Bones of the Deep, Death Valley, Book recommendations, and the next ARKANE thriller
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Hello from wintery Bath, and happy new year! I hope you're getting back into the swing of things as we move into 2026. I'm just finishing edits on my next thriller, Bones of the Deep, details below. If you prefer a desert thriller to the ocean, Death Valley is on special, with the ebook free on Amazon 22 - 26 Jan, 2026. Click here to check it out on Amazon, or here on other stores. Reviews would be much appreciated! I'm also back at college, working on my Masters in Death, Religion and Culture, but I plan to start researching my next ARKANE thriller soon. It will be book 14, Crown of Thorns and I'll be starting the research in Paris at Notre Dame, where the relic is kept. I hope that will be out by the end of the year. A luxury tall ship. A stolen mer-saint. The sea always takes back what is hers.Marine archaeologist Eve Calder has one chance to make her career. She's helped steal the find of a lifetime: the preserved skeleton of a non-human "saint" entombed in a hidden cave on a South Pacific seamount. Now the bones lie sealed in a pressure-controlled case in the hold of the SV Southern Crosswind, a historic tall ship full of tourists sailing from Fiji to Vanuatu. But as the ship leaves the shelter of the reefs and enters true blue water, something begins to move in the depths beneath her keel. Shadows circle in the bioluminescent dark. Hull-shuddering impacts echo through the timber. Strange clicks and inhuman wails vibrate up through the hull. The local crew whisper about sacred shrines and sea spirits. And then the first body hits the water. Far from land, hemmed in by rising storm and failing systems, the Southern Crosswind is besieged by a civilisation from the deep: terrifying merfolk who will kill to reclaim their holy dead. A thriller with teeth, perfect for readers who love monstrous merfolk, ocean survival, and endings that don't flinch. The story is inspired by my own experience crossing from Fiji to Vanuatu on the tallship Soren Larsen in 1999 (no merfolk though!)Click here to register interest in the Kickstarter and see photos of the trip Book recommendationsHere are some of the books I've enjoyed recently.
Let me know your book recommendations! Just click reply, I'd love to hear from you. Until next time ...
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J.F. Penn
For readers who want to escape ...
Hello from Bath, Spring is here and I recently attended a reunion back at my Oxford college, which was strange but also wonderful to see old friends and where they have ended up in life after 30 years. There was a moment in the old hall when a bell rung and Grace was said before dinner and the years fell away. Precious memories indeed, and you can read/listen to me talk about Oxford in this episode of my Books and Travel Podcast on Decadence, Discipline, and Dreaming Spires. Writing-wise, I...
Hello from Bath, One of the most common questions that authors are asked is: "Where do you get your ideas?" Well, for me, it's often about where I travel and what I find there. In 1999, I sailed on a tall ship from Fiji to Vanuatu in the south pacific, and something about that crossing never let me go. I just couldn’t find the right story for it ... until now. Bones of the Deep has finally arrived, with a setting that takes you out on the open ocean, the stolen bones of a merfolk culture, and...
Hello from Bath, It's spring here which is lovely, and I am in the final phases of preparing for the launch of Bones of the Deep, my next thriller, and also starting to research the next ARKANE thriller, Crown of Thorns. While you wait for those, you might enjoy my short story, The Black Church, now available in ebook and audiobook, human-narrated by me! It's free for a limited time from my store, linked below, and it's also in my 12-story collection, The Buried and the Drowned. A week alone...