Goodreads|Amazon US|Amazon UK
Release date: March 1, 2017

Publisher: Bloodhound Books 

Genre: Crime Fiction 

Blurb: 

MURDER. BETRAYAL. REVENGE.

It’s not the homecoming Detective Inspector Tudor Manx was expecting, but solving the case is just the start of his problems.

Recently transferred from the London Met to the North Wales Constabulary, Detective Inspector Tudor Manx has come to Island of Anglesey hoping for a quiet life.

But his hopes are dashed when a brutally mutilated body is found crucified to the bow of a fishing boat sending shockwaves through the peaceful community.

Manx’s faces pressure to solve the case quickly equipped with an inexperienced team. 

Is the body a message or a premonition of more murders to come?

Adding to his mounting problems, Manx’s troubled past returns to haunt him. Manx left the island after the disappearance of his younger sister, Miriam; a cold case that still remains unsolved.

Can Manx solve the case before the body count rises?

How will he cope when he is forced to choose between his family and his duty as a police officer? 

This is the first book in the thrilling new DI Tudor Manx series.

I’m the final stop on the blog tour for Anglesey Blue and I have an extract to share with you. 

Extract: 

“You’re telling me. Nearly had a bloody riot on my hands. Should have had you lot on speed dial.” She retrieved a scrap of paper from under the bar, and read it aloud. “Try this one. How many number one singles did the Swedish Super Group, Abba, have in their eighteen-year career?” “UK, or worldwide?” Gwen smiled, and laid down the paper. “See, that’s why you’re a copper, asking the right questions. Didn’t bloody say, did it? So, Dewi Diesel and Mick the Chimney go at it, hammer and tongs. Had to give them both a pint on the house to calm them down. Honestly, men! They’re no better than kids sometimes.” “Well, that’s the problem with pop quiz nights, isn’t it?” Manx paused before continuing. “Winner takes it all.” Gwen thought for a moment. “Very bloody funny!” she said, slapping her hands on the bar like a punctuation mark. “Right, can’t be standing here all night gabbing with you. Aiding and abetting they call it, yeah?” “More like co-operating with police enquiries,” Manx said, waving his nearly finished pint in her direction. “Well, it’s not like much happens round here that needs enquiring about, is there? Proper You should take me up on that haircut, before I put up my prices. Once word gets out,you could be waiting for days.”
“Days?”
“I’m renting the old salon next to the wool shop. Nothing fancy, mind. A couple of stations,and one of those big hair-dryers, but you’ve got to start somewhere, right?” Gwen skimmed afew, frothy centimetres off the top of the beer, and slid it over the bar.
Manx reached for the pint, and caught a glimpse of his long, thin face in the mirror behind the bar. It made him wonder for a moment as to the identity of the middle-aged man staring back at him from behind the bottles and optics. The harshness of the florescent light was hardly flattering, not that it mattered—Manx’s face wore his years too comfortably, he thought. He had longed for some rebellion, some rage against the onset of age, but his face appeared to have surrendered without much of a fight. The dark, puffy rings that puckered beneath his eyes,the three-day old stubble, and the slightly too long sideburns peppered with grey did little to distract from the overall impression of a forty-nine-year-old policeman, with little time for personal vanity, but, as of yet, had not given up completely.
 
“Might take you up on that offer, after all.” Gwen nodded. “I can fit you in Tuesday afternoon.” “Outstanding. Tuesday, it is,” Manx said, turning his gaze from the mirror’s exacting judgment. “And don’t be a stranger. We could do with some new faces in here, even if it’s just your ugly mug.” There was little chance of being a stranger here, Manx thought. He’d been back on the island precisely fourteen days, and each one of them had ended in the exact same location; the lounge bar at the Pilot Arms, Moelfre. Not much has changed since he was last here, either. The neat regiment of cracked Toby jugs still held court over the fireplace, casting their beady enamel eyes over the clientele. The wide bay windows were still festooned with a rag-tag weave of old fishing nets. In the main bar, a scrap of young men clacked balls around the pool table, and in the snug, a coven of young girls huddled around a table, all hushed secrets and loud makeup. Along the bar, the older men in flat caps and corduroy trousers occupied the barstools that had, by now, shifted and familiarised themselves to fit each of their buttocks with comfortable precision. The pub must have seen better days, Manx thought, but he struggled to remember when. Maybe the Pilot Arms was one of those establishments whose better days were yet to come. Was he really back where it all started? It wasn’t hard for Manx to recall his teenage self, flirting with the barmaid, and pestering the members of the Young Farmer’s Club to buy him drinks, before being thrown out on his ear at closing time. You can take the boy out of Anglesey, but you can’t drink the Anglesey out of the boy, he thought to himself, and savoured another mouthful of beer, as if to prove his own point. Gwen winked at him from the other side of the bar.
 
It was a casual sort of wink; the sort you give your friend when you’re in cahoots about something. Manx guessed she was in her early thirties, give or take a couple of years, and possessed the pale, almost pearlescent Welsh complexion, with the requisite blush of pink around the cheekbones. Her hair was coal-black, and she wore it up in a tousled bun which left two strands to fall in a nonchalant fashion across her cheekbones. It was Gwen’s eyes, however, which captured most peoples’ attention. They would inevitably linger a second too long on her eyes, as if they couldn’t imagine a colour that striking existing naturally—a deep green, tempered by flecks of almond around the pupils. Someone had mentioned to Manx she had a young boy, six or so, but the father had left for Saudi Arabia a few years back. Manx couldn’t blame the man for escaping the island; he’d done the same himself, but leaving behind a kid and a woman like Gwen Schofield seemed like a rash decision he’d come to regret. Manx was about to sink the remaining drops of his sequel and order the full trilogy, when his mobile vibrated anxiously across the bar. He checked the number: work. He contemplated not answering, but they’d eventually track him down, and send over a junior to knock on the door of his neighbour and landlady, Megan Evans, who appeared to know the whereabouts of everyone in the village at any given time. “Manx,” he said, with an abruptness he hoped would ensure whoever was interrupting his off-duty Saturday night, would keep it short. PC Kevin Priddle’s voice was loud and over-excited. The hue and cry of a rainstorm rumbled and cracked in the background as he spoke. Manx looked out. In the past hour, the weather had turned from a chilly October evening into an ugly, full-throated thunderstorm. Along the faint horizon of the Irish Sea, several container ships were already anchored, their pilot lights twitching nervously through the fog. They’d be there for the night; no port this side of Liverpool was going to let them dock until the storm had passed. Manx moved closer to the door. “Where did you say you were?” He sensed an edge of urgency and maybe even a twinge of excitement in the Constable’s reply. “Jesus! And you can’t locate another senior officer? No, it’s fine. I’ll drive myself.” Manx hung up, and returned to the lounge. He placed a twenty on the bar, and instructed Gwen to keep the change. “Leaving me already?” she said. “Can’t keep those super models waiting. They’re very temperamental; goes with the job,” Manx said. “Oh, and by the way, nine number one’s in the U.K., and no one’s completely sure about the worldwide. In case it comes up again.” Gwen smiled. “Fount of knowledge, you are,” she said. “And don’t forget, Tuesday at eleven. Make a new man of you.” * * * The rain swept sideways into Manx’s face, as he stepped from the shelter of the pub. He walked briskly past the sea-front car park, all but abandoned for the winter, and towards the narrow slip of road leading to the Bryn Mawr housing estate. Turning up his jacket collar, he felt a cold trickle of rain trace down his spine. He shuddered. Welcome to fucking Wales, he thought, and ducked his head against the elements he felt were just beginning to conspire against him.

About the Author: 

Dylan is a native, Anglesey-born Welshman who now lives in Oakland, California with his wife Laura and daughter, Isabella. He has worked as a media executive and copywriter at various TV networks and advertising agencies both in London and San Francisco. Currently, he is owner and Creative Director of Jones Digital Media, a video content agency.

Dylan was born on Anglesey and moved away when he was seven years old to the Northeast of England. His family then moved to the Wirral for several years before settling back on Anglesey when he was fourteen. Dylan studied Communication Arts and Media at the University of Leeds, then moved to Cardiff, working for S4C. In 1993 he relocated to London as a Creative Director with Channel 4 TV. Today, he lives in Oakland, California. His parents, sister and most of his immediate family still live on the island.

Anglesey Blue is the first in a series of crime novels featuring the sardonic, sharp-witted but troubled detective, Detective Inspector Tudor Manx. Dylan’s life, both on and off the island, inspired him to develop the series.

 “I love to use my imagination to create believable characters in a setting I know well,” Dylan says. “I want DI Tudor Manx and all the supporting characters to live in readers’ minds for many years. I’m looking forward to writing more of Tudor’s journey as he confronts the demons of his past to find the peace and redemption he’s searching for.”

Goodreads|Amazon UK|Amazon US
Release date: February 28, 2017

Publisher: Death by Choc Lit

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Blurb: 
What if you’d been accused of one of the worst crimes imaginable?

Detective Inspector Matthew Adams is slowly picking up the pieces from a case that nearly cost him the lives of his entire family and his own sanity too. On the surface, he seems to be moving on, but he drinks to forget – and when he closes his eyes, the nightmares still come.

But the past is the past – or is it? Because the evil Patrick Sullivan might be out of the picture, but there’s somebody who is just as intent on making Matthew’s life hell, and they’re doing it in the cruelest way possible.

When Matthew finds himself accused of a horrific and violent crime, will his family stand by him? And will he even be around to help when his new enemy goes after them as well?

Excerpt: 

Matthew woke abruptly, hurtled from sleep by a nightmare he thought would never end. Sweat saturating his face, pooling in the hollow of his neck, he pulled himself upright and squinted against the thin trickle of sunlight filtering through the slatted blinds at the window. His first thought was that he had a hangover the size of an airdrome. His second, that they had no blinds at their bedroom window.

Easing his legs over the edge of the bed, a wheeze rattling his chest and nausea gripping his stomach as the room revolved in sick-making revolutions around him, his gaze went instinctively to the bedside table. His inhaler was there, the blue curative he carried with him, lined up neatly alongside his phone. Disorientated, Matthew blinked hard. His vision was blurred. His memory? Where the bloody hell was he?

A hotel room. Functional, he registered. Scanning his surroundings, he noted the fire instructions pinned to the door, the ancient fire extinguisher on the wall, the dusty circa nineteen eighties carpet. A shithole. Matthew closed his eyes and swallowed against the acrid taste in the back of his throat, then almost had a heart attack as his phone rang, loud and shrill, screeching through his brain like an express train. Scrambling around his mind for some recollection of what had happened the night before, he came up with nothing that was tangible, his tenuous thoughts seeming to slip away, like sea filtering ineffectually through sand. He had a few grainy, grey memories: Jasmine, the apartment, tastefully decorated; the painting, abstract colours intermingling; coffee, dripping; shoes, clacking, like the ominous slow tick of a clock. One shoe. A stiletto. Connor …? Had he been there? Here? Matthew squeezed his eyes shut, tried desperately to remember. Natalie? Christ, no.

His phone rang again, sharp, insistent. Becky, it had to be, and Matthew had no clue what to say to her. Attempting to control his escalating panic, to regulate his breathing, he let it ring and reached for his inhaler instead … and then stopped dead.

Seeing the crimson stains on his hand, Matthew’s heart somersaulted in his chest.

Dried blood, he registered, trying hard not to let the panic, now gripping his gut like a vice, cancel out logical thought. Old blood. His? How old?

Bringing both palms shakily to his face, he examined them. They were ingrained with the stuff. He flipped them over. His knuckles were bruised. Right hand. Sweet Jesus, what had he done? Disentangling himself from the duvet, Matthew scrambled to his feet, then quelling the nausea now clawing its way up his windpipe, he checked himself over. Deep wheals ran vertically down his chest. Four. Matthew swallowed hard. Checked his limbs. Found scratches on his arms. His neck, too. He could feel those, raw and sore.

His pulse rate ratcheting up, he yanked the duvet back. More blood. Too much. Stark against the grey-white of the sheets. Trying desperately to keep a lid on his emotions, he turned, stumbling towards the bathroom, where he leaned over the toilet and vomited the sparse contents of his stomach.

Oohh doesn’t this sound great?! I’m also going to share a little information about her other book, After She’s Gone. 

Blurb: 

After She’s Gone

He’s killed your child and kidnapped your wife. What would YOU do?

There’s evil and then there’s Patrick Sullivan. A drug dealer, pimp and murderer, there are no depths to which Patrick would not sink, and Detective Inspector Matthew Adams has found this out in the most devastating way imaginable. 

When Patrick’s brother is shot dead in a drug bust gone wrong, the bitter battle between the two men intensifies, and Matthew finds it increasingly difficult to hold the moral high ground. All he wants is to make the pimping scum suffer the way he did … the way Lily did.

But being at war with such a depraved individual means that it’s not just Matthew who’s in danger. Patrick has taken a lot from Matthew, but he hasn’t taken everything – and now he wants everything.

About the Author: 

Sheryl Browne brings you edgy, sexy contemporary fiction and psychological thrillers.

A member of the Crime Writers’ Association, Romantic Novelists’ Association and awarded a Red Ribbon by The Wishing Shelf Book Awards, Sheryl has several books published and two short stories in Birmingham City University anthologies, where she completed her MA in Creative Writing.

Recommended to the publisher by the WH Smith Travel fiction buyer, Sheryl’s contemporary fiction comes to you from multi-award winning Choc Lit.

Website|Twitter|Facebook|Pinterest

Trailers for the books: 

DI Matthew Adams series: https://youtu.be/0MqZ5TpBwGk

After She’s Gone: https://youtu.be/ujK0mFpYYrM

Goodreads|Amazon
Release date: March 14, 2017

Publisher: ECW Press 

Genre: Mystery/Thriller 

Blurb: 

Retired detective T.J. Peterson is working the table scraps that his former partner, Danny Little, sometimes throws his way. One of them has Peterson hearing from a snitch about a body buried 30 years ago, the same time a drug kingpin went MIA. Peterson is also ducking an ex-con with a grudge, a hitman who likes playing jack-in-the-box with a 12 gauge. Then a former lover re-enters Peterson’s life and begs him to find her daughter, an addict who knows too much about the local drug trade for her own safety. The search for the girl and the truth about the 30-year-old corpse takes Peterson down into the hell of it all, deep into the underworld of crack houses, contract killing, money laundering, and crooked professionals doubling down on their investments of black money.

Welcome to my stop on the The Hell of it All blog tour. I have an excerpt to share with you today and the second part of it will be available on Do Some Damage on March 9th. This book sounds great, definitely on my TBR list! 

Excerpt: 

Chapter One

Peterson swung the black Jetta onto the shoulder of the narrow coastal road, grabbed the cell phone from the shotgun seat, and caught the call on the fourth ring.

“You’re late,” a man’s voice said.

“I’m five minutes away.”

“I don’t like it, man.”

“Just sit tight!”

“Five minutes, and I’m counting.”

The phone went dead, and Peterson gunned it. In the darkness, he missed the snowed-in path to the beach and squealed to a stop. He scowled at his mistake, then popped the transmission into reverse, backed up, and made the turn into the icy snowmobile ruts.

Scrub spruce and alders raked both sides of the Jetta. The occasional frost-heaved boulder ground hard against the undercarriage. Peterson heard a snowmobile roar to life not far away. Then the path took a wide turn and abruptly ended in a small clearing surrounded by snow-matted grass. At the far end, a heavy-set man in a black snowmobile suit and black helmet stood beside his machine.

Peterson knew him as a low-level criminal with big dreams; the kind who talks speed but cruises twenty clicks under the limit. His name was Harvey Roop, but because of the way he hunched over, as though he were carrying a heavy shell on his back, everyone called him Turtle.

Peterson reached for the .38 Ruger in the glove box and climbed from his car. He shoved the gun into the right-hand pocket of his brown field coat. He could taste the salt air in the cold wind off the ocean and looked over to where he heard waves breaking against the rocky shore. In the moonlight, he saw their crests bright with foam and the dark shapes of wild pea and rose bushes poking through the snow.

Then Turtle snapped on a heavy-duty flashlight and blasted the beam into Peterson’s eyes. Peterson hollered for him to aim it somewhere else.

“I don’t like being here with you,” Turtle said, his voice muffled through the helmet. He crossbeamed the path Peterson had driven down.

“You’re the one dressed like Darth Vader,” Peterson said.

Turtle shut the flashlight, then leaned over the snowmobile and killed the motor. He removed the helmet and set it on the seat. He worked a wad of gum in his mouth.

Excerpt to be continued on March 9 on Do Some Damage

Excerpted from The Hell of It All by Bob Kroll. © 2017 by Bob Kroll. All rights reserved. Published by ECW Press Ltd. http://www.ecwpress.com

 About the Author: 

Bob Kroll has been a professional writer for more than 35 years. His work includes books, stage plays, radio dramas, TV documentaries, and historical docu-dramas for museums. The Hell of It All is the second novel in a projected trilogy featuring T.J. Peterson. Kroll lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Visit Bob Kroll’s website to learn more about him.