The Hobcast Book Show

The Hobcast Book Show had the delightful opportunity to attend the book launch for The Confession by Hobeck Books author, Maureen Myant in Glasgow this week. Believe it or not, it's the first time we've attended a physical book launch since we launched the company. The novel is a fantastically twisty noirish thriller with a great premise: Julie Campbell's decaying body is discovered with a note - confessing to five murd...

We've met many remarkable people over the past three years since we decided to set up Hobeck Books, but few are as inspiring as our guest this week, Cat Yaffe. We discovered each other online, and then met in person at Crimefest '22 in Bristol last May. It was Cat's first public foray during her battle with breast cancer, and as she explains to us, the period since that first meeting has been a process of regaining her ...

Kate Mosse is one of the UK's most celebrated authors. Her Languedoc Trilogy of novels which began with the multi-million selling Labyrinth brought her worldwide recognition, but she was a hugely influential figure in publishing before that, co-founding The Women's Prize for Fiction, now entering its 28th year and recognised as one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world. Kate is no stranger to non-fiction eith...

There's nothing more satisfying than attending a literary event and making connections with fellow travelers in the publishing industry. We met Greg Mosse at the recent Fatal Shore event in Shoreham near Brighton and immediately established a great rapport. Greg's contributions to two panels that day were full of insight and wisdom about what makes a great story, and Rebecca and I made copious notes as he spoke. We're d...

It's a bit of a departure for us on The Hobcast Bookshow as we delve into the world of comics and graphic storytelling. Charles Martin set up Literati Press in 2010 with aim of creating a home for Oklohoma's burgeoning comic book artists and writers. He admits it took several years and many mistakes before he and his team found their true path as a business, but this is a story of creative perseverance and determination. Ch...

Regular listeners to The Hobcast Bookshow will know that the art of audiobook narration is something close to Adrian's heart. He's not shy in sharing his views on what a narrator needs from an author to make the process easier, but is he speaking for others? Our guest this week is Greg Patmore, a British actor and hugely experienced and successful audiobook narrator. What are the challenges he faces in the booth? How does h...

Our guests this week on The Hobcast Bookshow are Bob and Carol Bridgestock. The husband-and-wife writing team have established themselves as two of the UK's best police procedural authors - writing under the pen name, R C Bridgestock. Bob draws heavily on his experiences as detective, retiring at the rank of Detective Superintendent in West Yorkshire Police. Carol was a civilian employee of WYP, and she takes responsibility for...

Eastenders, Emmerdale, Eldorado, Pobol Y Cwm, The Bill, Vera and Casualty. If you check out our guest Rob Gittins' credit list on IMDB you will be dazzled by the scale and variety of it. A winner of multiple awards for his work both on TV and radio, Rob is also the author of seven novels. His latest, I'm Not There is published by us at Hobeck Books this week. It's a brilliant novel that deals with the impact of childhoo...

The events of the past week overshadow this episode of The Hobcast Book Show. We conducted our interview with our guest, Catherine Yardley, the day before the passing of Her Majesty the Queen on Thursday 8th September, but recorded the rest of the podcast on Saturday 10th, not long after our new king, Charles III, was officially proclaimed our new monarch. For this reason, the show has a different feel to previous episodes. There&#...

Our guest this week on The Hobcast Book Show has an amazing story to tell. Several, in fact. Amy Le escaped from Vietnam as the war ended with the collapse of the South. She was just a few months old. Taken in by the United States, they fought hard to establish a new life, with Amy's mother pushing her daughter hard to achieve a better life through education and hard work. When her mother passed away a few years ago, Amy embark...

How's this for an introduction: "If I were a woman, I'd be Zoe Sharp. If Jack Reacher were a woman, he'd be Zoe Sharp's main character, Charlie Fox." No small compliment for our guest this week, paid to her by Lee Child himself. In our fascinating interview with Zoe Sharp, we learn about her unconventional start in life, her rise through journalism into full-time writer, and the development of her three main...

We have a busy week ahead of us at Hobeck Books with the launch of two new titles. Alongside the release of A J Aberford's second George Zammit thriller, Bullets in the Sand, we're delighted to be publishing Her Deadly Friend by bestselling author Rae Sargeant. Rachel has been hugely successful with her psychological thrillers for Harper Collins, but her first novel for Hobeck is a departure - a mix of suspense and police p...

The sales figures bear this out: historical crime fiction is on the rise. This week we speak to one of the modern masters of the art, Mark Ellis, author of the superb Frank Merlin series set in World War Two. Originally from Swansea, Mark studied at Cambridge, became a barrister, then moved into banking before becoming a computing entrepreneur. The sale of his company has allowed him to follow his passion for writing, with his firs...

The Hobcast Book Show team have been on their travels over the past week, first to Wales and then to Devon for a family holiday. Inspired by their experiences, they were determined to feature an author connected with one of those areas, so this week's guest is the brilliant Malcolm Pryce, author Louie Knight Mystery series of novels set in the coastal town of Aberystwyth in Mid-Wales. As Malcolm explains to Adrian and Rebecca, ...

'It's more than speculation, it's a prediction.' That, famously, was the tagline for The Swarm - the 1978 disaster movie starring Michael Caine that depicted the impact that a swarm of 'African Killer Bees' would have on the United States. It's a sad reflection that the opposite is now true, and bees and other pollinators are under threat. That's the starting point for Hive - the award-nominated nove...

It's the big one! This week The Hobcast Book Show comes from the world's biggest crime writing festival, the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Festival set in the grounds of the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate. Back to full capacity for 2022, the event was a huge success, attracting some of the biggest names in global crime fiction. As you'll hear in this special show, Adrian and Rebecca caught up with some star guests, includi...

It's that time of year again. The Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Festival begins this week in Harrogate, bringing together the great and good from the UK and international crime writing scene. It's like Glyndebourne for the morbid, or Henley for those whose rivers run with blood. One of the highlights of the four day event is the announcement of the Theakstons award for Crime Novel of the Year. In this special edition of The...

We're delighted to be launching a new series of wonderful thrillers this week - the Inspector George Zammit series by A J Aberford. Set in Malta, George is an unlikely hero. He's not ambitious, carries too much weight, and enjoys the quiet life, but events conspire to place our hero at the centre of a series of complex international conspiracies. As author Tony Gartland, (writing as A J Aberford), tells us, Malta is the per...

One half of the Hobcast presentation team has spent half his life in journalism, and Adrian has lost count of the number of times he's sworn at the TV over the depiction of his former trade. But do journalists get a bad rap in fiction? Isn't it fair enough that writers use their creative licence to depict journalists in a way that suits their own stories? Or should writers work harder to get the details right and better ref...