Jim Loughran graduated in 1976 from Queen’s University Belfast with an Honours Degree in French and Spanish. He spent a year in Paris and the following year completed the Post Graduate Certificate in Education. After two years teaching French in Belfast and 10 years working for one of Dublin’s leading advertising agencies he joined Amnesty International where he was Head of Media and Communications for 15 years. He was then head hunted to join Front Line Defenders, a newly established Irish based human rights organisation working on the security and protection of human rights defenders, as Head of Communications.

Since retiring 5 years ago Jim has turned his attention to creative writing with a focus on historical fiction. He has won first prize in the Open Category of the annual SCC (Sport and Culture Committee) Short Story Competition, for:
City of the Damned, a story based on the life of Hugh O’ Neill, Earl of Tyrone the man who came closest to defeating Elizabeth 1’s army in Ireland and recognised as one of the great military strategists of the age.

and Syracuse Must Burn, the story of Timon, a boy with a gift for prophecy, whose premonitions save the city of Syracuse from attack by the Athenian fleet in 413BC

His first appearance in print was ‘Ill Met by Moonlight’ a gothic vampire story published as part of ‘These Dark Things’ an anthology of gothic fiction published by Briar Press, New York.

His first full length novel, working title ‘The Bratinsky Affair,’ will be published by Sharpe Books in 2025.

The Bratinsky Affair is the story of Countess Irina Bratinsky a Russian exile with Irish ancestry who dies in a burning house in Ireland in1976. The death of Countess Irina Bratinsky, international dealer in Fabergé jewels and friend of presidents, in a blazing ruin is international news. For journalist Tom O’Brien it’s an opportunity to advance his career as he exposes the countess’s secret life of espionage and crime. Tom meets Irina’s granddaughter, Olga and they retrace Irina’s steps from revolutionary Russia to war torn France. Inexorably they are drawn into the search for a missing family heirloom – a mystery which has already claimed three lives.

When Irina’s long lost brother Pavel emerges from the gulag as one of the most ruthless criminals in Brezhnev’s Russia he has vengeance on his mind not reconciliation. In their search for answers Tom and Olga confront Pavel in the ruins of Irina’s ancestral home outside Saint Petersburg. The question is: will they survive?

Writer of historical plays and fiction, The Georgian Trilogy : Chocolateria Hysteria, Acting on Instinct & Naked Ambition.

Novels: Collankerth, Historical Saga and Super Natural Thriller, Blue Door Farm

Arts/Heritage Features and reviews Freelance

Stephen May is the author of six novels including Life! Death! Prizes! which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and The Guardian Not The Booker Prize. As well as the acclaimed Sell Us The Rope a novel about the three weeks Joseph Stalin spent in London in 1907. He has also been shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year with his debut TAG and is a winner of the Media Wales Reader’s Prize. His latest novel Green Ink is published in March 2025 by Swift Press. It’s the story of Lloyd George, his mistress Frances Stevenson and the former revolutionary socialist MP Victor Grayson. Stephen May lives in West Yorkshire.

Reviews of Green Ink

THE TIMES BOOKS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2025

‘Stephen May has a nose for fascinating historical events’ The Times

‘A vivid and wholly credible recreation of post-Great War London – that threadbare, incendiary world of shabby intrigue, half-remembered figures now lost to the shadows, and an old order desperate to reestablish its corrupt credentials and squandered authority. All is imagined here in convincing and sardonic – and frequently hilarious – detail. Following the success of Sell Us The Rope, Stephen May has truly hit his stride’ – Robert Edric

‘Intrigue, betrayal, redemption – a glimpse behind the political scenes of a bygone British era that feels very contemporary’ – Rachel Seiffert

‘Stephen May has a nose for fascinating historical events, which he then gives the fictional treatment’ – The Times Books to Look Out For In 2025

Praise for Sell Us the Rope

‘The spry, sardonic voice of the new historical fiction. Original, adept and confident… What can I say, except that I wish I had written it myself?’ Hilary Mantel

‘A deeply satisfying novel. Incisive, inventive, frequently very funny’ Guardian

‘Historical facts furnish May with a cast of legends to bring to life, and he does it with verve and humour’ The Times

‘Brilliant and original — part historical novel, part romantic comedy, and part bildungsroman about a tyrant-in-waiting’ Marcel Theroux

‘A captivating thought-experiment that marks a consolidation of May’s powers as a writer’ Daily Telegraph

 

T A Belshaw is from Derbyshire in the United Kingdom. He is the author of the well-received Amy Rowlings Golden Age mystery series, which includes Murder at the Mill, Death at the Lychgate, The Murder Awards, Murder on the Medway, Ten Years After and the latest novel in the series, Encore For Murder which was shortlisted for the Romantic Novelists Association, Romantic Thriller Award at the 2026 Awards Night.

Trevor is also the author of the Dual Timeline Family Saga, Unspoken. The four-book series includes, Unspoken, The Legacy The Reckoning and the 2023 fourth book in the series, Betrayal. His Christmas Novel, Hopes and Fears, set in 1940 features the same characters found in both the Unspoken and Amy Rowlings series.

His short stories have been published in various anthologies including 100 Stories for Haiti, 50 Stories for Pakistan, Another Haircut, Shambelurkling and Other Stories, Deck The Halls, 100 Stories for Queensland and The Cafe Lit anthology 2011, 2012 and 2013. He also has two pieces in Shambelurklers Return. 2014

His poem, My Mistake, was rated Highly Commended and published in an anthology of the best entries in the Farringdon Poetry Competition. Various articles have been published in magazines as diverse as Ireland’s Own, The Best of British and First Edition.

 

 

Suzanne Shaw is a life-long writer who has practiced law and was also trained as a journalist. She began writing historical fiction so she could spend as much time as possible in the 18th and early 19th centuries. She has been fortunate enough to research the historical background and settings of her work in the Bodleian Library, the London Library, and in Cornwall. She lives with her rescue cat in the Pacific Northwest United States. Her first novel was published in 2024.

Bryan J Mason wrote his first novel, Shaking Hands with the Devil, in the late 1980s, but put it away, concluding he was a failed author after failing to get it published. He finally redrafted it and was delighted to find success over thirty years since the first draft.

He has worked as a financial investigator, a mediator and made sound effects for BBC Radio. He is now a full-time crime writer. As well as crime writing he writes regular theatre reviews and co-writes and directs an annual community pantomime.

An Old Tin Can was the first in a new black comedy crime series set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, followed by Dead On published on 5 November 2025. The trilogy will conclude with the ominously titled ‘There Are No Happy Endings’.

He describes his genre as ‘black comedy crime’ and enjoys writing in a historical context, which possibly owes something to being a history graduate, but could just be an aversion to writing about modern forensics and CCTV. He is planning a new series set in a Victorian undertaker’s.

A member of the Crime Writers Association, Society of Authors and Historical Writers Association, he lives in Bristol with his wife and has two children in their twenties. He enjoys swimming, eating out and the theatre, but is never happier than when hanging around in graveyards, which he thinks might come in handy one day.