Blog Tour: The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu

Book Extract: Invisible by Heleyne Hammersley

Published September 28, 2026 | By Laura

I’m very excited to be welcoming Heleyne Hammersley to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her book, Invisible.

An icy morning, a muddy riverbank. The body of a promising swimmer is found in the River Don close to Thorpe. Returning from a six-month absence, DI Kate Fletcher leads her first murder case since she nearly lost her own life to a desperate killer.

Grappling with her own doubts and insecurities, she has to negotiate a team transformed by differences in staffing and in attitude. Everything has changed and nobody is comfortable.

A second body leads to a strong suspect, but the evidence is circumstantial and far from clear cut. Kate’s ex-Detective Sergeant finds the breakthrough they need to help track down a cunning and meticulous murderer who has no conscience and no fear of consequences.

But can Kate act in time to prevent more deaths?

Heleyne has shared an extract with us today so grab that comfortable chair, the beverage of your choice and enjoy.

(Trigger warning: description of crime scene).

beginning of extract

This extract is from Chapter 17. After the discovery of a body in the River Don, DI Kate Fletcher is keen to establish any connection to a recent murder behind a pub in Doncaster.

An icy puddle marked the entrance to the alleyway, the surface a kaleidoscope of red and blue lights. A lone PCSO stood guard next to a line of blue-and-white tape which stretched from the corner of the pub to the wall opposite. He clutched a clipboard as though it were a talisman granting him permission to be there or warding off whatever evil lurked in the gloom behind the pub amid the overflowing bins and the graffiti.

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Book Review: The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu

Published March 3, 2020 | By Laura

From a Tang Dynasty legend of a young girl trained as an assassin with the ability to skip between dimensions on a secluded mountain sanctuary to a space colony called Nova Pacifica that reflects on a post-apocalyptic world of the American Empire and ‘Moonwalker’ Neil Armstrong, award-winning author Ken Liu’s writings are laced with depictions of silkpunk fantasy, Sci-Fi and old Chinese folklore, wrapped up in a mesmerising genre-bending collection of short stories.

Ken Liu is one of the most lauded short story writers of our time. This much-anticipated collection includes a selection of his latest science ﬁction and fantasy stories over the last ﬁve years – sixteen of his best – plus a new novelette. In addition to these seventeen selections, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories also features an excerpt from book three in the Dandelion Dynasty series, The Veiled Throne.

When asked to take part in the blog tour for The Hidden Girl and Other stories, I couldn’t wait to get started.

The Hidden Girl and Other Stories is a collection of sixteen science fiction and fantasy stories. Most of them focus around technology and the human condition.

The first thing I want to comment on is the cover. It is absolutely beautiful.

I had not read any of Ken Liu’s writing before so I didn’t quite know what to expect. This is a stunning set of stories that really go into the amazing but sometimes devastating reality of technology and our reliance on it.

The Hidden Girl also examines how humans relate to one another and what we are capable of doing to each other.

These stories provoked such emotion and have made an impact. It was hard to pick one I liked over the others. However, Thoughts and Prayers was particularly hard to read when you consider what is happening in terms of gun control and internet trolling.

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