Welcome to The Irresponsible Reader’s part in the Cover Reveal for Teodora Matei’s Living Candles! I don’t know why my [expletive deleted] scheduled post didn’t go up yesterday like it was supposed to. I apologize to Lonescue, Corylus Books, and Love Books for not noticing that until this morning–this makes the 3rd tour I’ve ever missed (and the second in a row for Corylus Books, when I mess up, I go big), and it’s not the way I try to run around here. “Irresponsible” is supposed to refer to my reading ethos, not my approach to commitments.

Technically, this isn’t so much a Cover Reveal as much as it is, “here’s a nifty cover for a book that looks promising from a publisher that has a great idea”. Hope you enjoy!

Book Blurb

The discovery of a woman close to death in a city basement sends Bucharest police officers Anton Iordan and Sorin Matache on a complex chase through the city as they seek to identify the victim. As they try to track down the would-be murderer, they find a macabre trail of missing women and they realise that this isn’t the first time the killer has struck. Iordan and Matache hit one dead end after another, until they decide they’ll have to take a chance that could prove deadly.

Buy Link

https://amzn.to/2HT6MnD


Corylus Books

Corylus Books is a new venture aiming to publish fiction translated into English. The people behind the company have very different backgrounds, but what brings us together is a deep appreciation of crime fiction and a strong interest in books from countries that so have been under-represented in English.

It took a while before it turned out that everyone’s thoughts had been on similar lines – that we wanted to take a chance on presenting some of the great European crime fiction that wouldn’t normally make its way into English. With a mixture of language, translation and other skills between the four of us, it seemed the logical next step to take.

The first Corylus books are a pair of Romanian crime novellas, Living Candles by Teodora Matei and Zodiac by Anamaria Ionescu.

There’s more to come in 2020 – starting with Romanian novelist’s Bogdan Teodorescu’s Sword, a powerful political thriller that has already been a bestseller in Romania and in its French translation. Sword will be available in May and will be followed later in the year by the first of two books by Icelandic crime writer Sólveig Pálsdóttir. The Fox will be available in the second half of this year, followed by Shackles in 2021.

And there’s more to come, with a novel by Bogdan Hrib set partly in Romania and partly in the north-east of England, a second novel from Teodora Matei, and we’re talking to more exciting writers from across Europe about what we can do together…


Without further ado…

The Cover


That cover just promises a creepy read. I can already feel the hair on the back of my neck standing up without reading a word. Looking at that cover makes me want to dust off my hands and look out for spiders.

You can get your hands on this cover (and the unnerving novel it goes with!) at https://amzn.to/2HT6MnD and keep an eye on Corylus Books, I think it’ll be well-worth your time.



My thanks to Love Books Group for the invitation to participate in this reveal and the materials they provided.

Love Books Group