Adult & YA fiction | Neil Bailey

Adult and Young Adult stories that won’t let you go

The Awakening - an environmental thriller

A Glimpse Inside

When the world starts to unravel, it doesn’t begin with sirens or headlines: it starts with whispers in the forest and strange cracks in the earth. In a time when climate collapse is no longer a warning but a terrifying reality, Sarah and a scattered group of survivors must race to each other and navigate a land where the rules of nature have changed; where humans aren't welcome. Gripping, thought-provoking, and eerily believable, The Awakening is a grounded environmental thriller that taps into our deepest fears; and dares to offer a glimmer of hope.

Publishing April 2027 through Rowan Prose Publishing

The Other Story - a psychological horror

“Ink binds you; blood ends you. You exist because I allow it. I withdraw my permission.”

When budding novelist Ev Cawthorne inherits the isolated marshland house of Rookmere, she decides it’s the right time to finish her books. Her autistic mind thrives on connections and multiple stories. Working on two manuscripts; a prison horror and a children’s adventure, reality begins to warp as characters cross pages and walk into her waking life. Her creation insists the books are its canvas as much as hers.

As the Dunwich area of Suffolk reels with mysterious bodies, children trapped in nightmares and police officers vanishing without a trace, Ev realises she is the conduit. The wall between fiction and reality has thinned, and only her writing can close it. But at what cost?

The Other Story is a metafictional horror novel that blends psychological dread with supernatural presence, asking what happens when stories refuse to stay on the page.

Publishing August 2027 through Rowan Prose Publishing

The Archive of Ashes - a psychological thriller

If perception can be rewritten, then truth is only as strong as the person holding it.

Clara Morven, a social media WWII historian, takes a MoD archiving job at a remote airfield in Scotland. While cataloguing fire-damaged records, she inhales ash and begins experiencing vivid, intrusive visions that feel more real than her waking life.

As the visions intensify, Clara teams up with Pip, a young historian, and Catriona, her guest house host. Together, they uncover evidence of a secret government program called the Happiness Lens, designed to manipulate perception and control entire communities. Beneath the archive lies the Paradise Block, a hidden human testing facility where reality itself was altered.

Trapped inside an iron Quonset hut, Clara’s grip on reality fractures. She finds records that place her inside the project decades before her birth. The deeper she searches, the less real her world becomes.

Fans of “We Spread” by Iain Reid, “Beautiful Ugly” by Alice Feeney, and “Broken Light” by Joanne Harris will enjoy “The Archive of Ashes.”