Book Haul: The Truants by Lee Markham.

Today’s book haul is The Truants by Lee Markham, published by Duckworth and released on April 27th 2017.

Following the suicide of his lover, the last of the ‘old-ones’ – ancient immortal beings, as clever as they are ruthless and unable to withstand the light of the sun – has decided to end his immortality. As he sits on a bench on the edge of a council estate to await his demise with the rising of the sun, he is mistaken for an old man, held up at knifepoint by a young man and stabbed before the sun burns his body to ashes. His assailant scurries back into the belly of the estate with the knife in his pocket, the blood of the old-one seared into its sharpened edge.

But once the blade cuts another person, the congealed blood mingles with that of its victim, and awakens in them the old-one’s consciousness from the depths of the afterlife. It is not long before the knife draws blood again, and one by one the youth living on the estate are taken over by the old-one’s mind. Determined to die, he must find and destroy the knife before his soul becomes irrevocably dispersed in the bodies of the city’s children, trapped forever in its feral underbelly. But someone is out to stop him…

Inspired by the murders of Baby P, Jamie Bulger and Damilola Taylor, and by the London riots during the summer of 2011, The Truants is a visceral, intelligent, gripping novel which uncovers the fragility and hopelessness of Britain’s social underclass – and the horror of their everyday lives.

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Praise for The Truants:

‘Invigoratingly fresh… brutal and touching… an extremely smart, talented first novel’ Jack Ketchum, author of Off Season

‘The Trainspotting of supernatural prose’ –Liam Sharp, co-founder of Madefire and author of God Killers

‘An absolutely stonking good read… the Tarantino-esque timeline gripped from start to finish’ –Russ Williamson, Smashwords.com

‘The best vampire story since Let The Right One In’ Neil Martin, SomethingYouSaid.com

‘By the end of chapter two my coffee was untouched and cold beside me. This wasn’t about vampires at all. It was about the emerging social underclass in the UK. It was about knife crime. It was about the London riots. It was about the social neglect that led to the murders of Baby P, James Bulger and Damilola Taylor. And it stirred me’ –Vanessa Austin Locke,The Latest

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About the Author

Lee Markham is an Eastbourne-based author whose work is inspired by writers such as Stephen King, Iain Banks, Alan Moore and Cormac McCarthy. He founded No Man publishing in 2014 and is currently the CEO of Chestnut Tree Tales publishing.

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Purchase The Truants:

Amazon UK  /  Amazon US

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For those wondering and for those unaware, that is the PG Tips monkey in the picture! 🙂

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