2025 Writing Mentorship Award (for unfinished or finished manuscripts)
A Lovecraftian monster invades a Sally Rooney-style relationship story. A young woman, over-reliant on her relationship with her boyfriend, moves into a house with him, which contains a telepathic Creature. The creature offers to secure her relationship in exchange for live prey.
When a quiet Wiltshire librarian discovers she’s being hunted for powers she didn’t know she had, she must survive a global witch purge, unlock the truth of her lineage, and choose between the man who sees her humanity… and the one who ignites her power.
Diagnosed with an autoimmune condition, Elena Russo's looking for answers. A discovery about her late father leads Elena to India where she tracks down the place he had his future read to him from an ancient Nadi Leaf. But what good comes from knowing your future? Can Elena find her way to healing?
When an ambitious career woman regains consciousness with no memory of the night before, she must work with a therapist to uncover the truth, both about that night, and the illicit love which led her to self-destruct.
A DCI fighting severe OCD must confront his lifelong fear and dark past to solve five murders in the corrupt world of dog showing, proving he is worthy of promotion.
The Inheritance Games meets The Haunted Mansion: locked up in a haunted house, a 17-year-old loner is forced to work with her housemates and solve a series of riddles left by the resident ghost to discover the house’s dark secret and earn her freedom.
Charlie Gorham becomes a medical student, not to become a doctor but to uncover the truth behind his father’s death. Instead he unearths a conspiracy involving Big Pharma and its commercial interests.
18th Century – a 15-year-old orphan goes to live with his aunt in Cornwall, unaware his arrival has inspired a murder—can he discover the killer’s plot and stop them in time?
When poorly and lonely William names a scruffy, one-legged pigeon Jack, he doesn’t just find a friend — he finds the courage to imagine, explore, and heal. Together they travel the world from his bedroom window… until it’s time for William to fly solo.
A dwarven barbarian burdened by destiny, searching for her redemption. A sassy, sensual, cocksure gothic fae bard, looking for a way to save his dying sister. A journey that binds them as hunter and prey. Finding love while failing to save the world, bringing about a dark prophecy and war.
After Marley Luck is swindled by the King of Westwind, she vows to do anything she can to remove him from the throne, even if it means sending the kingdom into chaos in the process.
Two versions of Matilda – a stressed-out mother and a fading opera star – swap lives in their search for true love. IN ANY LIFE combines the chemistry of Emma and Dexter in ONE DAY with the multitude of possibilities in THE VERSIONS OF US
A bright Tanganyikan girl called Redemption finds unexpected humour on the tropical island of Zanzibar until revolution and the threat of conjugal slavery separate her from the man she has grown to love. A tale of betrayal, courage and salvation.
As East London gentrifies and dark forces gather, can three very different women fight forces of misogyny and empower a new generation of witches? The charming wildness of PRACTICAL MAGIC meets the warmth of THE VERY SECRET SOCIETY OF IRREGULAR WITCHES, for fans of A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES and anyone...
An adult, sci-fi, horror retelling of Rosemary’s Baby (sans the sexual violence), featuring a snarky, fish-out-of-water, final-girl and a secret cult of angel worshippers attempting to return the Garden of Earth to the Seraphim by way of a sinister fertility mission in outer space.
Satulinar Cosmina, a young orphan unsure of her place in the world, sets off to save her sister from bandits, but soon finds herself on an epic quest to save her land from an ancient evil.
On the brink of eviction, Hannah discovers she’s pregnant, forcing her to move to her husband’s ancestral land in rural Kenya, where they're thrust into tensions over land access. Her husband is lost in the struggle, and she must confront her fears and decide how far she’ll go to fight for justice.
An inspirational story of love and war based on the true account of Makorongo, an East African serviceman who became a prisoner of war to the Japanese but was repatriated by Hans-Werner, his boyhood friend, before America bombed Tokyo in WWII.
The youngest princess of the Heavenly Mountains, whose family possesses the legendary tree of Peaches of Immortality, encounters Kunmi, the god of Ili, who reveals a reality very different to what she's always known, and must find the way to true eternal life, even if it costs her everything.
On a witch-hunting planet, a desperate healer whose magic is fading must ally with her nemesis to avert war before the price of success becomes unbearable.
Detlef, a young reindeer moves with his family from Finland to Africa. He's homesick. The change of school and his environment is a huge challenge. He finds it hard to find his place. But with a strange turn in the weather and snow on the way, things are about to take a turn for the better for him.
When parallel selves start sending warnings, Berlin author Elena Kugel laughs it off—until her unfinished manuscript is stolen and published under another name. Now the voices are multiplying, and Elena must decide which version of herself to trust to reclaim what was hers.
When a burnt-out pharmaceutical ad writer with bipolar disorder learns her estranged father is dying, she travels to Bangkok—where she was born and he now lives—in search of answers. What follows is a reckoning with identity, grief, and the messy work of making peace with the people who shaped her.
Targeted by rebels and silenced by shame, a disgraced vampire captain must ally with a dangerously alluring rider to expose a mortal uprising, while resisting the forbidden desire that tempts her and the power that cost her everything.
A clever girl focused on the future and an immature boy determined for an unchanging life must choose if they will forsake each other to pursue what their adoptive parents want for them.
Liz has given birth to two sons but she's never had a daughter. However, the young woman who is stalking her, Rose, thinks differently. Rose refuses to accept logic and won't leave Liz or her family alone. Fearing for her sons’ safety and needing to thwart her tormentor while saving her own sanity...
A patient wakes from a coma with no name and a bullet in his head. As a retired neuropsychologist and a homicide detective dig into his fractured mind, buried memories surface—ones not his own. The deeper they go, the closer they get to the truth: he isn’t who he thinks he is. He never was.
A genius's creation aims to improve the quality & length of life of the nation's citizens. When the government commandeers the system & begins to use it for its own sinister purposes, a protege of the corrupt Minister must find the strength to bring down a system she helped create.
Some stories end in fire. Others begin with it. Scarlet has tasted love, loss, and the agony of being reborn. To end centuries of bloodshed, she must return to where it all began—and decide who lives, who dies, and whether to burn the world that built her… or become its god.
When a young girl discovers she's a half-merrean, a fæy of water, her peaceful life spirals into chaos. Now hunted by mercenaries who abduct her family, Marina Havson sets out on a quest to save them from their clutches, discovering more of her merrean heritage along the way.
When Al’s dream job as a journalist in London turns sour and leads her to a suicide attempt, will she find a fulfilling career in San Francisco or will her traumatic past catch up with her?
Visit the Bronze Age Aegean, where perfect blue waters hide pirates and blades, raiders and slaves, love and loss, and sin. The kings are guilty. No one is innocent. Their war is real. Their gods are not. What really happened? Four Stories. Four struggles for freedom.
When a Harvard cryptologist decodes an ancient scroll, she unleashes supernatural forces that threaten to tear apart the very foundations of reality—and she discovers that even the darkest works of evil can never overcome the light of hope or the power of love.
Tantalised by snippets of her grandmother Lucy's extraordinary stories of her life in China in the early 1900s Kate goes in search of where they happened a century later. The stories were true.
He has a good job. He has respect. He has a lover. But piano-playing banker Sam Vine wants out of his stressful, run-of-the-mill life. Two wily women, his lover and his sister, step in to ‘help’.
A demon haunts the catacombs of a cathedral, and it's left to Sister Mara and Princess Vera to exorcise it before it threatens the surface world. When they explore the catacomb's depths, they find much more than just crypts and bones.
A gruff gun-for-hire who can’t pull the trigger must outwit a jealous sheriff brother, navigate madness-inducing mists, and outplay the keeper of an ancient, buried city to protect his power to manipulate weather and to prevent his new teen apprentice from becoming the monster he sees in himself.
Cory Bradley, a well-loved trawler captain, is attacked and left for dead. Meantime his wife has disappeared. Then the body of a woman washes up on the beach and an unoccupied building shows signs of having recently been lived in. Suddenly, in quiet Scarsbury the apparently obvious just isn't.
A dissolute marketing guru must dismantle the AI cult he helped create in a dark comedy reminiscent of Paul Murray and the social satire of White Lotus. With suspense elements, this story charts the existential crisis that has led humans to trust machines more than each other.
Even Hell needs a hero - when a tattoo artist with the power to save damned souls by sinking her ink (though, sadly not her own) tries to re-home a wayward (demon) dog, she must use her special gift to undo the curse that's ultimately trapped them both under the weatherglass of Meadowhawk Hall.
Following his mid-life crisis as a gifted writer, Robert is stuck in a dead-end job with a dream to leave. But when he falls in love with a girl with a debt, Robert is thrown into the world of a notorious double-dealing syndicate.
A young woman hoping for a break in her career is forced to work with her arch nemesis instead of getting the outright promotion she was expecting. They are forced to spend two weeks together in a small Scottish town. What could seemingly break them brings them closer than either ever thought.
The Oxford Handbook of Murder follows the journey of Polina who is a student by day, college maid by night as she uncovers a series of muders.
Two cousins, strangers from opposite sides of a village split by a banished witch one hundred years ago, must battle magic and evil on the one night a year when human and witch worlds merge.
When a young mystic takes her travelling show to Ireland in the 1730s, she is ensnared by the Dublin Hellfire Club, but these dissolute aristocrats want her to do so much more than summon the dead. Can Ada escape before the club's deal with the devil destroys them all? CASTLE RACKRENT X PIRANESI
Illegitimate child Liyue navigates the palace to learn about her long-lost mom’s foreign origins. When her quest collides with a failing chosen one trying to revive his clan’s tattoo magic, they uncover ugly truths and survive a budding rebellion—and choose their loyalties in a crumbling empire.
Heather is forty two, terrified and desperate to escape her small, tight world controlled by Mother, who has a nightmarish secret. Set in 1980s Scotland during the last years of the large mental asylums and the first women’s groups, she bravely finds a path to trust in the outside world. And in...
