Plague Times Trilogy
2 primary works • 3 total works 3 total works planned
Book 1
As heard on BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime
It doesn't look like murder in a city full of death.
A pandemic called 'The Sweats' is sweeping the globe. London is a city in crisis. Hospitals begin to fill with the dead and dying, but Stevie Flint is convinced that the sudden death of her boyfriend Dr Simon Sharkey was not from natural causes. As roads out of London become gridlocked with people fleeing infection, Stevie's search for Simon's killers takes her in the opposite direction, into the depths of the dying city and a race with death.
A Lovely Way to Burn is the first outbreak in the Plague Times trilogy. Chilling, tense and completely compelling, it's Louise Welsh writing at the height of her powers.
Book 2
Longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year
The second instalment in the thrilling new Plague Times trilogy from the author of A Lovely Way to Burn.
Magnus McFall was a comic on the brink of his big break when the world came to an end. Now, he is a man on the run and there is nothing to laugh about.
Thrown into unwilling partnership with an escaped convict, Magnus flees the desolation of London to make the long journey north, clinging to his hope that the sickness has not reached his family on their remote Scottish island.
He finds himself in a landscape fraught with danger, fighting for his place in a world ruled by men, like his fellow traveller Jeb - practical men who do not let pain or emotions interfere with getting the job done.
This is a world with its own justice, and new rules.
Where people, guns and food are currency.
Where survival is everything.
Death is a Welcome Guest defies you to put it down, and leaves you with questions that linger in the mind long after you read the last page.
'A vivid, action-packed journey through a post-apocalyptic world. Terrifying and touching in equal measure, the novel is a love story, an adventure, a road movie, a family drama and a murder mystery rolled into one' The Times Scotland
'No Dominion gripped me and broke my heart in equal measure' Val McDermid
It is seven years since the Sweats wiped out most of the world's population. But for those who survived the outbreak, life has gone on. Stevie Flint and Magnus McFall are now part of a small community on the Orkney Islands, without mobile phones or TV, without antibiotics or fuel, who are trying to rebuild the rudiments of democratic civilisation.
When three strangers arrive on the islands, however, they upset the fragile community, bringing long-buried tensions to the surface. Realising that a number of the islands' young are missing, Stevie and Magnus set off on a journey to the mainland to get them back - a mainland swarming with outlaw gangs, and where self-appointed autocrats and religious fanatics hold sway . . .
Thrilling and breathless, No Dominion asks what happens when the scaffolding of civilisation collapses, and how far we'd go to preserve our humanity.