Fiction
ISBN: 9781911752059
Publication date: October 8, 2025
Price: £10.99
Josephine is haunted. At university in Aberystwyth she is grateful to be away from home and further each day from her past. But still the spectre of her dead mother torments her.
Glynn isn’t like the other people she knows. When she kisses him on a night out it feels new and exciting. Only the town is held captive by a violent storm and weird things keep happening. A whale washes up on the shore. Strangers appear in town, though no one can leave. The old buildings seem suddenly alive.
Caught in the middle, Josephine wants nothing to do with it. But something is watching. And it’s about to go walking again.
Alex Hubbard’s scintillating debut novel is an intriguing story about love, friendship, and our links with the past – a contemporary Gothic masterpiece which will leave you nostalgic for your small-town uni days.
Alex Hubbard
Alex Hubbard is a writer from London, living in Wales. He first came to Aberystwyth in 2015 and, like so many, fell in love with it. As a child, he was diagnosed with dyspraxia and struggled to learn to read. Once he worked it out, he quickly became passionate about stories, words and thinking about things which aren’t real. Now, he is interested in how fiction can augment our shared senses of place and experience. If you also like the taste of evening air and the feeling that something unbelievable could happen, you might like his work. His creative work has appeared in Nawr, Cerasus, The Forge, Abergavenny Small Press Literary Journal, Prole, Bandit Fiction, and in two anthologies by Think.Material Press, among others. He is currently writing a novel about rising sea levels and lost places.
Photo credit: Camper Wender
“I absolutely loved this book… Exceptional crafting of location and landscape — set in Aberystwyth amidst a storm, the characters inhabit local pubs and shops those familiar with the area will be delighted to see captured on the page.”
Mari Ellis Dunning
“…the ultimate Aberystwyth novel, with just about all the town’s history crammed into it… [with] something important to say… about the way a sort of alien community of modern students, mostly from elsewhere, is skimming the surface of this historic Welsh location, not knowing or caring about its past. A really exhilarating read.”
Matthew Francis
“…a very strong debut… bold and imaginative… an author who experiments like that deserves credit.”
Liz Jones, The Aberystwyth Book Club Podcast
“Storm vividly portrays an Aberystwyth charged with memory, loss, and possibility. Grief and terrible, tempestuous weather blur, as the living move side by side with ghosts.”
Naji Bakhti, author of Between Beirut and the Moon
“A truly confident and accomplished debut: what starts as a modern take on student life soon shifts into something more complex, mysterious, and profound. Full of startling imagery and impressive set pieces, the story blends past and present, fantasy and reality, and continues to resonate long after the last page.”
Tyler Keevil, author of Your Still Beating Heart
“Storm is a dazzling debut. Moving, surreal, enthralling, funny, it tells the story of a group of students living and studying (well, there isn’t much studying) in the quirky west Wales town of Aberystwyth. Alex Hubbard makes the past come alive in a very real, very clever way, weaving Welsh pirates, beached whales, and nineteenth-century preachers among the love affairs and quarter-life-crises of the 21st century. The complex internal world of the characters is beautifully conveyed along with witty dialogue and unexpected developments… I couldn’t put it down.”
Eluned Gramich, author of Windstill
