My Name Is Ten By Colleen Macmahon

I received My Name is Ten By Colleen Macmahon to read and review thanks to Random Things Blog Tours. My Name is Ten is a dystopian thriller set in 2092 following a young girls time at The Kennels where she may be executed.

My Name Is Ten

She has six weeks. Six weeeks to be chosen or to die…

2092 and the world has been left scorched by the catastrophic solar eruptions of 2025 and turned larely into desert. The competition for resources is firce and often brutal. The young, healthy and fertile are commodities prized for their resilience and reproductive potential; they are bed, bought and traded by the wealthy elite and discarded when no longer of use.

When 17 year old Akara – once a pampered and highly valued Protégé – loses both her physical perfection and her documents, she is incarcerated in The Kennels. If she is not adopted she faces extermination.

Or possibly worse.

Colleen Macmahon

Colleen MacMahon is an English actress, artist and award winning author of short stories. She has narrated audiobooks, designed book covers, written plays for theatre groups and taught and mentored children, young adults and so-called grown ups. She lives in the beautiful Devon countryside with three dogs, a lot of wildlife, and a (mostly) patient partner who spends an unreasonable amount of time sorting out her technical messes. 

My Name Is Ten is her debut novel and she is currently working on its sequel.

My Thoughts

I spotted the invite for this tour and was intrigued by the name and felt a dystopian thriller would change up my reading a little bit. I am so glad I did as I really enjoyed I am Ten. The story begins with Akara in The Kennels, awaiting her judgment, reflecting on her life. Colleen Macmahon writes in such detail you almost feel as though you are right there. With such a unique storyline I hope Colleen Macmahon writes more books like this. I think either as a series or standalone stories they would make a great collection!

Best Served Cold By Gabriel Galletti

I received Best Served Cold by Gabriel Galletti, a crime thriller, to review thanks to Random Things Blog Tours.

Best served cold by Gabrielle Galletti

Best Served Cold

Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

Grudges harboured and hatreds hidden but not forgotten.

Then a catalyst ignites the flame…
Someone in Leeds is settling old scores.

The Police ask Chad Hilton, an ex-pro footballer turned criminal profiler, for help. But his wife’s infidelity and his addiction to painkillers are pushing him close to the edge.

As the body count rises, can Chad uncover the murderer before his demons destroy him?

Gabriel Galleti

It’s said that everyone has a book in them…But do they?

After a forty year career in business spanning four continents, Gabriel Galletti
sat at the keyboard and began to write. Could he do it? Indeed should he do it?

One Pandemic and three lockdowns later, and with huge assistance from Cornerstones Literary Agency and fantastic thriller writers Mark Leggatt and Neil Broadfoot, all Gabriel’s passions – Yorkshire, Crime Thrillers and
Leeds United have come together to produce his debut novel Best Served Cold.


Best Served Cold is the first in a series set in Leeds and
introducing Chad Hilton as the flawed ex-footballer turned profiler.

My Thoughts

From the get go it felt a little like I was reading a different version of House! Another pain riddled, painkiller addicted answer seeker, and I was not disappointed.

Chad Hilton is an ex footballer helping police as a criminal profiler on a murder case, things very quickly pick up speed with a missing persons case possibly linked, but how!? Not to mention the stress and strains from his personal life that also take a dark turn!

As Chad battles his own demons he works tirelessly to solve the case he is working on, but can he figure it all out in time, kick his addiction and save his relationship?

I really enjoyed Best Served Cold and knowing it is the first in the series I will definitely be on the lookout for the rest of the series as they are released!

The Way Of The Worm By Ramsey Campbell

I received The Way Of The Worm by Ramsey Campbell to read and review thanks to random things blog tours. This is book 3 in the Three Births of Daoloth Trilogy, a fantastic modern horror that really sucks you in.

The Way Of The Worm

The present day, or something very like it. Dominic Sheldrake has retired from lecturing and lives on his own. His son Toby is married with a small daughter. The occultist Noble family are more active than ever. Their cult now openly operates as the Church of the Eternal Three,and has spread worldwide. The local branch occupies the top floors of Starview Tower, a Liverpool waterfront skyscraper.

To Dominic’s dismay, Toby and his wife Claudine are deeply involved in it, and he suspects they are involving their small daughter Macy too.
Dominic lets his son persuade him to attend a meeting of the church, where he encounters all three generations of the Nobles. Although Christian Noble is almost a century old, he’s more vigorous than ever– inhumanly so. The
family takes turns to preach an apocalyptic sermon that hints at dark secrets masked by the Bible and at the future that lies in wait.

In a bid to investigate further Dominic undergoes the rite the church offers its members, which confers the ability to travel psychically through time. Before he’s able to flee
back to the present he has a vision of the monstrous fate that’s in store for the world.
Dominic discovers a secret he’s sure the Nobles won’t want to be made public. Although he has retired from the police, Jim helps him establish the truth, and Roberta publishes it on her online blog. It’s the subject of a court
case, the results of which seem to defeat the Nobles, only for them to return in a dreadfully transformed shape.

Now Dominic and his friends are at their mercy,and is there anywhere in the world to hide? Even if they manage somehow to deal with the Nobles, there may be no escaping or preventing the alien apocalypse that all the events of the trilogy have been bringing ever closer…

Ramsey Campbell

Ramsey Campbell was born in Liverpool in 1946 and
now lives in Wallasey. He has received the Grand Master
Award of the World Horror Convention, the Lifetime
Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association,
the Living Legend Award of the International Horror
Guild and the World FantasyLifetime Achievement
Award. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature.


His first book was published by the legendary Arkham House when he was eighteen years old. His later work draws on the British and American traditions of horror fiction. It ranges from the psychological to the ghostly,
the subtly uncanny to the cosmic, the quietly disquieting to the terrifying, the poignant to the darkly comic.

His Flame Tree books include Thirteen Days by
Sunset Beach, in which afamily on holiday encounters an ancient horror on a Greek island,and Think Yourself Lucky, where the internet lets loose the monsters lurking within people just like us. In Somebody’s Voice a writer
finds his memoryand personality threatened by trying to write the memoir of a victim of abuse. The Three Births of Daoloth trilogy– The Searching Dead, Born to the Dark and The Way of the Worm – pits three childhood friends
against a terror as vast as time and space.
Three of Campbell’s novels have been filmed – The Influence (available from FLAME TREE PRESS), Pact of the Fathers and The Nameless (in development as a Netflix series). He reviewed films for the local BBC for nearly forty years, and is presently working on an appreciation of the Three Stooges, Six Stooges and Counting. A new supernatural novel, Fellstones, is in progress too.

My Thoughts

Ramsey Campbell really draws you into his world of horror, I couldn’t put The Way of The Worm down! A storyline unlike any other I’ve read, Dominic and his friends just can’t let Toby, Claudine and Macy get wrapped up in a religious cult they suspect is run by the same monster they came up against years ago. My heart was racing hoping Dominic and his friends could somehow persuade Toby to see who or what their religious leader really was before something could happen to his granddaughter.

Shadow Flicker

I received Shadow Flicker by Gregory Bastianelli to review thanks to Random Things Blog Tours.

Shadow Flicker

Investigator Oscar Basaran travels to Kidney Island off the coast of Maine to document the negative effects of shadow flicker from wind turbines on residents living near the windmills, but is unprepared for what he encounters from the islanders. Oscar’s research shows that sleep deprivation, light deficiency and ringing headaches brought on by the noise and constant strobe-like effect of the sun filtered through the spinning blades of the turbines brings on hallucinatory episodes for the closest neighbors to the machines.


Melody Larson’s elderly father nearly chokes to death after stuffing dandelion heads into his mouth. The Granberrys’ pregnant cow repeatedly runs headlong into a fence post. Tatum Gallagher mourns her young son
who vanished more than a year ago, presumed swept out to sea by a wave while fishing on the rocky shore, but several people claim to see him appear only in the glimmer of the shadow flicker.


Aerosource, the energy corporation that owns the turbines, hired Oscar to investigate the neighbors’ claims, but the insurance agent shows no allegiance to the conglomerate, especially after learning a previous
employee sent to the island a year before has disappeared without a trace.
When Oscar meets former island school science teacher Norris Squires, fired for teaching his students about the harmful effects of shadow flicker, he learns a theory regarding Aerosource that sounds too preposterous to
believe.
While it seems the shadow flicker effect has driven some of the island’s animals crazy, is it possible it’s caused an even worse mental breakdown among the human inhabitants? Or is something more nefarious at work on
the island?

As Oscar’s investigation deepens, he discovers the turbines create an unexpected phenomena kept secret by a select group of people on Kidney Island who have made a scientific breakthrough and attempt to harness its
dark power.

My Thoughts

I thoroughly enjoyed Shadow Flicker, I really enjoy a good horror that actually creeps you out a little because it’s almost believable. I love Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell and this is definitely a long those lines and a book I would recommend to fans of these authors too!

Gregory Bastianelli

Gregory Bastianelli is the author of the novels Snowball, Loonies and Jokers Club. Horrornews.net described him as the ‘messiah of macabre.’ His stories have appeared in the magazines Black Ink Horror, Sinister Tales and Beyond Centauri; the anthologies Night Terrors II, Cover of Darkness and Encounters;and the online magazines Absent Willow Review and Down in the Cellar. His novella The Lair of the Mole People appeared in the pulp anthology Men & Women of Mystery Vol. II.

Gregory graduated from the University of New Hampshire where he studied writing. He worked for nearly two decades at a small daily newspaper where
the highlights of his career were interviewing shock rocker Alice Cooper and B-movie icon Bruce Campbell.
He became enchanted with the stories of Ray Bradbury as a young child,band his love of horror grew with the likes of Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell.

He lives in Dover, New Hampshire. He enjoys kayaking, hiking and cycling in the summer and snowshoeing and racquetball in the winter. Along with spending time with family, he enjoys traveling, especially to Italy where he
has visited his ancestral home and relatives residing there and hiked the Path of the Gods on the Amalfi Coast and to the top of Mt. Vesuvius.
He is a member of the Horror Writers Association and the New England Horror Writers. You can find out more about his work at gregorybastianelli.com.

The Better Brother by Simon Gravatt

I received The Better Brother by Simon Gravatt to review thanks to Random Things Blog Tours, a story of two brothers wrapped in dark humour.

The Better Brother

Michael Merriweather despises his brother. He never wants to see Jack again. But then their father dies
and leaves a will that requires the warring siblings to run the family funeral business together as a
condition of them receiving their inheritance. As a result, the brothers face a series of difficult decisions
that will change their lives.


Michael and Jack are at each other from the word go. Their opposing views on how to run the business
descends into a very personal conflict that will have catastrophic consequences. Soon, all that matters to
each of them is a burning desire to come out on top and prove himself to be the better brother.


Layers of festering resentment are gradually unpeeled in this darkly comic tale of sibling rivalry, laced with
the power, passion, reprisals and everyday friction of family business.

My Thoughts

It’s been a while since I read a book quite so amusing considering it begins with the death of the main characters father! Sibling rivalries are always amusing but rarely do you find a book quite like this. I really enjoyed reading about the two different personalities, seeing two totally different people from the same family has always intrigued me and I was curious which brother really would come out on top!

Simon Gravatt

Simon Gravatt is a first-time novelist who lives in South London. He’s drawn from personal experience as a brother and business owner to write his tale of sibling rivalry and the combustibility of small business. Simon is married with two adult children.

The Cactus Surgeon: Using Nature To Fix A Faulty Brain By Hannah Powell

I received The Cactus Surgeon: Using Nature to Fix a Faulty Brain by Hannah Powell to review thanks to Random Things Blog Tours. I was looking forward to reading this as I often feel like being a busy polluted area makes my health worse, I was intrigued to see if moving and spending more time surrounded by nature really did help.

The Cactus Surgeon

Living in London, Hannah suffered burnout and was diagnosed with a functional neurological disorder. With no information available to help her, she found her own way to get better.

Growing up in a garden centre, her childhood was full of nature and plants. This was in stark contrast to the concrete of the capital, where she became unwell. In searching for the answers to her illness, she wonders whether being torn from her pot and replanted in a more hostile environment was the reason her body started to malfunction.

After seeking out alternative therapies, and moving to the countryside of North Essex, her ‘green recovery’ continued.

It’s a book of mindful moments, savouring the small wonders of nature

My Thoughts

Hannah Powell starts by explaining where her burnout began, how busy her life was in the lead up to her ill health. It’s a stark contrast to the childhood she then goes on to share with her readers and it’s easy to see why reverting back to a greener way of life both appealed and made sense as a way of therapy/treatment for how ill Hannah had become and how by doing so this improved other areas of her life too. It was lovely reading about her life in North Essex as its not too far from me and reminded me it’s not all grey and horrible here too!

Hannah Powell

Hannah Powell (née Bourne) is Communications and HR Director for the Perrywood Garden Centres she runs with her dad and two brothers. When she was six years old, she wanted to be a cactus surgeon.

Before coming back into the family business, she had a successful career in PR and marketing, running high-profile campaigns for clients, including Barclaycard and Domino’s Pizza. She was part of the team that launched Global Entrepreneurship Week, an annual campaign to encourage young people to set up businesses worldwide.

She now lives in North Essex with her husband, daughter and many plants.

thecactussurgeon.com

How To Survive Without Grown-Ups By Larry Hayes

We received How To Survive Without Grown-Ups by Larry Hayes to review. This comedy sci-fi adventure book is aimed at children 8+ and is full of fantastic illustrations by Katie Abey.

How to survive without grown-ups
Front cover of How to Survive without Grown-ups By Larry Hayes

How To Survive Without Grown-Ups

Mum and Dad have left – gone to Mars, and they’re never coming back…

But this isn’t one of Dad’s weird jokes; it’s REAL. It’s up to ten-year-old Eliza and her genius little brother, Johnnie to find out what’s going on and launch a rescue.

Can they handle vampire squids, a suspicious villain, a secret island full of traps, and a trip into space? And – more importantly – will they ever get their parents back?

Larry Hayes

Larry Hayes has a day job running an investment fund, a part-time one as financial director of a homeless charity and on Fridays he home schools his two kids letting them decide what to study. How To Survive Without Grown-Ups is his debut novel.

Katie Abey

Katie Abey is an illustrator who lives in a teeny hobbit-like house in Derbyshire with a cat, a hedgehog, a small human, and a rainbow-haired husband. Her work often features sarcastic-looking animals, and she likes using a lot of colour: she is allergic to Magnolia.

Eva’s Thoughts

How to survive without parents is a witty, family-friendly book, where readers go into the world of fiction in the year 2053! I loved all of the many characters in the book! My absolute favourite is  Myrt, The lemon family’s Cocker spaniel, whose nemesis is all things orange! 

Jonnie and Eliza Lemon’s parents are going to Mars forever! Luckily, the confident and brainy siblings come up with a plan to get to their parents and make them not want to go to Mars. So they pack their stuff, and set off across the ocean, and run into many obstacles and advantages along the way.

They run into robot animals and many more things along their travel path. They soon meet the mischievous Noah, who tricks them into staying and he pretends to help save their parents. He actually doesn’t help and instead sends high technology robots to go into their brains so he can hack them too.! Luckily, they avoid this and finds out Noah’s true ways…. 

After this, he locks them in a treehouse and sends the robots to go after them! I won’t spoil the ending for you but this is such an enjoyable read with lots of action and interesting characters.

Hindra’s Heroine By Kelly-Marie Pollock

I received Hindra’s Heroine by Kelly-Marie Pollock to review, the third book in the Chronicles of Nova Morgan Collection. I have been completely absorbed in the Chronicles of Nova Morgan, with its unique and hilarious characters and fantastic storyline, and am a little sad this is the final book in the collection.



*Contains adult content including sex, drug use, profanity, and violence*

Hindra's Heroine by Kelly-Marie Pollock Book Cover

Hindra’s Heroine

Holed up in an off-world island in the middle of the Irish Sea, Nova and her allies are nursing their wounds after the battle at Mount Divinity left Nova mortal once again. They’ve all but given up hope on ever finding a way off the island when Ruth, the wayward witch, wakes up screaming, visits assaulting her already fragile mind. With the entity Ultio now puppeteering her limbs, Ruth’s magics lead them back to London, back to where Nova’s story first began. Odyssey.

Join Nova, Ruth, Chaplin, and Noah as they group together with a whole host of new and familiar characters to infiltrate Hindra and take back what’s theirs.

Together, they must face the darkness lingering within and battle their way back to the light, but for one of their number that battle may well be futile.

For she is the slaughter, the world her lamb.

Book cover - Hindra's Heroine by Kelly-Marie Pollock
Kelly-Marie Pollock Author Photo

Kelly-Marie Pollock

Kelly is a married mum of 4 plus 3 adult step-children. She has an intense love of the Victorian era, Vampires, and is waiting for a Zombie uprising. Kelly’s passion is writing. She is also a mental health advocate and BiPolar warrior. When she isn’t reading or writing, she enjoys long nature walks with her husband and their children. Kelly can not get through the day without her morning cup of tea. She uses excessive amounts of sarcasm and profanity in most sentences and she’s not even sorry. (Why would you be!? haha!)

My Thoughts

I had been eagerly waiting for the final part of the trilogy to land in my inbox having thoroughly enjoyed losing myself in the storyline. Once again I was not disappointed! Nova’s strong character and resilience shine through as Ruth takes them back to Odyssey in an attempt to save their friends and take back what’s rightly theirs. Once again I truly didn’t expect the ending at all and was left feeling a little emotional. Kelly-Marie Pollock writes powerful storylines with fabulous characters with their unique personalities. I’m sad to see the story but can’t wait to see what’s next!

Devil’s Fjord By David Hewson

I received Devil’s Fjord by David Hewson so review thanks to Random Things Blog Tours. Devil’s Fjord is a standalone psychological thriller where two local boys go missing, exposing the darkness at the heart of the Faroe Islands.

Devil’s Fjord

A remote island. An isolated community. A terrible secret.

If the new District Sheriff, Tristan Haraldsen, thought moving to a remote village on the island of Vagar would be the chance for a peaceful life with his wife Elsebeth, his first few weeks in office swiftly correct him of that notion.

Provoked into taking part in the village’s whale hunt against his will, Haraldsen blunders badly, and in the ensuing chaos, two local boys go missing. Blaming himself, Haraldsen dives into the investigation and soon learns that the boys are not the first to have gone missing on Vagar.

As Tristan and Elsebeth become increasingly ensnared by the island’s past, they realise its wild beauty hides an altogether uglier and sinister truth.

David Hewson

David Hewson is a former journalist with The Times, the Sunday Times, and The Independent. He is the author of more than twenty-five novels including his Rome-based Nic Costa series, which has been published in fifteen languages. He has also written three acclaimed adaptations of the Danish TV series The Killing.

@david_hewson | davidhewson.com

Fans of Nordic noir will love this standalone thriller, perfect for readers of Tom Rob Smith’s The Farm, Elly Griffiths’ Dr. Ruth Galloway Mysteries, Ragnar Jonasson’s Whiteout, and Michael Ridpath’s Amnesia

⦁ As well as his critically acclaimed Nic Costa series, Hewson has also written three adaptations of the Danish TV series The Killing, which have sold over 54,000 copies

Astral Travel By Elizabeth Baines

I received Astral Travel by Elizabeth Baines to review as part of Random Things Blog Tours. Astral Travel unravels the mysteries of Jo’s family history as she tries to write a book about her late father.

Astral Travel

After Patrick Jackson’s death his estranged daughter Jo begins to try to unravel the mysteries that always surrounded him. Why did he never talk about his past in Ireland? Why was he always so moody and bad-tempered in the home while a talkative charmer in the outside world? Why, at one time, did he forbid Jo to do family history research? And why did he seem to have it in for her especially, affecting her life into adulthood?

Why, too, do Jo’s memories of her own childhood differ so starkly from her mother’s?

The more Jo questions and digs, the more the mysteries deepen. Until at last she uncovers a chain of secrets forged in the religious and sexual prejudices of the past, but with the power to affect the lives of Patrick’s family in the present day.

Elizabeth Baines

Elizabeth is the author of two previous novels published by Salt, The Birth Machine and Too Many Magpies, as well as two short-story collections, Balancing on the Edge of the World and Used to Be. She’s also been a prizewinning playwright for Radio 4, writing both comedy and serious drama, and has produced and acted in her own plays for fringe theatre. She has been a schoolteacher and has taught Writing in universities, but now writes full time. She lives with her husband in Manchester where she brought up her two now grown sons.

My Thoughts

I wasn’t sure what to expect with Astral Travel but I wanted something other than a murder mystery to read and was intrigued when reading the blurb.

Jo has so many vivid memories of her childhood and yet some seem to differ so wildly from her mother’s and sisters. She decides writing about her late father will help her understand what happened much clearly. She has to dig quite deep to eventually start getting nearer the truth and slowly, bit by bit the story unravels.

Between religious and sexual prejudice, Jo learns the truth is wilder than she first thought but publishing a book may not be a wise idea for the sake of the family.

Overall I really enjoyed the way Astral Travel is written and reading a different kind of mystery book. Family histories are always interesting but discovering some of the darker secrets can be a real eye opener, not to mention a stark reminder that prejudice can impact people’s lives in such an intense way.