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STOP PRESS! The Stranger Times wins the 2023 British Fantasy Award for Best Audio Work!

‘Wonderfully dark, extremely funny’ proclaimed ADAM KAY, author of the No.1 bestselling This is Going to Hurt

‘A filmic romp with great characters, a jet-propelled plot, and a winning premise’ said the GUARDIAN

JASON MANFORD thinks it’s ‘Hilarious. You’ll never look at Manchester the same way again.’

The Chronicles of St Mary’s series author JODI TAYLOR declared ‘I loved this . . . great premise – great story – great characters . . . hugely enjoyable.’

And THE TIMES called it ‘ripping entertainment from start to finish.’

There are dark forces at work in our world (and in Manchester in particular), so thank God The Stranger Times is on hand to report them . . .

A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but mostly the weird), it is the go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable.

At least that’s their pitch. The reality is rather less auspicious. Their editor is a drunken, foul-tempered and foul-mouthed husk of a man who thinks little of the publication he edits. His staff are a ragtag group of misfits. And as for the assistant editor . . . well, that job is a revolving door – and it has just revolved to reveal Hannah Willis, who’s got problems of her own.

When tragedy strikes in her first week on the job The Stranger Times is forced to do some serious investigating. What they discover leads to a shocking realisation: some of the stories they’d previously dismissed as nonsense are in fact terrifyingly real. Soon they come face-to-face with darker forces than they could ever have imagined.

The Stranger Times is the first novel from C.K. McDonnell, the pen name of Caimh McDonnell. It combines his distinctive dark wit with his love of the weird and wonderful to deliver a joyous celebration of how truth really can be stranger than fiction.
Readers love The Stranger Times:
***** ‘A delight from start to finish – laugh out loud funny yet with plenty of thrills.’
***** ‘Full of wit and humour, and knows how to keep the reader hooked.’
***** ‘You’ll soon fall in love . . . fans of Pratchett, Gaiman, Aaronovich will be blown away.’

The Stranger Times and This Charming Man shortlisted for a ‘Dead Good Reader Award’ – the ‘The New Kid on the Block Award for Best New Series’!

Publisher Review

A filmic romp with great characters, a jet-propelled plot, and a winning premise. -- Eric Brown * GUARDIAN * I tore through The Stranger Times. Like an entertaining collision between the worlds of Mick Herron and Charlie Stross, it's a novel that proves ancient eldritch horror is no match for old-school journalism. -- CHRISTOPHER BROOKMYRE, bestselling author of Fallen Angel There are weird happenings in Manchester; good job the drunk and dysfunctional journalists of The Stranger Times, a newspaper dedicated to paranormal and the unexplained, are on hand . . . terrific, easygoing fun. -- Robert Millen * THE TIMES * I loved this . . . great premise - great story - great characters . . . hugely enjoyable. -- JODI TAYLOR, bestselling author of The Chronicles of St Mary's series A cracker . . . brace yourself for murder, monsters, mesmerism - and merriment. Wonderfully wacky. * SAGA * Darkly witty. * i-NEWSPAPER * Darkly comedic . . . alternating between sinister and silly, McDonnell's writing is intelligently witty. * THE HERALD * Fresh and genuinely funny. * SFX magazine * The one-liners zing, the dialogue is a tennis match of witty banter. * FINANCIAL TIMES *