COMMON GROUND

When Isabel Howarth wins a surprise by-election and enters Parliament as MP for Bamworth, she knows scrutiny will follow. The press will dig. Secrets will surface. And the one thing she fears most-that her fractured family history will be dragged into the open-may yet destroy everything she has worked for.

Then the messages begin.

Anonymous, intimate and disturbingly precise, they track her movements through Westminster and use a childhood name only one person ever spoke aloud. Her estranged brother Ian, disgraced and living abroad, has found a way back into her life-and he is entangled with people who need Isabel inside Parliament, visible and compliant.

When an entirely genuine accident leaves Isabel critically injured and confined to hospital, she is abruptly removed from the very place where they want her to operate. From her bed, the pressure intensifies. The messages become more insistent. And when Isabel is forced to witness what appears to be a brutal killing, she realises the people behind Ian are prepared to use terror as well as leverage.

As Parliamentary Security, her family and fellow MPs show their support, Isabel becomes part of an unfolding national-security response-one that forces her to confront who is manipulating her brother, and why she has been made such a dangerous point of access.

Isabel Howarth MP is a tense political thriller about coercion, visibility and loyalty, set in the unforgiving glare of Westminster, where even illusion can be weaponised.