Welcome to my stop, for today, on Douglas Board’s three book blog blitz with Rachel’s Random Resources!

I have an extract from Time Of Lies to share with you today, as well as info for all three books.

Time of Lies

In 2020 the United Kingdom elects its own Donald Trump.

Bob Grant, former football hooligan, now the charismatic leader of the Britain’s Great party, has swept to power on a populist tide. With his itchy finger hovering over the nuclear trigger, Bob presides over a brave new Britain where armed drones fill the skies, ex-bankers and foreigners are vilified, and the Millwall football chant ‘No one likes us, we don’t care’ has become an unofficial national anthem.

Meanwhile, Bob’s under-achieving, Guardian-reading brother Zack gets a tap on the shoulder from a shady Whitehall mandarin. A daring plot is afoot to defy the will of the people and unseat the increasingly unstable PM. Can Zack stop his brother before he launches a nuclear strike on Belgium? And just what is ACERBIC, Britain’s most closely-guarded military secret?

A darkly comic political thriller, Time of Lies is also a terrifyingly believable portrait of an alternative Britain. It couldn’t happen here… could it?

Extract…..

“TIME OF LIES” by Douglas Board

In 2020 the UK elects its own Donald Trump as Prime Minister – Bob Grant, uneducated Bermondsey geezer and self-made millionaire. The election slogan of Bob’s BG party is ‘Britain’s Great! End of!’.

Zack, a Guardian-reading out-of-work actor, can’t believe that his brother Bob has his finger on Britain’s nuclear trigger. Meanwhile Patrick Smath, the Eton-educated permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, is wetting himself and having to tell Bob Britain’s most closely-guarded secret for the last 25 years.

‘Time of Lies’ is about an upside down world where truth is in retreat from lies, deception and bullshit. Zack and his wife Kathy, a Royal Navy officer, are in Helensburgh having tea with Cairstine, Kathy’s mum. Kathy is Cairstine’s only child but Cairstine has dementia and speaks of a non-existent extra daughter. The night before Zack and Kathy went to a Glasgow comedy club and heard an extended riff: what if elderly people realised that pretending to have dementia could give them more power? Here Zack is telling the story.

‘Both of my girls were angels,’ explains Cairstine, ‘in their own way. But Kathy was very focussed on her career. I had to find my place in her order of things.’ She beams a smile like a cracked dinner plate. ‘She left me.’

‘Ma, I’m here.’

‘And where else would you be? It comes down to that man. I blame him.’

I assume she means me. The giggles will be unstoppable if I don’t say something. Besides, I’ve flown four hundred miles to help Kathy play verbal tennis against a wonky ball-throwing machine: it’s time to join my partner at the net. ‘Usually it depends on the woman too,’ I offer.

Cairstine turns to me. ‘Oh, look at yourself giggling away, and thinking I don’t know. No, you’re not the man,’ she explains dismissively. ‘You’re not Kathy’s boss. He had designs on her. Trust a mother’s instinct.’ She looks back at Kathy, tilting her head to one side. ‘Now Meghan was different. She was absolutely devoted to her ma. And she had a career as well. Of course she did.’

Is Kathy tired, or tired of being put down? Is she following dementia care advice? Whatever the reason, she puts a foot into the fantasy world of ‘Meghan’. ‘What career was that, ma?’ she asks. ‘Meghan’s, I mean.’

Punishment is guaranteed, and it comes. ‘Oh you’re heartless! She had that terrible accident, didn’t she? So she couldn’t have a career.’

I laugh out loud ‒ I can’t help it.

Kathy throws me a look like a grenade. ‘No, I don’t know, ma. There never was any Meghan.’

‘That’s wicked! Because Meghan would have ‒’

Cairstine’s voice tails off. That’s rare in this habitat.

‘Because Meghan would have ‒ ?’ Kathy persists.

‘Oh, she would have outshone Kathy,’ Cairstine replied. ‘I never said a word to Kathy, of course, but I knew. The way a mother does. Outshone her into a cinder.’

Hydrogen bomb test subjects standing miles away, with gloved hands clamped over their goggles and facing away from ground zero, have reported seeing everything turn blinding white. Kathy and I can confirm the accuracy of these reports. We finish our visit early, badly needing some recovery time.

Purchase Links:

30% off with discount code BLOGTOURLIES http://eye-books.com/books/time-of-lies

UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Lies-Douglas-Board-ebook/dp/B07199TZQ5

US – https://www.amazon.com/Time-Lies-Douglas-Board-ebook/dp/B07199TZQ5

Promotional Videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvExzv39qs8&t=37s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqBwnl4rtk8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_clB5pM7Gbw&t=48s

The Rats: A White House Satire

Ros March, disabled lesbian mum and former Royal Marine, has just moved to Turnberry on Scotland’s west coast. Her cottage overlooks one of the world’s most famous golf courses – Trump Turnberry – as well as the scenic bird sanctuary Ailsa Craig. But idylls deceive. In truth Ailsa was once overrun by rats, who were exterminated at the end of the twentieth century, and Ros’s landlord turns out to be a delusional Islamophobic misogynist who calls himself ‘Potus Two’. When Potus Two announces that both he and Ros will have the chance to meet the President on Turnberry’s hallowed grounds, Ros hatches a plan. Even a slim chance to do something about one of the biggest rats in the world is not something she will pass by.

ICYMI – See yesterday’s post for an extract!

Purchase Link:

https://douglasboard.com/novels/the-rats-a-white-house-satire.html

UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0789PC6LG

US – https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0789PC6LG

Promotional Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq07R072IhU

MBA

Why is so much of the world managed by arseholes? When workaholic business school hot shot Ben Stillman is fired, he has the chance to find out. Not a guy to sit still, Ben jumps head first into turning his former business school into a world-class madrassa of capitalism.

Ben has ten days to rescue the launch of its spectacular glass tower, and his own career – ten days during which he will have to confront terrorist plots, undercover police, the extravagant demands of the super-rich, and the only woman who can save him from this madness.

A satirical thriller, a love story, and a wry look at modern management ideology all rolled into one – MBA is a piercing yet hopeful enquiry into the meaning of success.

Purchase Links:

30% off with discount code BLOGTOURMBA http://eye-books.com/books/mba

UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/MBA-Douglas-Board-ebook/dp/B00YS91B02

US – https://www.amazon.com/MBA-Douglas-Board-ebook/dp/B00YS91B02

Promotional Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=hUOs5YqqkBg

Author Bio –

Douglas Board is the author of the campus satire MBA (Lightning Books, 2015), which asked why so much of the business world is Managed By Arseholes. Time of Lies, his second novel, is a timely exploration of the collapse of democracy.

Born in Hong Kong, he has degrees from Cambridge and Harvard and worked for the UK Treasury and then as a headhunter. He has also had a distinguished career in public life, serving as treasurer of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and chairing the British Refugee Council.

As well as writing fiction, he is the author of two applied research books on leadership, which was the subject of his doctorate. He is currently a senior visiting fellow at the Cass Business School in London. He and his wife Tricia Sibbons live in London and Johannesburg.