It's our world, but decades into the future... An ordinary world, where cars drive themselves, drones glide across the sky, and robots work in burger shops. There are two superpowers and a digital Cold War, but all conflicts are safely oceans away. People get up, work, and have dinner. Everything is as it should be... Except for seventeen-year-old John, a tech prodigy from a damaged family, who hides a deeply personal secret. But everything starts to change for him when he enters a tiny cafe on a cold Tokyo night.
A cafe run by a disgraced sumo wrestler, where a peculiar dog with a spherical head lives, alongside its owner, enigmatic waitress Neotnia... But Neotnia hides a secret of her own - a secret that will turn John's unhappy life upside down. A secret that will take them from the neon streets of Tokyo to Hiroshima's tragic past to the snowy mountains of Nagano. A secret that reveals that this world is anything ordinary - and it's about to change forever...
'A fascinating exploration of what it means to be human in a world where everything can be faked ... wonderful, insightful and thoughtful' James Oswald.
'Outstanding! Sci-fi showing how the past might impact on the future ... a glimpse into a (very plausible) terrifying future' Michael J Malone
Blackthorn Ashes was meant to be their forever home. For the first six families moving into the exclusive new housing development, it was a chance to live a peaceful life on the cliffs overlooking the Cornish sea, safe in the knowledge that it had been created just for them. But six weeks later, paradise is lost. Six people are dead. And Blackthorn Ashes is left abandoned and unfinished, its dark shadows hiding all manner of secrets. One of its surviving residents, Agnes Gale, is determined to find out the truth about what happened. Even if that truth is deadlier than she could have ever believed possible . . .
'An astonishingly gifted writer' Marian Keyes
'Nail-biting, heart-wrenching stuff. Black Thorn has the atmosphere and drama of a modern-day du Maurier novel' Erin Kelly
'Brilliant. Taking a really deep dive into some dark spaces that Sarah brings vividly to life, it's wonderful and unlike anything else I've read lately' Mick Herron