2025: Publications

 

2025 has been a lovely year for me, and it's been varied and productive in terms of publications. I've enjoyed promoting my new novel, Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife, and seeing copies of the hardback in Sainsburys and Asda has been a new and very pleasing experience. The book had lovely reviews in the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Sunday Post, Morning Star, Critic, and elsewhere and the reaction overseas, especially in the US and Italy, has also been gratifying. The book publishes in France and Poland next year.

The first five Rachel Savernake books have also been published as an ebook box set, while the paperback edition of Hemlock Bay also came out this year. Hemlock Bay was also shortlisted for the eDunnit award for crime novel of the year, which was delightful.

I published a second, much expanded edition of The Golden Age of Murder to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the original publication. Again, the Daily Mail's review was very kind and I believe the book has also just been covered in the Times Literary Supplement (though I haven't caught up with that as yet). This is a book I remain very proud of, but in one sense a book of this kind is never truly 'finished'. So to have the chance to develop the book even further was an offer I simply couldn't refuse, and I was happy with the result.

This year, I published four anthologies. Leading the way was Playing Dead, a Detection Club members' anthology. Then There Were More was edited on behalf of the Crime Writers' Association, while there were two British Library Crime Classic anthologies, Cyanide in the Sun (summertime mysteries) and As if by Magic (impossible crimes). 

A very pleasing development was that Joffe Books acquired the ebook rights to my Lake District Mystery series and started to republish them at regular intervals. It's been great to see new readers reacting to Hannah and Daniel.

I've written a few short stories (although most of these are due to be published next year), and intros to ten Crime Classics in addition to the anthologies, plus an intro for a book of short stories written by Tom Mead. And I've recorded a couple of features for Hammer Films Blu-Rays, one of which has yet to be released. So it's been a busy year in terms of publications of different kinds. Much more importantly, it's one that has felt truly fulfilling.