A roundup of the latest books announced by Candy Jar Books this year.
Intelligence Taskforce
Written by Jonathan Blum
Cover by Adrian Salmon
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is in disgrace. And alone.
As the inquiry into his recent actions closes in, he takes personal leave, and heads
to the United States to hunt answers. The conspiracy he’s been uncovering stretches to the highest levels, involving people with the ability to manipulate probability and random chance, who could skew the fate of the entire world. But what for?
From the UN building to the Pentagon, the streets of Harlem to the shores of Barbados, Lethbridge-Stewart has to leave behind his secure position and build a
new team of international allies. What they establish could bring the world together to face alien threats… or their different agendas could tear everything down.
They locate the man behind the conspiracy. But is there someone – or something – behind even him?
Intelligence Taskforce is Jonathan Blum's second Lethbridge-Stewart novel. though range editor Andy Frankham-Allen observed:
There is two ways to look at this book; it’s either a sequel, or it’s the second part of one novel. I’m inclined to think of it as the latter, since it was initially only planned as one novel.
Jonathan Blum said:
When I first pitched my story to Andy, it was just one book – Andy said I could go a bit longer than usual because it was the grand finale. Then I submitted it, and he said, ‘okay, not quite that long…’ I’d already cut out a bunch of bits from my outline, because I knew I was running long, but the submitted draft was about 90,000 words, where most of the Lethbridge-Stewart books were around 70,000. In passing I said ‘you know, there’s these subplots in the original outline that I left out, we could put them back in and make it two 60,000 word books…’ In my defence, I did have COVID at the time! Don’t try this at home, folks – usually you’ll be laughed at. But luckily, this helped Andy with his schedule, so he said ‘make it two 70,000 word books and you’re on’. But that meant I still had to come up with even more new material! The story split neatly in half – book one became ‘what’s going on and who’s behind it’, while book two was ‘how do we stop them, and how far are they planning to go’. If you look at the books as basically an old-style Doctor Who four-parter, the expansion was in parts two and three!”
For me, the defining note of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is that he’s such a conventional, upright figure – and yet he has to deal with so much interplanetary barking insanity. And as we know from the TV show, he allies himself with some weird people. His life is fundamentally strange, but he stays so normal – what does that mean about him? How can he actually do that? There’s a possible answer in here, and it’s not one the Brigadier would like… In the books he and Anne have this great personal history with the Great Intelligence and their family, this chaos lurking under the surface of their orderly lives, and they’re both going to have to face that. And for a representative of The System, he spends an awful lot of time skirting the rules; he only really seems conventional and rigid when he’s standing next to the Doctor! Here, in order to get UNIT as we know it off the ground, he’s going to have to both rebuild the system from within, and work outside it. And, without intending to, burn some crucial old bridges…
Adrian Salmon said of his cover;
It was quite a technical exercise this one! My intention was to make the 'coins' be knocked back colour-wise to suggest movement as against solidity, and I think it works!
A coda to the series, The Lost Son by Tim Gambrell, will be released later in the year.
The book is available on pre-order from Candy Jar Books.
The Lucy Wilson Mysteries: Stop the Clock!
Written by Cherry Cobb
London, 1941. The day Big Ben stopped.
It’s half-term. Lucy and Hobo are excited to be in London, especially as they’re going to see The Lion King at the theatre! But, Lucy’s dad has told them to stay inside and out of trouble. Luckily for the dynamic duo, Lucy’s time ring has other plans!
Rationing. Air raids. Bombs. The Houses of Parliament. Big Ben. And a strange ticking noise.
But who is Curt Uhrmacher? Why does he have an army of clockwork people? And can Lucy and Hobo stop the clock in time?
The latest instalment of The Lucy Wilson Mysteries, is now available for pre-order exclusively from the Candy Jar website.
The Lucy Wilson Mysteries series first started back in 2018 and even though it was spearheaded by the talented Sue Hampton the series has since been very male-led, with Stop the Clock! being the first full-length novel written by a female writer since. Author, Cherry Cobb, is very excited to be the second woman author for the series:
I’ve written a few short stories about Lucy over the years, but when Shaun asked me to write a full-length novel, I jumped at the chance!
I had to set the story in World War II London as it was such a remarkable period in history. There are so many stories to be told, but one that grabbed my attention was the time that Big Ben stopped working from June the 3rd at 10.13pm to June the 4th at 10.13am in 1941. This was due to a workman who accidentally dropped a hammer into the movement works while repairing the clock after an air raid. But then I started to think, what if it wasn’t the workman and was something else entirely?
Head of publishing Shaun Russell, said:
It’s fantastic to have Cherry writing for the series. We were incredibly lucky to have the series kickstarted by Sue and I’m hoping that this will be the start of more stories by women authors.
As well as exploring a time so rich with history, the book also features some cameos of Winston Churchill, Alan Turing and Candy Jar’s very own Eileen Younghusband, author of the award-winning One Woman’s War. Keren Williams, Publishing Co-ordinator and part of the editorial team for both Lethbridge-Stewart and Lucy Wilson, said:
We’ve seen Eileen quite a lot in the Lethbridge-Stewart series, due to popular demand, but this is her first appearance in Lucy Wilson. And, what’s most exciting is that the ending leaves an opening for her return in a later story.
The Lucy Wilson Mysteries is a Lethbridge-Stewart spin-off adventure inspired by characters created for Doctor Who by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln.
Stop the Clock! is available to pre-order exclusively from Candy Jar Books.
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Companions: Sixty Years of Doctor Who Assistants
Written by Andy Frankham-Allen, is joined by Philip Bates,
Cover by Colin Howard
Doctor Who was never really about the Doctor. This is the story of the Time Lord’s companions – friends through all time and space.
Discover the journeys of every one of the Doctor’s assistants, from Susan, Ian Chesterton, and Barbara Wright, to Fifteenth Doctor companion, Ruby Sunday; including their adventures off-screen, in novels, comics, and audio.
Companions: Sixty Years of Doctor Who Assistants is an in-depth account of each companion, examining their arcs, significance in the TV series, and how they traversed different times, places, and mediums. Relive their travels on television. Learn what companions did after they left the TARDIS. And meet the Doctor’s wider network of friends, from Evelyn Smythe to Liv Chenka, Professor Bernice Summerfield to his grandchildren, John and Gillian.
See the universe anew through their eyes.
Companions: Sixty Years of Doctor Who Assistants is a brand new, fully expanded edition of one of Candy Jar Books’ most popular non-fiction works, Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants. With just over a decade’s more stories, this sixtieth anniversary edition revises and expands on every chapter, bringing to light more details than ever before; includes detailed summaries of characters added to The Whoniverse since 2013; and features new chapters for the companions of the Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Doctors.
Primarily split into fifteen chapters, one per Doctor, each section looks first at companions’ TV stories, their arcs, and importance to the show as a whole, before delving into spin-off media that expands on their characters. It aims to be the definitive story of all the Doctor’s friends in time and space, covering every companion from the original team of Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan through to the Doctor's latest travelling companion Ruby Sunday. Taking into account the franchise’s ventures into other mediums like novels, comics, and audio means that, alongside in-depth histories of Sarah Jane Smith, Ace, Rose, Amy and Rory, and many more, the book further covers companions not seen on television, including Fitzgerald “Fitz” Kreiner, Erimemushinteperem, Gabby Gonzalez, Frobisher, and Lucie Miller.
Publisher, Shaun Russell, said:
Companions has been long out of print, and I still get fans asking when it’ll be available again. With Doctor Who recently celebrating its sixtieth anniversary, now seemed the perfect time. What’s been so amazing, though, is seeing how much extra material there’s been to cover. It’s effectively the same amount as a brand new book!
Original author, Andy Frankham-Allen, is joined by Philip Bates, editor of the Doctor Who Companion website. Andy said:
I remain incredibly proud of Companions; the reception it had made the long hours noting down every important character beat worthwhile. My edition went up to the end of The Name of the Doctor in 2013, so for this new edition, we’ve finished off Clara Oswald’s time with the Eleventh Doctor, then analysed the lives of many more companions since then like Bill Potts, Yasmin Khan, and even someone whose time on board the TARDIS we all thought was over, Donna Noble.
Philip adds:
Andy’s tome sits on my desk, a comprehensive and fascinating guide that I can turn to whenever my memory cheats. When Shaun and Andy asked me to get on board updating it, I was understandably over the moon. It quickly dawned on me how many more adventures there were to feature, so that meant starting again from page one – checking all the information was still correct or hadn’t been contradicted, then diving into other mediums to find out how classic and new companions have had their lives explored further. And it’s been an absolute joy.
Shaun concluded:
Doctor Who has a rich history and this book indulges in it. But Doctor Who is also about looking to the future, and right now, that’s Millie Gibson. So it felt only right to feature the 2024 season of the show. Plus, we get to talk more about the lovely Bonnie Langford, who returns as Mel Bush in the latest series. So this is as up-to-date and rigorous an exploration of Doctor Who as you can get!
The book is due out later this year, and is available to pre-order from the Candy Jar website.
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