Matt Wesolowski Books in Order

Matt Wesolowski was born in Newcastle upon Tyne and grew up in Gosforth, in the city’s north. His fiction brings together crime, horror and folklore, often sending readers into isolated northern places where the past has not stayed buried.

Writing was a childhood ambition, but his route to publication wasn’t a straight line. Before his books found an audience, he worked as an English tutor with young people in pupil referral and care settings, experience that feeds his interest in how people are judged, excluded, or reduced to a single bad act.

He began by writing horror short stories for British and American anthologies. His early novella, The Black Land, arrived in 2013 and took readers to the Northumberland coast, a setting that points toward the uneasy landscapes that would become central to his later work.

Horror came first.

A major turning point came in 2015, when Wesolowski won the Pitch Perfect competition at the Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival. His debut novel, Six Stories, followed in 2016. It introduced Scott King, an elusive online journalist who investigates old cases through a sequence of interviews, and it was picked as a WHSmith Fresh Talent title.

The book’s format began as an experiment. Wesolowski had become absorbed by true-crime podcasts, especially Serial, and wondered whether a crime novel could work with the rhythm of an audio investigation. The result is a story told through transcripts, competing memories and the careful gaps between what people say and what they leave out.

That idea grew into the six-book Six Stories sequence. Hydra follows a young woman convicted of killing her family, while Changeling returns to a child’s disappearance in a haunted-feeling forest. Beast examines the death of a vlogger in a coastal town, Deity digs into the death of a disgraced pop star, and Demon asks difficult questions after a boy is killed by children his own age. Readers tend to come for the mysteries, the shifting testimony and the eerie local legends, but the books also keep an eye on online pressure, fandom, public blame and the harm done by easy answers.

The North is never just a backdrop in these stories.

In 2025, Wesolowski added Don’t Call Mum, a folkloric horror novella set on a disrupted train journey through North East England. He continues to live in Newcastle with his partner and son, and teaches creative writing. His household has also included rescued goldfish, a snake, a cat and an axolotl, which feels suitably in keeping with a writer drawn to strange corners and unsettling possibilities.