If you’re captivated by the court politics in The Cruel Prince by Holly Black and the heist adventures from Netflix’s Shadow and Bone, These Hollow Vows by Lexi Ryan will keep you up at night. When Abriella makes a deal with a menacing Unseelie King to save her sister, she enters a world of two warring fae courts and faces moral crises. Tasked with stealing various magical objects, Brie is swept into a fantasy land rife with betrayals and lies. Upon hearing this premise, we

After a day of fabric sourcing for a new project, Sarah Arthur jumps into her car and picks up the phone. She enthusiastically dives into a story about how a cancelled order of silver embroidered fabric became the basis for one of Diana Bishop’s iconic dresses on A Discovery of Witches. The costume designer, renowned for her Emmy-nominated work on Sherlock, brought to life Elizabethan garments worn by its lead stars, Teresa Palmer and Matthew Goode. Set in 1590, season two of

When Newton Faulkner started songwriting, he was told that happy songs are the hardest to create. But that’s exactly why he gravitated towards them. That’s a recurring theme for the upcoming album —Interference (Of Light) — set for release on 20 August; Newton threw out the rule book, doing the stark opposite of easy. The self-imposed challenge paid off as the result is a bright and dynamic record. It is the product of “sitting in a room alone and looking out of the window in

Turning off all connections to the outside world, Asher Monroe embarked on a three-month mission to complete his upcoming album, Windows of Time, on a boat in Croatia. While that may sound intimidating to some, for Asher it was a creative haven that transformed his approach to songwriting. “I immersed myself into the whole project. I put my phone away for a few months, I jumped into the water every day. It was really fun to use that beautiful scenery and the whole environmen

Netflix has developed a healthy catalogue of thought-provoking thrillers, with The One being its latest series. Starring Hannah Ware as a CEO of a matchmaking app that uses science to find your soulmate, the series is equal parts murder mystery and romantic drama. Amongst all the dramatics and sci-fi elements, however, it is a study about human instinct and how far we will go for self-preservation. In many ways, the season catalogues the character journeys as opposed to bein

After rescuing his Gretsch Country Gentleman electric guitar from a two year lock-up, Michael Malarkey drops by Strongroom Bar for a one-off show. It’s a small detour on his way home from Liverpool Comic Con. “I had just come back from the tour [in March] and I was still kind of buzzing from it. I wanted to do some shows incrementally throughout to keep me fresh. It’s usually a bit of a surprise when I go on tour, because my life is so chaotic, especially with kids that I ra