Matthew Blakstad | author

To celebrate the publication of Lucky Ghost, I recently set out on the Ghost Train - a whistle-stop tour of some of the finest book blogs on the internet.

Crimes against reality don’t usually end in bloodshed. Their ammunition is public opinion, their shotgun barrel the internet; and the victims are people’s reputations. When they’re committed, these crimes seem trivial, even ludicrous – but their consequences can be lethal. 

On the day of Donald Trump's inauguration, surely now’s the time to start making up the news we actually want to see this year?

There was a brief spell, between the white heat years of the 1960’s and the gaudy disaster of the 1980’s, when futurology blossomed. This was the final gasp of a post-war love affair with centralised planning. 

Today’s internet is a wild frontier where new ways of doing harm are being invented every day. If crime fiction is to keep pace with the world, it needs to embrace technology, not shy from it.

The government's launch of an online identity management system echoes the ill-fated 'Digital Citizen' project from my novel Sockpuppet. I wrote a piece about this for The Independent. 

I couldn't resist writing something about the very public meltdown of Microsoft's chatbot, Tay. It's just too close to the events in my novel, Sockpuppet. You can read my piece, 'Je Suis Tay', on Pornokitsch.

A dynamic, beautifully written debut that moves effortlessly between ultra-contemporary London, the wilds of a remote Scottish island, and a fantastic reality that underpins them both.

With this punchy debut, Felicia Yap has hit on a winning formula from the very start. This is a book that will keep you guessing to the very end. It’s going to be massive.

The ocean’s a zone where you can be completely free; or vanish utterly. It’s against this elemental force that Claire Fuller has set her powerful second novel. Like all the best stories, Swimming Lessons has secrets hidden in every nook.

The Wolf Road was one of my stand-out reads of 2016. It could be a classic adventure story of the West, except that it takes place in a post-apocalyptic America that might almost have come to be.

When your American dream turns sour, where do you run to? In this case, America. Or at least to its wild, disjunct north-western annex.

I don't know if the black-magic-noir-black-comedy genre was ever a thing but it is now. And that's a lot of black to pack into a single genre. Poison City is Paul Crilley's adult fiction debut and it's a cracker.