Dead Ink Books

Publishing the underground. Dead Ink is a small, ambitious and experimental literary publisher based in Liverpool. Supported by Arts Council England, we’re focused on developing the careers of new and emerging authors.

Set up in 2011, Dead Ink’s aim has always been to take literary risks and challenge the status quo. We believe that there are brilliant authors out there who may not yet be known or commercially viable. We see it as Dead Ink’s job to bring the most challenging and bold new writing out from the underground and present it to our audience in the most beautiful way possible.

Publications

Guest

Guest is a story of disillusionment, protest and, eventually, redemption.

Glitch

After two decades spent in the US, L-J is on a flight back to his native Suffolk to visit family and his childhood coastal home. His flight is straightforward, as per design, until it hits a glitch – an unexpected and dramatic cabin decompression – which suggests that all that L-J expects from this trip cannot be counted on.

Water Shall Refuse Them

Reminiscent of the suspense of Shirley Jackson and soaked in the folk horror of the British landscape, Water Shall Refuse Them is an atmospheric coming-of-age novel and a thrilling debut.

Please Read This Leaflet Carefully

Karen Havelin’s Please Read This Leaflet Carefully is a life told in reverse and a subversion of what we expect from stories of illness. Having been diagnosed with endometriosis in her twenties, we follow Laura Fjellstad in her struggle to live a normal life across New York, Paris and Oslo, fueled by her belief that to survive her chronic illness she must be completely self-reliant.

The Study Circle

‘And there was no safe place, the baying of the outside world had collapsed the walls between public and private. Everything living outside, lived within. He was forced to live all those distant battles within his own being. A neverending punch in the gut.’

Three Dreams in the Key of G

In Three Dreams in the Key of G three female voices – Mother, Crone and Creatrix – unknowingly influence each other’s fates as each battles to assert themselves and discover their voices in hostile environments.

The Unauthorised Biography of Ezra Maas

Blending biography and post-modern detective elements, following a journalist on the hunt for Maas through a mix of letters, diary entries and phone transcripts. What unfolds is an absorbing and intriguing labyrinth that blurs the line between fact and fiction. What’s the real story behind Ezra Maas? That’s for the intrepid reader to find out.

Sealed

Timely and suspenseful, Sealed is a gripping modern fable on motherhood, a terrifying portrait of ordinary people under threat from their own bodies and from the world around them. With elements of speculative fiction and the macabre, this is also an unforgettable story about a mother’s fight to survive.

Hollow Shores

Budden’s debut collection blends the traditions of weird fiction and landscape writing in an interlinked set of stories from the emotional geographies of London, Kent, Finland and a place known as the Hollow Shore.

Know Your Place: Essays on the Working Class by the Working Class

Featuring 23 essays from working class writers, this book reflects on the role that the class system plays in Britain today. From holidays to food, race to housing, and language to sexuality, this book covers a wide range of topics from a diverse list of authors from across the country.

Another Justified Sinner

It’s the eve of the recession, but who cares? For commodity trader Marcus, life is good. So what if it’s all falling apart? This isn’t a crisis. Until it is.

As misfortune strikes Marcus again and again, he finally has to change. But can this English psychopath ever change? Another Justified Sinner is a literary black comedy about the fall and rise and fall of Marcus, a slippery sinner. How difficult is it to change?