Justin Richards is a jack-of-all-trades. He’s written numerous books — including The Chaos Code, The Parliament of Blood, and the Time Runners series — as well as audio plays and a stage play. He’s also an editor for a media journal, with several anthologies to his credit. He’s the Creative Director for the BBC’s Doctor Who books, and has authored several himself (including Time Lord Fairytales, The Shakespeare Notebooks, and The Only Good Dalek).

None of that prepared me for his 2015 novel The Suicide Exhibition, which featured an insidious Nazis plot to use alien Vril technology to win the war, and the small band of British wartime intelligence agents who undertake a desperate mission to stop Heinrich Himmler from excavating ancient burial grounds and finding these extraterrestrial Übermenschen. Michael Moorcock said “Richards brings all his skills as a leading Doctor Who writer to this tale of wartime intelligence at odds with some of H.P. Lovecraft’s worst nightmares,” and Kirkus Reviews said “Richards’ true talent lies in crafting campy but believable dialogue which imbues the novel with a real sense of character… Part Indiana Jones, part X-Files, part Catch-22, it’s good campy fun.”

The Blood Red City, the second volume in The Never War, arrives in hardcover from Thomas Dunne before the end of the month. As the alien Vril awaken, Colonel Brinkman and his team at Station Z stuggle to solve an ancient mystery… while preparing for an imminent alien attack.

[Click the covers above for bigger versions.]

Here’s the jacket copy for The Blood Red City:

The alien Vril are waking, and the Never War is heating up. Colonel Brinkman and his team at Station Z desperately need answers — they have to discover exactly what they are facing and how the attack will come. But the information doesn’t come easily. With a major Vril offensive imminent, the Nazis step up their own project to exploit Vril weapons and technology.

Leo Davenport finds himself fighting with the Greek resistance as he struggles to solve an ancient mystery. Major Guy Pentecross must travel to the ruined deathtrap of the most dangerous city in the world to track down the one man who can help.

From a spaceship crash in Bavaria in 1934 to the rat-infested devastation of Stalingrad, from the ancient ruins of occupied Greece to the bombed-out streets of London, the second book of the Never War series continues a secret history of the Second World War in which humanity itself is fighting for survival…

This is Indiana Jones crossed with The X-Files. In The Blood Red City, Justin Richards has an extremely credible grasp of the period’s history and has transformed it into a groundbreaking alternate reality thriller.

The Suicide Exhibition was published by Thomas Dunne Books on March 3, 2015. It’s 352 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. So far there’s no word on a US paperback edition.

The Blood Red City will be published by Thomas Dunne Books on March 29, 2016. It is 396 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by David Curtis.

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