Matt Bromley | Author

Matt Bromley | Author

About Matt Bromley

Matt Bromley is a newspaper columnist, education journalist, and author of numerous bestselling books on education, one of which is an award-winner.

He writes a fortnightly op-ed column for The Yorkshire Post newspaper, is SecEd Magazine’s most prolific and popular writer, and has written more than fifteen books on teaching and educational leadership. He co-hosts an award-winning podcast.

He is CEO of bee and Chair of the Building Equity in Education Campaign. He has over twenty-five years’ experience in teaching and leadership including as a secondary school headteacher and academy principal, further education college vice principal, and multi-academy trust director.

Having started as a local newspaper journalist then worked in the telecoms industry, he has spent most of his career in education as an English teacher and school leader, and is now a public speaker, teacher trainer, and school improvement advisor.

His debut novel was Mother Fear. His second novel is The Cove – Haunted by Murder.

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Discover Matt’s debut novel…

About Mother Fear

One moment, he is silent, unyielding, locked behind a screen or a slammed door. The next, he is loud and restless, filling the house with laughter and half-formed philosophies. He argues just to argue, challenges rules to test their strength. Yet, when the night is too quiet or the world sits too heavy, he still falls asleep next to me, his head resting just close enough to let me know he’s still my boy and needs my protection.

Sometimes, he is a teenager, absent even when present – scrolling, shrugging, speaking in grunts. But more often, he is a child. Some days, I see the man he’s becoming – tall, sharp-edged, with a quiet determination. Other days, I glimpse the boy he once was – curled up asleep, his face open, vulnerable. Sometimes, he walks beside me, taller than I remember, his shoulders squared like a man’s. But when he stumbles, when life hits harder than he expected, he looks at me with the same wide eyes he had when he was younger, the ones that silently ask if I still have all the answers. And though I don’t, I nod anyway, because for now, that’s what he needs to believe.

He is on the edge of adulthood, yet he is still my baby. He is the best thing that ever happened to me, my first and last thought; one half of me, he makes me whole.

He is my son. Oliver.

And he is gone.

I now move through the world like a man missing a limb, carrying an absence that aches with every step. I set the table for one less, but my hands hesitate over his empty place. My phone stays close, always charged, always waiting for a call that never comes. My love has nowhere to go, trapped inside me like a river dammed, swelling with every moment missed, every memory unmade. I write texts I never send; rehearse conversations I never have. The sound of a boy’s laughter outside my window makes my heart lurch, and just for a second, I let myself believe it’s Oliver come home.

When Tom looks down at the newborn baby cradled in his arms, his doubts begin to dissipate. For this – a memory in which he will seek succour in the years to come – is the moment he allows himself to believe that the child could be his.

He looks at his baby son, moments ago brought naked into the world, vulnerable and weak, sees himself reflected there, and something inside him shifts, a biological rewiring of every chip and circuit. The baby blinks back at him, and in a pact forged in blood and tears, Tom swears he’ll do whatever necessary to protect this child.

But that’s not how this story goes.

Yes, Tom’s protected Oliver from the outside world – from school bullies, bike accidents, and bee stings; and yes, he’s given every part of himself to this child. But in the end, he’s unable to protect his son from the enemy within: The mother they all fear; the mother of all fears.

Because, twelve years after Oliver is born, with his parents now separated, his mum Maggie is intent on breaking the bond between father and son.

Maggie winds herself around the facts, coiling like a boa, until she’s so constricted the truth no one knows where truth and lies meet.

Before that summer, life had been normal, life had been ordinary, life had been amazing. After a decade of living with Maggie, a self-confessed sociopath who had tried to destroy his confidence and self-worth, Tom has finally found happiness with Kate. And together they forge a family of four with Oliver and Kate’s son Adam. Oliver calls Kate ‘mum’; Adam calls Tom ‘dad’. Their blended family is imperfect, but it is also perfection.

Until Maggie finds out and sets about destroying it all.

Visit the Mother Fear website to find out more and to read a free sample.

NEW! Discover Matt’s second novel…

About The Cove

Podcaster Sam Spectre agrees to stay the night at The Seacove Inn to investigate claims it’s the most haunted pub in England. But what starts as a ghost-hunt soon becomes a murder mystery when someone’s found dead in the cellar. With the inn sandbagged and cut off by a storm, no one can get in or out… which means the murderer is still there.

Two hundred years earlier, newly orphaned Beth Brodie arrives at the Inn to stay with her Uncle Bert, a shadowy figure who controls the local smuggling trade. Corrupted by contraband, he’ll stop at nothing to protect himself. 

With chapters alternating between 1825 and 2025, the events of the past send ripples across time, forming a tidal wave that turns into a tempest as we pivot from an MR James ghost story to an Agatha Christie locked-room mystery in this edge-of-your-seat thriller from the bestselling author of Mother Fear.

Visit The Cove website to find out more and to read a free sample