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The Widow: The Arachnoid Chronicles - Book One

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Entomologist at the Royal Entomological Society, Aaron Pike is tasked with locating Professor Philip Jackson, a renowned arachnologist, who has gone missing.

Jackson is needed to help investigate a spate of black widow attacks in London. Reluctantly, Aaron takes young assistant Adele with him to Jackson’s home, which has been left derelict for some time. After visiting Jackson’s lab, Aaron finds out that Jackson hasn’t been seen in months. With the help of Jackson’s former assistant, Celia, Aaron and Adele unearth a shocking secret, experiments that Jackson and disgraced geneticist, Jonas Eckstein, have been conducting in secret on exotic spiders.

Recently widowed urban photographer Zoe Hardcastle visits Abney Park Cemetery where she is bitten by a black widow spider. After a lengthy spell in hospital, Zoe is amazed to find that she is in exceptional shape. Her body is changing, growing stronger. And while she grows in strength, so does her desire to have a baby.

Aaron’s investigation leads him to Aldwych Station, an abandoned subway beneath the streets of London, where he comes face-to-face with pure terror. Nothing could prepare him for what he encounters in the tunnels below—the home of The Widow.

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Published June 22, 2025

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About the author

D.C. Brockwell

26 books25 followers
D C Brockwell lives in Burgess Hill, West Sussex, with his wife, Beks and rescue cat, Olivia. He works as a dental technician for Elite Dental Studios in the day, and writes crime/horror/action and adventure/romance stories in the evenings and weekends. After completing his dental technicians’ course at Lambeth College in March 2018, he sat down and started taking his writing more seriously, completing five first drafts of novels in a year.

A graduate of criminology and criminal justice studies at the University of Portsmouth, he has always had an interest in crime, specifically abnormal psychology. It was while studying criminology that he penned his first (unpublished) novel, which, he says, will never see the light of day.

He self-published his first romance novel, The Southern Belles in July 2019, under his pseudonym, Katie Simpkins, a name both he and Beks chose together.

His first crime novel is a contemporary and gritty crime drama.

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