Books by Karl Drinkwater

A single decision can save - or ruin - a life.An opportunistic baby theft by a young woman in pain. Two strangers shipwrecked on a lifeless rock, unable to speak the same language. A remote cycling holiday descends into terror. One woman seeks the courage to destroy her life. A miracle unites a community, and teenagers take a stand against hypocrisy.Karl Drinkwater presents characters to root for - and characters to dread - in sixteen varied tales of humanity, endurance, and psychological suspense.

2000 Tunes. One summer of love.Mark Hopton is twenty-four, single, and obsessed with Manchester music. It's his escape into a better world.Oh man, he needs that escape. His psycho brother's on his case and in his face, his dad's in prison, and the local gangsters are twisting his melons to make him smuggle drugs. Heaven knows he's miserable now.His one ray of hope is work colleague Samantha Rees, a gorgeous and chaotic Welsh woman who rocks his world. However, Samantha is living the twenty-four hour party people lifestyle, so would never be interested in a shy outsider like him.But when a chance encounter leads to Mark and Samantha spending a perfect day together in the city centre, perhaps hope isn't fool's gold after all?

The legendary Lost Ships exist, and they harbour nightmarish horrors. Opal knows. She barely survived her first encounter with one.Despite escaping, she failed to find what she was looking for: her lost sister. Now Opal must board a second derelict Lost Ship to seek answers, and it's even more monstrous, a sickening place of death and decay. To make things worse, the military government wants her, dead or alive. Considering their reputation, dead may be better.To find her sister, Opal will risk everything: her life, her blood, her sanity. There's always a price to pay. Armed with her wits, an experimental armoured suit, and an amazing AI companion, she might just stand a chance.Ideal for fans of sentient AI ships (as in Embers of War by Gareth L. Powell), while the massive space-based abattoir conjures up the horror worlds of space from films like Alien, Pandorum and Event Horizon.

They're called the Lost Ships ... but sometimes they come back.And when they do the crews are missing, while the ships have been strangely altered, rumoured to be full of horrors.Opal Imbiana has been seeking something her whole life. It's a secret so precious she's willing to risk her life recovering it from a recently discovered Lost Ship, in a lonely nebula far from colonised space.She's just one woman, entering an alien and lethal environment. But with the aid of an amazing AI companion and experimental armoured suit, Opal might just stand a chance.

First the birds went quiet.Then the evening sky filled with strange clouds that trapped the heat below.Now Callum wakes, dripping in sweat. Something has come to his isolated Welsh farm. If he's going to keep his family alive during this single night when all hell breaks loose, he'll have to think fast. And when he sees what he's facing, he suspects even that may not be enough.Otherworldly creepiness that captures our fear of the unknown. This blast of a book can be read in one nail-biting session.

Horror lives in the shadows.It exists under the earth's surface in ancient caves. Below the vast sea's undulating waves. Under dense forest cover. Within a storm's thick, rolling clouds. And downstairs in our homes, when we hear the knife drawer rattle in the night. Even our minds and bodies harbour the alien under the skin, the childhood nightmares in our subconscious.Darkness hides things, no matter how much we strain our eyes. And sometimes those things are looking back at us.In this collection of fifteen scary stories to tell in the dark, Karl Drinkwater sews flesh onto the bones of our worst fears, full of creeping menace that seeps from urban legends and folk horror.

"Welcome to Ynys Diawl, our beautifully isolated Welsh island. We greet visitors in a special way! What? Oh, true, the English translation is Devil Island, but that's just slander.""Yes, it was the perfect escape for three strangers. Each had their own reasons for visiting. We don't care why anyone comes here! Hey now, who said the locals are violent? Surly, maybe, but we love all types, here.""Mmm, that does look like a storm coming in. A bad 'un. No escape from the island tonight. Escape? I meant ... never mind. Come down these steps with me, I have something to show you. Don't look so worried, we don't bite!"An atmospheric folk horror likened to The Wicker Man in Wales.