standalone novels
ONCE UPON A TIME LIKE YOU'VE NEVER READ IT BEFORE…
DI Lyla Rondell is on the case of a lifetime. Tasked with investigating a series of perplexing deaths, the only lead she has is that each appears to be based on a different classic fairy tale. Far from the stuff of bedtime stories, the press is having a field day with what they have named the Grimm Ripper Murders.
But as the bodies stack up, Lyla’s whole world is about to flip on its head. Because the killer’s bloody trail stretches deep into her own origin story, and when she discovers the truth, nothing will ever be the same again.
Faced with the fact that everything she knows is fiction, Lyla will have to take a little creative license of her own if she’s going to turn the final page on the killings…
'An exquisite puzzle of a crime thriller, it revels in the shadows, as reality is savagely entwined with the very roots of storytelling itself… Prepare to be spellbound because A. K. Benedict is a master of this darkest art’ JANICE HALLETT
‘A clever, clever, thoroughly meta, extraordinarily enjoyable modern fairy-tale with layer after layer of intrigue and a breathless pace, I loved it, especially the delicious happy ever after’ ANDREA MARA
‘Hugely inventive and mind-bendingly clever’ CLAIRE McGOWAN
‘A fairytale trickster of a book, witty, sly and wickedly clever; it gripped me from first page to last. This is the thriller you'd get if Angela Carter kidnapped Stephen King and made him write with toadstool ink’ KIT WHITFIELD
‘Some passages read like Agatha Christie, some like Angela Carter – but all of it is written with the smoothness and intelligence that is AK Benedict’s signature style. With charm and chills often on the same page, this is a serpentine novel that refuses to give up its secrets until it’s good and ready’ CHARLOTTE BOND
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WRITING AS A.K. BENEDICT
If you get out, you’d think you’d be one of the lucky ones. But you’re not. The house infects you.
There’s an old stone house near Coal Hill School. Most people hurry past it. They’ve heard the stories. But, if you stop, and look up, you’ll see the face of a girl, pressed up against a window. Screaming.
Tanya finds herself drawn to the stone house. There’s a mystery there, and she’s going to solve it. But the more she investigates, the more she realises that there’s a presence in the house. One that wants her.
Something is waiting for Tanya in the stone house. Something that has been trapping others in its web over the years. Something that is far worse than any ghost.
'This haunting supernatural thriller is full of hidden treasure that will delight you long after you've turned the last page' Sarah Pinborough
'An absolutely glorious crime/fantasy/ghost story mash-up. In a seriously crowded genre, A K Benedict has produced something original, quirky and enormous fun...Beautifully written, darkly funny, constantly surprising...my find of the year so far' Sharon Bolton
Maria King knows a secret London. Born blind, she knows the city by sound and touch and smell but now that surgery has restored her sight, the world seems a scarier place and she doesn't want to see it.
DCI Jonathan Dark also sees a different side to the city. He's in the shadows, haunted by his failure to save a woman from the hands of stalker, and he won't let it happen again.
Now a killer has set his sights on Maria, and Jonathan must find a way to stop him.
But when gathering evidence, you can't choose your source.
Can you save the living by talking to the dead?
'AK Benedict is snapping at the heels of Ben Aaronovitch as one of the new stars of the sub-genre of crime with a supernatural twist' Sunday Express
A serial killer with all the time in the world...
Stephen Killigan has been cold since the day he arrived in Cambridge. Seven hundred years of history staining the stones of the university have given him a chill he can't shake. Then he stumbles across the body of a missing beauty queen - a body which disappears before the police arrive...
Unwittingly, Killigan has entered the sinister world of Jackamore Grass on a trail that reaches back to seventeenth-century Cambridge. It's a world of cadavers, philosophers and scholars of deadly beauty, a world where a person's corpse can be found before they even go missing, of a city and a person that hold far too many secrets written in blood.
Written in sinuous, elegant prose with characters that linger in the mind...one of the more interesting debuts this year ― DAILY MAIL
A fast-paced page-turner, this is a speculative crime thriller that travels to the heart of a series of gruesome crimes by way of a city and person that have far too many secrets written in blood ― CORNFLOWER BOOKS
A perfect mix of mystery, humour and delightfully managed time-travel fantasy. ― TRIPFICTION.COM
There is much to admire and intrigue in this debut novel. It crosses over several genres to offer us a speculative thriller, complete with murder-mystery, police investigation, philosophy, the aesthetics of murder, time-travel and magic. It's inventive, haunting and compelling ― THE LITTLE READER LIBRARY