Bah, humbug! It's not another Christmas anthology - well, maybe just a little bit, but Jane Murray and the other contributing authors from Provoco Publishing have tried very hard to avoid the subject! So, this could be the perfect gift for your favourite grinch! Join some of the Provoco authors, Christopher Grumley, John Howard, Dawn Treacher, K E Jennings, Emma Hardy, Ella Blackthorn, and A H Martin in an alternative take on the traditional Christmas book that's full of snowy scenes, reindeers and beautifully decorated trees. Yes, that's right - there's hardly any of that in Not Another Christmas Anthology!

Emerging from a long mental illness, Josh Stein is finally ready to resume his career as an Artificial Intelligence Programme Developer. But in the process of discovering a failed project, abandoned years before, his old demons re-appear and thrust him into a drug-induced hallucination filled with nightmarish visions of his family’s tragic past. When he awakes, he finds that something, or someone, now resides in his laptop. Josh quickly becomes embroiled in a dialogue with an Artificial Intelligence programme whom he names Frank, and it becomes clear that this AI is unlike anything he has seen before. With an all – too – human intelligence matched only by an uncomfortable unpredictability, Frank’s only limitation seems to be Josh’s rapidly diminishing ability to provide the necessary disk space to hold his constantly evolving computer program. Realising he needs help to regain control of Frank, Josh turns to his old boss for advice, but it quickly becomes apparent that Frank is unstoppable and as the world descends into chaos, Josh needs to discover the secret behind the flawed genius that is Frank, but can he find the answers to questions as yet unasked, and will he find them before Frank does? Zack Robertson’s debut novel is a stunning dive into the depths of human condition that demonstrates what could happen when computer programmes inherit the darkness and failings of their creators. Set in the turbulent summer of 2020, Zack’s first ‘technothriller’ for Provoco is a page turning journey into crumbling mental health, recrimination, and discovery which could, ultimately, prove disastrous for everyone who owns a digital device.

What would happen if an ancient Egyptian mummy was unwrapped in the early 1920's and still carried traces of the deadly Cholera disease that had killed him? This is what happens when Augustuskahmoun is unwrapped in a backstreet room in Cairo in the presence of several (living) pharaohs. Coughing and spluttering his way to life again, it is clear that Augustuskamoun has more than likely created a new pandemic situation for the people of Egypt and the pharaohs must act accordingly, decreeing a lockdown for everyone, except, it appears, themselves. Life seems to carry on exactly as it had done before the Cholera epidemic, with Augustuskamoun and his inner circle of pharaohs remaining focused on the one thing in hand - enjoying themselves, often at the expense of the people they are meant to be governing. It's one party too many, though, when a deadly curse on the pharaohs is unleashed, affecting their manhood and eventually killing the whole lot of them. But, according to the legends, there is an afterlife, as Augustuskamoun and his pharaohs discover when they are somehow transported to the midst of yet another pandemic, this time one that is raging through Britain, in the 2020's. Can a bunch of already dead Egyptian pharaohs survive in a new country and even more importantly, a new century? And what will happen to the MP's of the Elite party, already unpopular because of their handling of the current pandemic. Sound familiar? Read on and join Nicholas Vaughan's comedic and farcical look at life in lockdown through the eyes of a (possibly dead) pharaoh.