It doesn't look like murder in a city full of death. A pandemic called 'The Sweats' is sweeping the globe. London is a city in crisis. Hospitals begin to fill with the dead and dying, but Stevie Flint is convinced that the sudden death of her boyfriend Dr Simon Sharkey was not from natural causes. As roads out of London become gridlocked with people fleeing infection, Stevie's search for Simon's killers takes her in the opposite direction, into the depths of the dying city and a race with death. A Lovely Way to Burn is the first outbreak in the Plague Times trilogy. Chilling, tense and completely compelling, it's Louise Welsh writing at the height of her powers.

Magnus McFall is no stranger to trouble, but he never expected a life sentence. He is arrested just as a pandemic called ‘The Sweats’ hits London. Growing public disorder results in emergency powers and he finds himself imprisoned without trial. An unlikely alliance with long-termer Jeb and a prison riot offer the opportunity of escape. The two men force their way through the devastated city and head north into countryside fraught with danger. Magnus is unsure if Jeb is an ally or an enemy and soon he is forced to decide how far he will go in order to survive.

It is seven years after the first outbreak of "the Sweats" destroyed the world, almost overnight. Two refugees from the death and decay of London, Stevie Flint and Magnus McFall, have both washed up on Orkney. A rural community clinging to survival, the islands are home to a generation of youth who barely remember a time before the pandemic. One of them, Magnus' foster son, Shuggie, is fourteen years old and angry as hell: he and his young friends blame all adults for the loss of the technological and scientific wonders of the past. When the foster parents of Shug's girlfriend, Misty, are found murdered and the young couple vanishes without a trace, Magnus fears the worst. Refusing to believe they could have committed the crime, and in order to find Shuggie and Misty before something terrible happens to them, Magnus and Stevie set off on a quest into the decaying city of Glasgow - and into the heart of a post-apocalyptic landscape they tried to leave behind when they fled the chaotic streets of London.