Deep Water by Vanessa Fox

Skyswood Primary School and Bishop’s Hatfield Girls’ School sparked a passion for literature in St Albans girl Vanessa Fox, a passion that has seen her propelled into the international bestseller lists.

Vanessa worked in marketing on Watford’s Harlequin Shopping Centre management team when she left Queen Mary College, London University, before moving to Ireland in 1992. She now lives on the edge of the Wicklow Mountains but her roots are back in Hertfordshire where her parents still live.

Her second novel In Deep Water is released in the UK this month, following from Little Bones which was a Number One Bestseller in Ireland for more than a month.

In the book Cat Connolly is back at work after the explosion that left her on life support. Struggling to adjust and mental scars, her work once again becomes personal when her best friend Sarah Jane Hansen, daughter of a Pulitzer-winning American war correspondent, goes missing while working on a story that even her father thought was too dangerous.
With Sarah Jane's father uncontactable, Cat struggles to find a connection between her friend's work and her disappearance. But Sarah Jane is not the only one in deep water when Cat comes face to face with a professional killer…
In the world of missing persons, every second counts, but with the clock ticking, can Cathy find Sarah Jane before it's too late?

Vanessa explains: “I use a pen name because my married name is O’Loughlin and Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin would be a real squash on the cover, to say nothing of the struggle anyone outside Ireland has pronouncing O’Loughlin. 

“I’m very lucky in that my husband was a member of the Irish Police force, An Garda Siochana, for over thirty years so as a crime writer I have unique access to crime fighters. It’s really important to me to make my fiction feel real.”

Vanessa started writing fiction properly in 1999 when her husband went sailing across the Atlantic for eight weeks and she had an idea for a book. “I’d always wanted to write, I loved writing at school and had some amazing teachers. Coincidentally my English teacher at Bishops, Mairead McKeever, was Irish. Her enthusiasm and passion was contagious, she fostered a love of writing in all her pupils and was hugely influential on me.”

Published by ZAFFRE

What Nobody Knew by Amelia Hendrey

A budding author has self-published her first book, all about her struggles in childhood.

At the age of three Amelia Hendrey, from Kimpton in Hertfordshire, was abandoned by her mother in St Albans town centre. She later discovered her mother remarried and went on to have another daughter.

She then went to live with her father and his wife and the book, What Nobody Knew, details “the secrets that went on inside that house”.

At the age of 15 Amelia was raped by her father, who was later sentenced to seven years in prison. She remained living with her step mother until the age of 17, when she was sent to a hostel to live alone.

The book takes you through her life and the struggles she faced, it is moving from start to finish.

The Outer Circle by Ian Ridley

Author Ian Ridley has veered away from sports books to write a thriller.

Ian, from Flamstead, has written 12 sports books including an autobiography of Barnet’s world champion boxer Darren Barker and A Dazzling Darkness Sober, the Sunday Times bestselling second volume of autobiography of the former Arsenal and England captain Tony Adams.

Now his debut novel The Outer Circle has been published by Unbound. The book starts the day after the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games in London 2012 and imagines a lone figure walking into Regent’s Park Mosque in London to commit an atrocity.

From then on, the book follows five very different characters caught up in the drama, including a national newspaper journalist and a young Muslim, before a dramatic ending five days later.

“I’d always wanted to write a novel,” explains Ian. “Finally, I got round to it. I wanted to start it at a time when the country was happy with itself and see what happens when something shocking occurs to disturb that. As I was writing it over the last four years, so many things have happened to make it topical.

“I hope it combines good writing with a good plot and some memorable characters. I certainly got caught up in following them and seeing where the story took them and I hope others will too.”

Published by Unbound.