oblivious to their previous life together. She must remain strong, out his dark secrets and protect her man to win her freedom.

But Emily has some dark, twisted secrets of her own, secrets Jason owns entirely, and Alex seeks.

Take Two Tablets

“If people think I’m bad, then I’ll be good at that!”

Macy Lord is living her worst life: victimised at home, vilified at school.

When novice Religious Studies teacher Mr Fairclough asks his class to re-interpret The Ten Commandments, Macy resolves, for the sake of authenticity, to break them. Blaming, blaspheming, coveting, dishonouring, lying, stealing, and worshipping shiny stuff all come easy, but then she kills – and kills again.

Traumatised by her potential parricide, Macy goes on the run: faking adulthood in London, blurring art and death in Paris, escaping undercover in Arabia, raising the bar in Brooklyn.  

Pursued by a coterie of vengeful cast-offs, Macy craves her calm, cool Mr Fairclough, but having lost his star pupil, he too has eschewed education for misadventures of his own.

If nurture is absent, will nature take its course? Can Macy find redemption in the chaos of her life? And how will she ‘complete the set’ with The Seventh Commandment still unbroken?

The 9/11 Connection

In the years since the events of The Odessa Connection, Isaac Menshive and Will McIntosh have settled into new and contrasting roles. Isaac, with his priorities firmly centred on his young and growing family in London, has taken a back seat in running the Menshive Trust, the vast and burdensome business enterprise he inherited. It is Will who oversees the trust’s day-to-day administration full-time alongside Isaac’s daughter Ruth, to whom he is becoming ever more attached.
As part of their researches, Will and Ruth discover that Isaac’s father, a university professor in New York who died under mysterious circumstances, had been working on his own ambitious project, based in the North Tower of the World Trade Center before the attacks of September 11, 2001. They call in experts to examine the Professor’s papers, including those scattered over the city when the towers collapsed, in the hope of learning more about his intentions. At the same time, Isaac’s grasping ex-wife and her two daughters suddenly come back into his life. Is this more than coincidence? Could they perhaps be in league with the sinister figures who have been harassing Isaac over the last several years?
The 9/11 Connection brings the story of Will and Isaac to a satisfying conclusion as it continues to develop the relationships between the familiar protagonists while introducing some highly colourful new characters. With the same flair for detail, psychological nuance and sophisticated geopolitical understanding as its predecessors, the novel displays an uncanny prescience about the current political situation in Eastern Europe.

The Alpha Portfolio

This is a story about a daughter’s search for the truth and her struggle against the silent misogyny within her family.

In the months leading up to the Global Financial Crisis, Lottie Sacramento is about to marry her fiancé Dan. She would consider herself one of life’s lucky ones. Working for her uncle’s business in the gilded world of European property fund management, Celestial has an investment track record to die for. Unfortunately, her fiancé does just that – in mysterious circumstances on a business trip to Frankfurt – and her world is thrown into turmoil.

As the financial crisis unfolds and Lottie searches for the truth about Dan and Celestial, she begins to unravel a series of dark family secrets.

The Beaumont Werewolves and Vampires' Society

A British journalist from St. Helens in England, goes to Dublin to find out why so many animal attacks are taking place. She soon discovers that a Doctor John Landis has a secret drug to turn people into werewolves and vampires. He gets his victims from the local hospital and meetings of people who have lost a loved one. Her journey to solve this mystery starts from Dublin in Ireland, to Blackpool in England, then onto the Isle of Wight and finally the Isle of Mull.

The Bigamist

Harry Boulton, a successful consultant for a global corporation, finds himself in a downward spiral after losing a substantial sum of money gambling and being fired from his job in Brussels. The added pressure of receiving a letter from his wife in New York asking for a child only compounds his stress. With mounting debts to a dangerous loan shark known as Spider and the weight of two marriages to navigate, Harry reaches the brink of despair and makes a devastating decision.

But just as he is about to pull the trigger, fate intervenes and gives him a second chance. Determined to turn his life around, Harry takes on a new job and sets out to make amends with the two women in his life. However, when his wives unexpectedly meet in Sydney, where he has found a fresh start, the stage is set for a heart-pounding confrontation that could determine the rest of Harry’s days.

Harry’s journey is a thrilling roller coaster ride of personal redemption, filled with twists and turns that will leave readers on the edge of their seats. With a gripping plot, dynamic characters, and intense action, this book explores the limits of love, loyalty, and the human spirit.

The Competition

Eight unlikely chefs thrust together, a washed-up TV presenter, a large cash prize and an unforgiving Northumberland landscape. Add to this a previously forgotten ghost from the past and what could possibly go wrong?

Introducing a new and daring competition that everyone is just dying to be part of. A brutal and often darkly comic tale about why chefs should never be left to their own devices. Scores will be settled, friendships formed (and lost) and all in the pursuit of fifty thousand pounds.

Will anyone live to tell the tale? Hunting and foraging for food along with plummeting temperatures and the risk of exposure, there can be only one winner.

The Conversation Club

Centuries ago, the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten appointed a council of 22 custodians to foster the flourishing of the human spirit through the pursuit of knowledge, the advance of the arts, and covert philanthropy. Today, the London Chapter of that council is known as The Conversation Club. It is helmed by Esau Monk, who guards its activities and astounding wealth with ironclad secrecy, but its very existence and purpose are threatened from within.

60 years ago, in Nazi Germany, Wolfgang Ackerman smuggled 22 boys and a hoard of stolen gold out of the country at the outbreak of the war. Their destination: London, and The Conversation Club. Unknown to anyone but him, he has secretly substituted his own son for one of the boys and is haunted by guilt.

Now, in London, someone is carrying out brutal murders. The security services are convinced Islamic terrorists are behind the atrocities. Former FBI profiler, Dr. Ben Whisker, disagrees. He discerns something far more deadly than meets the eye. His recent fall from professional grace, however, means he is not being taken seriously. Realising that the impenetrable Conversation Club is the focus of the violence, he teams up with the Grand Master of the Club, Esau Monk, to figure out what the connection is.