Gerri Brightwell's latest novel, Turnback Ridge, will be published in August 2022 by Torrey House Press. Turnback Ridge is set in a near-future Alaska in which the effects of global warming and draconian immigration policies are wreaking havoc. One man, Nash Preston, tries to hold his family together as he runs from Immigration bounty hunters, only to find himself and his sons in a sinister detention facility from which they must escape if they are to survive Her previous novel is Dead of Winter (Salt UK in March 2016). Dead of Winter is a fast-paced, darkly funny novel set in Interior Alaska that follows down-on-his-luck cabbie, Mike Fisher, as he searches for his daughter. Her step-father has been shot in her bathroom, and Fisher thinks she killed him and fled. In a panic he tries to hide the body, but that’s not easy when it’s fifty-below outside. Things get dangerously complicated when it turns out step-dad was part of a local militia, and now they’re on Fisher’s tail. Gerri Brightwell was brought up in South Devon, England. After deciding a degree in zoology was not for her, she took up literature and art history, and lived on a narrow boat in Bristol. Since then she has roamed more widely, working in Spain, Thailand, Canada and the United States. She has worked as a cleaner, ice-cream seller, sandwich-maker, pottery sponger, editor, nanny and, most recently, a teacher of writing and literature. She has master's degrees in creative writing from the University of East Anglia, and the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, plus a doctorate in literature from the University of Minnesota. Her novel, The Dark Lantern, has been published in North America, Australia, New Zealand and Italy, and tells the story of a maid and her mistress in a nineteenth-century household full of secrets. Her first novel, Cold Country, was published by Duckworth in 2003 and is set in Alaska. Gerri Brightwell lives in Fairbanks, Alaska, with her husband, fantasy novelist Ian Cameron Esslemont, and their sons. She teaches in the creative writing programme at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.