Wednesday 24 June 2015

Extract & Giveaway: The Voices Beyond by Johan Theorin

Since I set up the blog I have been very lucky to receive fantastic books to review but at the same time I'm struggling to keep on top of my reading list so sadly not all the books I receive can be reviewed, instead I try to find guest reviewers to review them or run giveaways.

One such book that I received this week is The Voices Beyond by Johan Theorin which is published next Thursday, 2nd July. Sadly I already have too many July books to review so I have agreed with the publisher to share an extract of the book and run a giveaway for my copy, but that's not all as Sophie at Transworld has very generously offered another copy of the book as a giveaway prize so there's now two copies to be won.

Summer on the beautiful Swedish island of Öland. Visitors arrive in their thousands, ready to enjoy the calm and relaxation of this paradise. 

Amongst them is Jonas Kloss, excited at the prospect of staying with his aunt, uncle and older cousins. But it is not as he had hoped. One night he takes a boat out onto the moonlit sea. A ship looms out of the darkness and the horror he finds on board is unimaginable. 

Fleeing for his life, Jonas arrives at the door of an elderly islander, Gerlof Davidsson. Once Gerlof has heard his tale of dead sailors and axe-wielding madmen, he realizes that this will be a summer like none other Öland has ever seen. 

For one man – the Homecomer – this is a very special journey. He seeks revenge that he’s waited a lifetime to exact…

Throughout his life, Johan Theorin has been a regular visitor to the Baltic Island of Öland. His mother's family - sailors, fishermen and farmers - have lived there for centuries, nurturing the island's rich legacy of strange tales and folklore.

A journalist by profession, Johan lives in Gothenburg, Sweden.

To give you a teaser as to what you can expect, I have an extract below for you to enjoy.

The ghost ship  came gliding out of the darkness across the black waters of the Sound, giving way to nothing and no one.
The boy in the rubber dinghy didn't have time to get away when the ship suddenly appeared.  His small inflatable craft almost capsized in the collision, but at the very last moment he managed to pull close to the steel hull and throw a line around the gunwale.
The ship loomed above him.  It was oily and rusty, as if it had been sailing the seven seas for many years.  Nothing was moving on deck, but deep inside he could hear the throbbing of an engine, like the beating of a heart.,
The dinghy had been damaged and was letting in water, so the boy had no choice.  He reached up to the gunwale and clambered aboard.
Cautiously, he climbed over and down on to the dark deck; there was a powerful stench of rotten fish.
Slowly, he crept forward, along the side of a closed hatch.
After only five or six meters he saw the first dead man.  A seaman dressed in filthy dungarees, lying on his back and staring blankly up at the night sky.
Then more seamen came staggering out of the darkness towards him - dying or already dead.  Yet still alive.  They reached out to him, spoke to him in weak voices, in some foreign language.  
The boy screamed and tried to flee.

Thus began the last Summer of the twentieth century in the village of Stenvik.
And thus began the story of the ghost that haunted the village.
Or perhaps it all began some seventy years earlier, in a small inland churchyard.  With another young man, Gerlof Davidsson, who heard the sound of someone knocking loudly from inside a coffin. 

Does this sound like your type of book?  If so, enter via the Rafflecopter form below.  The winners will be selected at random when giveaway finishes and contacted for postal address to enable Sophie and I to post the books to you.  a Rafflecopter giveaway

15 comments:

  1. I'm not usually a fan of ghost stories, but this extract has left me wanting to read on - if only to see whether it really IS a ghost story!

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  2. i ove johan theorin

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  3. Paula Readings25 June 2015 at 11:30

    Sounds exciting!

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  4. Does it sound like my type of book? Er, yes. I need some new horror, and this sounds perfect. Keeping my fingers crossed for this one.

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  5. Sounds like a great read from the teaser!

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  6. Already looking for a new summer read and this would be ideal!

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