KEITH BROOKE: an annotated bibliography

Here's far more than you ever wanted to know about my published work. Novels appear by default, but just use the links below to find out about my other work.

novels; collections; nonfiction; edited; short fiction.

Also: see criticality for details of my book reviews.

Bibliography: novels

I also write fiction under other names, most notably Nick Gifford, whose young adult novels have been published by Puffin and optioned for the movies by big-name producers. For details of Nick's work, see the Nick Gifford website.

Enigma Exposed: The Enigma Quartet, book two by Eric Brown and Keith Brooke (2024)
The second volume in a novella series where humankind struggles to free itself from alien rule.

Wormhole by Keith Brooke and Eric Brown (2022)
A genre mash-up in the first full-length novel from long-time collaborators Keith Brooke and Eric Brown: a corporate thriller, a whodunnit, interplanetary SF, and more.

Enigma Season: The Enigma Quartet, book one by Eric Brown and Keith Brooke (2022)
The first volume in a new novella series where humankind has retreated underground.

Iterations: The Kon-tiki Quartet, book four by Eric Brown and Keith Brooke (2020)
The final volume in this collaboration returns full-circle to Earth as old rivalries flare up and the future of humankind hangs in the balance.

Insights: The Kon-tiki Quartet, book three by Eric Brown and Keith Brooke (2019)
The third volume in this collaboration. It's been a lot of fun seeing where we take this.

Parasites: The Kon-tiki Quartet, book two by Eric Brown and Keith Brooke (2018)
Lovely to be collaborating with Eric again! This is the second in a set of four novellas following humankind's efforts to colonise the stars.

Dislocations: The Kon-tiki Quartet, book one by Eric Brown and Keith Brooke (2018)
Lovely to be collaborating with Eric again! This is the first in a set of four novellas, starting on an Earth struggling to deal with the impact of climate change, and following humankind's efforts to launch out and colonise the stars.

Riding the Serpent's Back (2014)
Yes, I've committed Big Fat Fantasy! This one actually has its origins in a short story of the same name, published in Interzone in 1995, and reprinted in my collection Memesis. The story was set on an island set in a sea of molten lava on a colony planet; as sometimes happens, a story doesn't lose its grip on my imagination even when it's been written and I started to realise there was something bigger here, and that this world with its molten sea would make a terrific setting for an epic fantasy. Once I'd made that leap, the rest of the world started to fall into place, and the obvious kind of story to set here was an end of era story, with the world and its people threatened by catastrophe.

The Bone House Gang by Nick Gifford (2014)
There's no such thing as ghosts. Everyone knows that. Twelve-year-old Jools Bone lives in a run-down mansion, surrounded by a large collection of treasures gathered by his family of explorers and adventurers. When a TV crew arrives to film a new hands-on history series, Digging for Dead People, family friends the De Veres come to help, along with their three children, Ned, Helen and Billy. As filming starts with the search for an ancient burial mound in the forest surrounding the Bones' family home, the gang learn of the ancient legends surrounding the tomb of the lost prince, including tales of hauntings by the spirit of the prince himself. The children are much too rational to believe the stories: there's no such thing as ghosts, of course. But when one particularly grim legend threatens to come true, the kids are faced with a life and death rush to prevent history repeating itself.

Tomorrow by Nick Gifford (2014)
Tomorrow: a future only you can see; a future only you can save... When fifteen-year-old Luke's father dies, his eccentric family threatens to descend into chaos. Luke distracts himself by helping to sort through his father's belongings, a painful process which takes on an entirely new dimension when he discovers that his father had somehow had knowledge of events in his own future. This prescience is connected in some way to a recent spate of terrorist attacks, which would explain why security forces - and others - start to take an interest in Luke's discovery. Just what had his father known, and why are Luke and his friends suddenly at the centre of it all? Tomorrow: an emotion- and time-tangled thriller set in the War Against Chronological Terror. Tomorrow: when three teenagers may have the power to save or destroy a world that is yet to be.

Expatria: the box set (2013)
Ebook-only omnibus set of the two Expatria novels.

alt.human / Harmony (2012)
Note the two titles for this one: the publisher's marketing team in North America preferred one title; the European team preferred the other; and everyone ended up confused... With this one I decided it was time for me to tackle some of the big ideas of SF. Like alternate history. And aliens. And the Fermi Paradox. So I did it: all in one book. And what's more, the novel was shortlisted for the Philip K Dick Award, which was hugely encouraging!

The Unlikely World of Faraway Frankie (2010)
A short fantasy novel with its roots in my short story 'Beside the Sea'. Frankie retreats from the traumas of his life by losing himself in day-dreams. That's all very well until those dreams start to materialise around him, and his home town warps into a fantastical version of the real place.

The Accord (2009)
I always said there was a novel in this. It grew from a background shared by three stories, 'The Accord', 'Sweats' and 'The Man Who Built Heaven', each of which forms part of the novel to one degree or another. It's a thriller about the life and love of Noah Barakh, the man who built a virtual world where people can live on after death, a secular heaven. When you're immortal a vendetta can last a long time...

Erased by Nick Gifford (2006)
You're not paranoid if they really are after you. Someone is messing with Liam's world. All the rules have changed and his life has unravelled completely. He can't even trust his own memories. What he does know is that someone is watching him. Someone thinks he's dangerous. Liam has to fight back. There are no bystanders in this terrifying game. Only players and victims. And Liam isn't going to be a victim. First published by Puffin.

Genetopia (2006)
This one was a long time coming. It dates back to my second professional sale, a story called 'Passion Play' which was published in Robert Holdstock and Christopher Evans' Other Edens III back in 1989. As soon as I wrote that story I knew I had to explore its warped future of accelerated and distorted evolution at novel-length. I spent over a decade thinking about it, and at last it's finished and with a publisher. Of course, the finished novel bears almost no resemblance whatsoever to the story that triggered it. The response to it has been fantastic, with Pyr's first ever starred review in Publishers Weekly, praise from Kit Reed, Michael Swanwick, Peter Hamilton, Jeff VanderMeer and Stephen Baxter, and a review in Locus which concluded, "Let Keith Brooke tell his tale in its cogent fullness. It is beyond any facile summary, a minor masterpiece that should usher Brooke at last into the recognized front ranks of SF writers."

Like Father by Nick Gifford (2005)
Voices in my head. It's driving me mad. It's like my skull's splitting open from the inside. They're talking to me. Laughing at me. Telling me what to do. I'll have their tongues. That'll shut them up. Danny is terrified of being like his father. His dad ended up in prison after a night of savage violence. But then he finds his father's diary and uncovers his dark thoughts - and even darker secrets. Who was whispering to his father, goading him, leading him on? And what if they are coming back for Danny? *Originally published by Puffin as Incubus, this edition reverts to the author's preferred title.

Flesh and Blood by Nick Gifford (2004)
Matt's home life is falling to pieces as his mother seeks refuge from divorce by returning to the seaside town where she grew up. Separated from his friends, bored and discontented, Matt gradually becomes aware that his mother's family are the keepers of a terrifying secret. First published by Puffin.

Piggies by Nick Gifford (2003)
A freak storm transports Ben to a parallel world inhabited by vampires. He manages to escape to the woods where others like him (called ferals by the vampires) hide. As he begins to give up hope of ever getting home, Ben makes friends with Rachel, a vampire more human than some of the ferals who treat him with suspicion. Rachel takes Ben to her farm in an attempt to prove that she's not like the other vampires, but that's when he discovers a terrible secret. And why is the book called Piggies? That's the worst horror of all. First published by Puffin.

Lord of Stone (1997)
I believe this one was actually listed in a Gollancz catalogue back in the early 1990s, but they pulled out without ever explaining their reasons. This is the best novel I've written, a post-war fantasy about the death of magic in an increasingly secular world, and I'm delighted that it's finally found a home.

Expatria Incorporated (1991)
The second part of the Expatria story, about the culture clash when a ship from Earth arrives to spread the gospel of the Holy Church of GenGen. I rate this as the best of my three novels published in the early 1990s.

Expatria (1991)
A far future adventure romp, set in a world that has lost contact with Earth, and rejected the ways of science and technology.

Keepers of the Peace (1990)
My angry young man novel. A near-future anti-militaristic cyber-thriller, camouflaged so successfully as the kind of writing that provoked it that at least one critic dismissed it as a right wing military wet dream. I take that as a kind of back-handed compliment. I think. Locus liked it: Tom Whitmore said it was several years since a first novel had grabbed him the way KotP did, with writing that 'recalls the 1950s Heinlein'; Faren Miller called it a 'gripping story of challenge and skin-of-the-teeth survival'.