New Releases by Martyn Bedford

When an out-of-work actor discovers his bedsit once belonged to an obscure, suicidal painter, he turns his talents to re-creating the ultimate site-specific performance… As a teenage girl drifts from depression into a permanent state of sleep, she becomes the focus of both scientific interest and an unexpected, cult following... Against a backdrop of hooliganism and hostility, an asylum seeker writes letters home assuring his family how welcoming England is... Many of the characters in Martyn Bedford’s stories find themselves at a point of redefinition, trading in their old identity for something new. Whether it is an act of retreat or escape – fantasising about storming out of a thankless job, or just avoiding a bad-tempered husband for a few moments on Christmas day – they each understand the first step in changing a reality, is to reconstruct it. ‘Martyn Bedford is the genuine article, a writer of unmistakable flair and accomplishment.’ - New York Times ‘Haunting and intimate portraits of vividly different lives that get under your skin and stay there.’ - Jeremy Dyson ''Letters Home further establishes Martyn Bedford as a stand-out writer of highly memorable fiction.’ - Jacob Ross

Two went on the run. One came back. The day Gloria first met Uman Padeem her life changed. He was the new kid in school with a mysterious past, confidence and charisma, but what attracts Gloria most is the way he sees her deep longing to escape her humdrum life. And so they do. When Gloria returns, she sits with her mother facing a detective. Uman has disappeared; they must find him. As she retells their story, Gloria begins to wonder if it was Uman that took her away, or if she had started to disappear much, much earlier . . . With each question, the mystery surrounding Gloria''s disappearance deepens.

A suspenseful tragedy laced with romance, Never Ending will take you from the past—a steamy vacation in Greece that’s cut short by the unfathomable—to the present—a lake-side clinic stay—to the truth in between. “What do you deserve, Siobhan?” “I don’t deserve to forget he’s dead. Even for a moment.” “I asked what you do deserve, not what you don’t.” “I deserve not to be forgiven." Shiv''s brother Declan, her best friend, is dead. It''s been all over the news. Consumed by grief and guilt, she agrees to become an inpatient at the Korsakoff Clinic. There she meets Mikey. Caron. The others. They share a similar torment. And there, subjected to the clinic''s unconventional therapy, they must face what they can''t bear to see. Shiv is flooded with flashbacks, nightmares, haunting visions of Declan on their last, fateful family vacation in Greece. And with memories of Nikos, the beautiful young man on the tour boat. It started there, with him, beside the glittering sea . . . the beginning of the end. “The characters and the scenery are rendered with such photographic precision that readers will feel as though they’re watching a film.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred “Bedford skillfully pushes and pulls at the reader’s emotions while carefully revealing the details of the backstory and the aftermath until the two converge.” —Booklist, Starred “Part-mystery, part-romance, and part-disturbing portrait of how fragile the human psyche can be, this novel is provocative and not for the faint of heart.” —SLJ From the Hardcover edition.

Friday, December 14th. Fourteen-year old Alex rushes home that night to beat his curfew. The next morning, he wakes up in an unfamiliar house, different part of the country, and it's the middle of June. Six months seem to have disappeared overnight. The family at the breakfast table? Total strangers. And when Alex looks in the mirror, another boy - called Philip, or Flip - stares back. The race against the clock is on, and unless Alex finds out what's happened and how to get back his own life, he'll be forever trapped in someone else's body and life.

A fugitive turns up at a young widow''s door. Finn is a draft dodger. Afraid of dying and opposed to the war, he could see no way out until a stranger slipped him a calling card from an anti-draft network. Now on the run, he has the promise of a new identity and a new life, but if he is caught, the punishment will be brutal. Then he meets Bryher. Thrown together by war, united in grief, they take a chance on one another- a chance that could make or break them.

"Unusually deft and witty dialogue--. With great aplomb, [Bedford] has brought off an erotic thriller."--The New York Times Book Review In The Houdini Girl, award-winning mystery writer Martyn Bedford explores the pulsing spiritual chaos that lies at the heart of erotic obsession. Fletcher "Red" Brandon is a master magician who uses his talents to seduce Rosa, a flinty Irish woman. But when Rosa is killed suddenly, Red discovers secrets about the woman with whom he shared one sexy, combative, freewheeling year. Inside Rosa''s shoulder bag are a wig and a stranger''s passport. And when a routine investigation reveals that Rosa has vanished before--and that her father was a terrorist for the IRA--Peter suspects foul play. Red finds himself in Amsterdam, a stranger stumbling through his lover''s secret history. Following a trail of addiction, prostitution, and murder, Red''s search for the truth becomes more and more laden with mystery and forces him to reveal his own unsavory secrets. Masterfully plotted, The Houdini Girl transcends sleight-of-hand trickery for a stunning tale of love, loss, and the lure of illusion.

When Ethan discovers that Chloe Fortune is a dowser and that her acute sixth sense allows her to locate anything she sets her mind on, they seem made for each other. But as they hunt their quarry, they close in on other truths: about themselves, about each other and about obsession itself.

Gregory Lynn is thirty-five years old, a bachelor, and an only child from the age of four-and-a-half. He has one brown eye and one green. Scarred by childhood trauma, he lives a solitary life, sequestered in his London house, drawing cartoon fantasies to pass the days. In his drawings, he has control; by drawing things, he sometimes makes them happen. But the world has a way of creeping in. Gregory's mother dies. And he discovers, in a dusty box in the attic, the long-forgotten school reports whose words are the unending refrain of a man sentenced to failure at an early age. Must work. Little progress. Disappointing. Gregory Lynn reads, and remembers: teachers and subjects, names and places. The history teacher who humiliated him. Lynn, that's a girl's name, isn't it? The geography teacher who threatened to expel him. The gym teacher who called him donkey. And on and on until, as methodically as a professor laying out a lesson plan, Gregory Lynn prepares for the cold-blooded acts of revision that will even the score with those who made him the way he is - seven deadly subjects in all.