About

H. M. Read is an English author of horror, science fiction, and thrillers that focus on the darker side of the human psyche.

His debut novel, Feral Bloom, co-written with his brother C. J.Holden, imagines a reality-grounded apocalypse. Blending speculative fiction with philosophical horror, the novel explores survival, decay, and the fragility of the human condition.

Read’s writing is minimalist and deliberate, favouring subtlety over excess. When not writing, Read is a musician and artist. He lives in the UK and is currently working on his second novel, Sole Affection, slated for release in 2026.

“We pushed upriver into hell. We walked where nothing made sense. We lived a while in the company of madness.”

A literary post-collapse sci-fi where memory kills, thought corrodes, and one woman still knows how to read.

They say forgetting is how we survived. A vanishing so seamless, no one living can see the scars. Braska hunts the past. Temlyn enforces the present. Their fates intertwine in a world where trust is madness. Before they understand what it means to be human, they will lose everything that makes them so.

The Bloom devoured civilization. Cities are mulch. The lands fester with impossible dangers, and survivors drift on the water.

Someone must discover who ended us before we disappear for good.

For fans of The Road and Annihilation, a haunting vision of ruin and resistance.