Our favourite books this year, chosen by Orion editors...

Editor's Choice: Genevieve Pegg chooses Black Flowers by Steve Mosby

Dear Reader,

There are countless different reasons why you open a book. Wrapped between the covers comes entertainment, escape, horror and delight. A story shows you something about the world you never knew before and something about your own life you never knew someone else shared.

Black Flowers is a novel about those kinds of stories. I knew from the first time I read the prologue and felt a chill of fear and intrigue that I wasn’t going to be able to let it go. It’s a book about the stories we tell each other to try to contain and understand the dark things in this world.

What would you do if the books you read didn’t end when you closed the covers? What if those terrifying scenes you read in your favourite crime novels were based on something real? Black Flowers is a taut and terrifying read about secrets and lies and the things we’d do to protect the people we love. You’d better hope you don’t find a black flower pressed between the pages of your copy of the book – or that thin line between story and history might just become blurred…

If you’ve read Steve’s novels before, you’ll already know that a macabre and compelling world lies over the page. If not, I hope you’ll enjoy discovering Steve’s writing and love the novel as much as I have. Yes, it’s about stories within stories; yes, it’s about a girl who comes back and a woman who goes missing; yes, it’s about a man who faces his worst fear…but most of all, it’s just a cracking good read.

Genevieve Pegg
Senior Commissioning Editor