Strangers Waiting People and places are never what they seem. In Strangers Waiting, her first collection of short stories, acclaimed award-winning crime writer Sally Spedding explores that theme to powerful and unnerving effect Alice Duff in Blackthorn Days, will lure you into her parallel world, while Downtime reveals a macabre future for those who dare grow too old. In Reserve du Chasse, the Mullers unwittingly stumble into a part of rural France still bitter from the last war. The author, referred to as a ‘latter-day Du Maurier,’ delves into the darkest parts of the human psyche, the landscape we inhabit and that Other Dimension beyond the earth we know. Read, and you won’t know whom to trust, or where to choose to plant your dreams…

The Cool EP A new concept, the ‘Mono’ EPs are set to redefine the way people read short stories. Produced using a classic design, the EPs, offer an affordable, pocketsize companion that can be taken and read anywhere – and there is no need for batteries. Stylishly designed, the EPs will be available in four flavours, Cool, Groovy, Hip and Glam with each boasting three fantastic stories from some of the best short story writers around. The first to be released is The Cool EP, which features stories from: Sally Spedding, author of Prey Silence, Strangers Waiting, Cloven and Wringland Patrick Chapman, author of The Wow Signal and Doctor Who: Fear of the Daleks; Sarah Salway, author of Leading The Dance, Tell Me Everything and Something Beginning With.

Come and be Killed It is summer 2002, and twenty-three-year old Frankie Holt, hardworking carer armed with good references, leaves Manchester's grimy slums for the Malvern Hills and a job looking after the wealthy yet vulnerable Scott sisters. Little do the two women know that sparky, tough-talking Frankie, with her strange newborn doll, has her own sinister agenda. But Frankie has two dark shadows who will dog her days in that pretty place. Her stepsister Shannon, whom she tried to drown two years before for a hurt that was one hurt too many, and Londoner, Martin Webb, a police force reject who is convinced that he has an instinct for solving crime.

Prey Silence After enduring six years of his wife Kathy's depression, Tom Wardle-Smith moves his young family from Guildford to a fermette near Cahors in south-west France in the hope of saving his marriage. However, little do any of them realise the underlying resentment against 'les rosbifs' and other 'étrangers,' and how his growing trust of neighbouring veal farmer, Samson Bonneau, will put their lives in danger. In a strange new country, with a filthy rundown fermette to renovate, Kathy plummets into deeper misery and begins to turn the children against their father. As they are drawn into a deepening heart of darkness, beginning with a mutilated pet dog, menacing phone calls and missing children, including his own nine-year old son Max, Tom turns to Natalie Musset a fearless animal rights campaigner, and together they race to save Max from his lethal abductors, and also the crumbling marriage. Sally is featured as Author of the Month for July on www.crimesquad.com with a good review of PREY SILENCE.

A Night with No Stars The killing room won’t know the sun until late afternoon, but its damp shade is the perfect home for slaughter; its dimness the only blessing for those who must watch… For Lucy Mitchell, her job as editor’s assistant at Hellebore Publishers was meant to be the start of a bright new future. But six years and a vicious attack later, the time has come for her to move on. Hoping to fulfil her own and her late father’s dream of a rural life, Lucy decides to move to Rhayader in Wales and arrives one stormy day to view mysterious Wern Goch on the Ravenstone Estate. But why is there such a heavy air of malevolence and melancholy shrouding the hall and its strange occupants? And why is the enigmatic Mark Jones so determined to drive her away? Laughter can still be heard on the Ravenstone Estate, but by the time the ravens have left the alders’ branches to make a single rogue cloud against the blue, the laughter dies to a silence of fear. It’s not long before the hall’s dark and violent history comes to light. Who butchered the sexy, manipulative Sonia Jones fourteen years ago? Who subjected her to that grotesque post-mortem then allowed the ravens to devour her body? What had she done to deserve such an end? And how can the trusting and optimistic Lucy Mitchell pick her way through the minefield of lies and deceit to find the truth? Will she survive the hatred and revenge kindled by her investigations? Who knows, because in that twilight world, marked out not by days but nights, anything can happen. Only one thing is for certain; a reign of madness has begun.

Cloven Little has changed in the picturesque village of Cold Firton, where evil has thrived unhindered for centuries... In February 1830, surly Tomos Richards reluctantly takes his 14-year-old mute and crippled sister, along with his cattle drove, from Cardiganshire towards London, hoping to find a cure for her injuries. Sian’s journey is beset by danger and cruelty and, after much of the drove is lost in a bog, she takes her chance to run away. Alone save for her pony and her loyal dog, and desperate to return to Wales, she mistakenly arrives at Tripp’s Cottage in Nether Wapford, where cholera has just taken hold and strangers are viewed with deep suspicion. Shifting to the present day, Ivan Browning, a 32-year-old pottery teacher, has escaped London to live in the same Tripp’s Cottage. There he begins to experience ghostly pleas for help…while unwittingly becoming the target of two wealthy local criminal gangs. For it seems his investigation into the cottage’s haunted history is about to uncover a gruesome mystery that others want to keep buried deep.

Wringland Abbie Parker has just started her new job as sales negotiator for a prestige housing development in sinister and vaporous Black Fen – rumoured to be the most haunted corner of England. One morning she arrives to find her office door ajar, and a strangely dressed woman waiting inside, intent on laying claim to just one particular building plot. As the days go by, Abbie has further strange experiences both on the building site itself and in the surrounding wet-lands. Not only must she cope with the unwelcome attentions of a weird local clergyman, and the erratic behaviour of her visiting boyfriend Simon, but also with a hazy sense that she is now somehow in conflict with the vengeful spirit of a woman betrayed over a century earlier. After the terror of risking her life by befriending the cleric’s disturbed little daughter, Abbie finally enjoys a brief period of happiness with Simon. But can their mere human love and courage prove sufficient – as both are drawn deeper into the profoundest evil?

Crime on the Move Murder in and around trains, planes and automobiles has always been a rich source of inspiration for mystery writers and here the boundaries are extended to their widest. This anthology features some of the country's finest writers tackling the subject of crime on the move, including The Anniversary by Sally Spedding.

The Best British Mysteries British crime-writing has never looked so good. This unique anthology presents a compendium of the cream of British crime fiction. With a bumper twenty-four stories, including Strangers Waiting by Sally Spedding, The Best British Mysteries is a deliciously page-turning read – and the perfect summer read for any mystery-lover.

Sword Lilies Sally's crime short story SWORD LILIES, set in the south of France, will appear in The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime (ed by Maxim Jakubowski) published in March 2010 by Constable & Robinson.

Flight Path Sally's crime short story set in Gascony, has been chosen to appear in Tonto Books' new anthology, Even More Tonto Short Stories, published August 5th 2010. www.tontobooks.com