Fearnley Fiction

Buy Here ‘Ladies and gentlemen…’ It was the University Chancellor welcoming them back to the campus, telling them that dinner would be served now and to look at the seating plan. Maddie accepted a refill from another waitress and walked towards the dining hall. She wasn’t exactly scanning the room, but really, she realised, she was . Looking for a certain… Maddie was suddenly accosted from behind by a shrieking noise. ‘Maddie! Maddie Brown! I knew it would be you! I would have spotted those legs a mile away. I remember them pedalling your bike around the place – always late for lectures!’ It was Liz – from Yorkshire. They’d done second-year Psychology together, sworn to keep in touch on graduation day, then promptly gone off and led very different lives. There was no Facebook back then to keep tabs on people or virtually stalk anyone. But they’d connected a few years ago and were now ‘friends’ on Facebook – hence the invitation to the reunion. ‘How are you, Liz?’ Maddie...

Buy Here 3rd September 1939. Battersea, London. Victor hammered on the scruffy front door and Georgina Garrett stood closely behind him. She could tell by the state of the dilapidated, small terraced house that the family who lived here were poor. But that didn’t excuse Bobby’s behaviour. She’d already given him fair warning yet he’d chosen to defy her and had taken it upon himself to rob Ezzy Harel’s jewellery shop in Clapham Junction. She heard Johnny Dymond’s car pull up and glanced over her shoulder to see him park behind her own black Rover. ‘Sorry I’m late, Miss Garrett,’ Johnny said as he swaggered towards her, his unbuttoned, fur-collared cashmere coat catching in the breeze and billowing out behind him to reveal a smart three-piece suit. ‘Ain’t Bobby home?’ ‘Yes, he’s in there, probably hiding his slimy arse,’ Georgina answered, her lip curling in disgust at the thought of the man. She’d guessed that no-one would come to the door. The sight of her pulling up w...

Buy here I was given the chance to read this as part of a tour. I have to say it sounded great and right up my street. I wasn't wrong. I really enjoyed this book, it was refreshing to have a book where the main characters, in fact most of them are deaf. This is not something that happens much. I liked the idea of this book, it really does make you think that this can happen and there are families who never know if someone has been in their house. Let alone if something was happening to a member of the family. Nell Pattison has a talent for drawing you here and there, thinking that you have worked it out. I couldn't guess who it was, I kept thinking I had it, when actually, I didn't.  I enjoyed the short chapters in this book, it really held my attention. I thought the way it counted down till the incident was good as well, really made you question what you thought you knew. I am looking forward to reading more from this author, I think whatever is written ne...

Buy Here                                15th July 1998 I can’t sleep thinking about what we will do tomorrow. I’m scared he will know; I’m scared he will be watching me… Chapter 1   August 1998 Three weeks after…   O nward they trudged. Step by step. Deeper into the woodlands, trying as best they could to maintain the straight line they had been instructed to hold. They didn’t speak, they could barely look one another in the eye. They all knew just one look would confirm their worst fears, that the searching was in vain. They weaved around bushes and climbed unsteadily over fallen trees. The mud, thick and heavy, made progress even slower, and on a few occasions the sludge underfoot dragged wellington boots clean off tired feet. The summer had burnt bright and long,  one of the hottest on record. But the woods were dark, cold. The air didn’t move the...

Buy Here Merryknowe Bakery and Tearooms was the most visited shop in the tiny village, which wasn’t a point of pride – not when the village was dying a slow death from lack of visitors and actual inhabitants. It wasn’t the prettiest village in Wiltshire and Rachel Brown tried to bring some elegance to the window of the bakery with her baked goods. Sometimes she made cupcakes with pink iced roses or chocolate eclairs with satiny icing but today she had cream-filled butterfly cakes on the silver tray. She watched the man and his child walk away from the shop until they were out of sight and she felt herself turn red when she remembered the way he’d looked at the bruise on her cheek. It’s not what you think , she had wanted to say to him. She knew people thought it was a man who did this to her, but it wasn’t a man. Rachel had never been close enough to have a man touch her in passion or anger. There was no way she could even meet a man, not with what she had to do every d...

Buy Here October 2017 The spray from the wheels of a lorry splashed across Stuart Ingram’s windscreen, temporarily blinding him. He switched up his wipers, resisted the temptation to depress the brake, a movement that would send him sliding across the dual carriageway, and squinted, battling for a clear view of the road through the darkness and the rain pummelling his windscreen. He overtook the lorry and pulled off at the next junction into Rothwell, a small market town on the fringes of the Northamptonshire border. The streets were deserted, dull hues behind tightly drawn curtains the only sign of life in the old terraces that lined the roadside. After a week of unnaturally high October temperatures and the Met Office predicting a possible autumn drought, the rain had arrived with a vengeance, swamping everything in sight and leaving a slick residue as the hard-baked ground failed to cope with the sudden onslaught. The streetlights bobbed and flickered throu...

Buy Here DECEMBER 1945 By the time the Glasgow train pulls into the insignificant station, still forty miles short of its destination, darkness has already claimed the village and its surrounding countryside. In a few houses there is the wavering light of a candle, in others the flare of an oil lamp. The scant illumination gives to the cottages and bigger houses along the road a forlorn, uncared for appearance, even though Christmas is only a few days away. A woman alights from one of the carriages. She is still young, no more than thirty, but her headscarf and sombre coat make her look older than her years. Turning, she heaves down a heavy suitcase, then offers her hand to another woman, just old enough to be her mother, who takes one leaden step and then a second onto the platform, before looking joylessly about her. With a sharp hiss, a cloud of steam envelops them as the train eases its way out of the station to continue its northward journey. The exit, to which they ...