Broken Branches

“A fantastic and brave story”.

A novel of intrigue and thrills, with an underlying discourse of grief and mental health issues. This is the forth novel released by author M. Jonathan Lee, which has a whole host of twists and turns just like the previous stories. 

Family curses don’t exist. Sure, some families seem to suffer more pain than others, but a curse? An actual curse? I don’t think so.’

A family tragedy was the catalyst for Ian Perkins to return to the isolated cottage with his wife and young son. But now they are back, it seems yet more grief might befall the family. 

There is still time to act, but that means Ian must face the uncomfortable truth about his past. And in doing so, he must uncover the truth behind the supposed family curse. 

Jonathan’s inspiration for Broken Branches stemmed from him and his uncle researching their family and finding they were related to a man who around a 120 years ago, had a disobedient dog who he later went out and hung from a tree in the garden. Jonathan then realised that throughout his own family history, there has always been a child that has died before their parents, which created the plot for Broken Branches which explores whether a curse could really be passed down a family from generation to generation. 

Other novels by M. Jonathan Lee include the first two parts of the ‘The Series’ ‘The Page’ and ‘The Radio’, ‘A Tiny Feeling of Fear’ and ‘Drift Stumble Fall’. 

‘The Radio’ was nationally shortlisted for the Novel Prize in 2012. 

Jonathan’s writing has always been inspired by a number of novels, including Alex Garland's The Beach, and his writing is comparable to Mark Haddon, Nick Hornby and Joseph Connolly. 

Jonathan’s novels are published with the Northern Publishing House, Hideaway Fall. All novels published through Hideaway Fall are creative fiction that grab the attention of the reader and have unexpected twists in the plot. They stray away from sci’fi, romance novels and non-fiction, because as they state, they’re ‘not our bag’. 

Jonathan is active in the author community, and has spoken on multiple occasions in schools, colleges, prisons and universities about creative writing and storytelling and appeared at various literary festivals including Sheffield’s Off the Shelf and Doncaster’s Turn the Page festival. 

He is also a tireless campaigner for mental health awareness, which has led him to write regularly for the Huffington Post, the Big Issue and spoken at length on numerous occasions about his own personal struggle on the BBC and Radio Talk Europe. 

“Superbly written. An intriguing book and one I did not want to put down.”