Stranger Times Books

If you're an American Gods binge-watcher, addicted to Ben Aaronovitch, or devoted to Discworld and Terry Pratchett, this smart, knowing, outrageously fun (and occasionally rather rude) supernatural romp by an award-winning stand-up comic is a must-read . . . There are Dark Forces at work in our world (and in Manchester in particular) and so thank God The Stranger Times is on hand to report them. A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but more often the weird) of modern life, it is the go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable . . . At least that’s their pitch. The reality is rather less auspicious. Their editor is a drunken, foul-tempered and -mouthed husk of a man who thinks little (and believes less) of the publication he edits, while his staff are a ragtag group of wastrels and misfits, each with their own secrets to hide and axes to grind. And as for the assistant editor . . . well, that job is a revolving door – and it has just revolved to reveal Hannah Willis, who's got her own set of problems. It’s when tragedy strikes in Hannah’s first week on the job that The Stranger Times is forced to do some serious, proper, actual investigative journalism. What they discover leads them to a shocking realization: that some of the stories they’d previously dismissed as nonsense are in fact terrifyingly, gruesomely real. Soon they come face-to-face with darker foes than they could ever have imagined. It’s one thing reporting on the unexplained and paranormal but it’s quite another being dragged into the battle between the forces of Good and Evil . . .

Manchester appears to be suffering from a nasty dose of the vampires, which is just the sort of story the weekly newspaper The Stranger Times likes to get its teeth into. Or perhaps it's the other way round...? This Charming Man is the hugely entertaining second novel in the Stranger Times series. Vampires do not exist. Everyone knows this. So it's particularly annoying when they start popping up around Manchester . . . Nobody is pleased about it. Not the Founders, the secret organization for whom vampires were invented as an allegory, nor the Folk, the magical people hidden in plain sight who only want a quiet life. And definitely not the people of Manchester, because there is nothing more irksome than being murdered by an allegory run amok. Somebody needs to sort this out fast before all Hell really breaks loose - step forward the staff of The Stranger Times . It's not like they don't have enough to be dealing with. Assistant Editor Hannah has come back from getting messily divorced to discover that someone is trying to kidnap a member of their staff and while editor Vincent Banecroft would be delighted to see the back of any of his team, he doesn't like people touching his stuff - it's the principle of the thing. Throw in a precarious plumbing situation, gambling debts, an entirely new way of swearing, and a certain detective inspector with what could be kindly referred to as 'a lot of baggage' and it all adds up to another hectic week in the life of the newspaper committed to reporting the truth that nobody else will touch. This Charming Man is the second book in the critically acclaimed The Stranger Times series.

Love can be a truly terrible thing. Marriages are tricky at the best of times, especially when one of you is dead. Vincent Banecroft, the irascible editor of The Stranger Times, has never believed his wife died despite emphatic evidence to the contrary. Now, against all odds, it seems he may actually be proved right; but what lengths will he go to in an attempt to rescue her? With Banecroft distracted, the shock resignation of assistant editor, Hannah Willis, couldn't have come at a worse time. It speaks volumes that her decision to reconcile with her philandering ex-husband is only marginally less surprising than Banecroft and his wife getting back together. In this time of crisis, is her decision to swan off to a fancy new-age retreat run by a celebrity cult really the best thing for anyone? As if that wasn't enough, one of the paper's ex-columnists has disappeared, a particularly impressive trick seeing as he never existed in the first place. Floating statues, hijacked ghosts, homicidal cherubs, irate starlings, Reliant Robins and quite possibly several deeply sinister conspiracies; all-in-all, a typical week for the staff of The Stranger Times.

Reviewers love Relight My Fire... 'Transgressively hilarious . . . Of course there's a story that the intrepid journalists of T he Stranger Times have to tease out . . . but the real joy lies in the pitfalls and pratfalls of getting there' DAILY MAIL 'An absolute riot of a read' DAILY EXPRESS 'Laugh-out-loud funny' DAILY MIRROR 'I loved the dry and embedded humour of this book, it's the stuff of life' SFCROSWNEST Some comebacks can be murder . . . Stella is enjoying life as an almost student, or at least she is until a man falls from the sky right in front of her, leaving a big old hole in the pavement for Manchester Council to fill. The obvious question of how he ended up in the sky in the first place has no obvious answers, which is where The Stranger Times come in. This isn't just the hunt for another story though. Dark powers think Stella might have been involved and the only way she and the team can prove her innocence is to find out what the hell is really going on. What have dodgy gear, disturbed graves and a decommissioned rock star got to do with all this? Vincent Banecroft has problems of his own in the form of a tall, dark but-definitely-not-handsome man dressed like a one-man funeral who has been sent to make the paper's editor atone for his sins. Once he finds out exactly what that entails, Banecroft is not keen. Being banished to a Hellscape for all eternity looks like being no fun at all, not least because he has that pale Irish skin that burns really easily . . . All that plus territorial ghouls, homicidal felines, eternal (and seemingly unstoppable) gnomes and a celebrity 'Who's Who' that'd put a royal wedding to shame, and you're looking at a wild few days for The Stranger Times . Relight My Fire is the fourth adventure in the acclaimed and brilliantly funny Stranger Times series.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas . . . For most people, that means a time of celebration, relaxation and inebriation, but not for the staff of The Stranger Times. While a book club meeting ending in a triple murder isn’t unprecedented, it is at least noteworthy. It quickly emerges that this is no ordinary book-club-triple-murder either, as it features a librarian possessed by a chaotic entity who has broken through from another dimension and is hellbent on vengeance. He’s made a list, but he’s not checking it twice as the whole of humanity is on it. Who would want to summon such a thing? And how is anyone going to be able to send it back? As if that wasn’t enough to be dealing with, a shocking revelation about a member of The Stranger Times team’s past brings family together, but not in a way that’s ever going to make it into a Hallmark movie. Featuring demonically possessed Santas, blood-thirsty books and the ghost of a legendary nightclub, it’s beginning to look a lot like a Christmas apocalypse . . . Ring the Bells is the fifth book in the award-winning, critically acclaimed and laugh-out-loud funny The Stranger Times series. The reviewers loved Relight My Fire: 'McDonnell's world is transgressively hilarious, grimly banal and beguilingly warm. Of course there's a story that the intrepid journalists of The Stranger Times have to tease out: grave-robbing, cryogenics, a very angry witch, and a washed-up indie legend looking for a lost album, but the real joy lies in the pitfalls and pratfalls of getting there .' DAILY MAIL ' An absolute riot of a read.' DAILY EXPRESS 'Laugh-out-loud funny and full of colourful characters.' DAILY MIRROR 'It’s no secret that here at SciFi Towers we’re massive fans of the Stranger Times series by C. K. McDonnell.' SciFiNOW 'I loved the dry and embedded humour of this book, it's the stuff of life . . . the whole thing is great fun.' SFCROSWNEST ' Relight My Fire is perhaps the best since the original.' STARBURST