Bestselling Gloucester author Rachel Sargeant is preparing for the release of her latest psychological thriller.

Following on from the success of her two previous novels ‘The Perfect Neighbours’ and ‘The Good Teacher’, Rachel’s latest novel ‘The Roommates’ is set to make one of publisher HarperCollins’ most popular lists.

“I’m thrilled that HarperCollins have moved me onto their main crime fiction list,” said Rachel, who lives in Abbeymead.

“The Roommates’ is set in a university. Four girls arrive for Freshers’ Week and find themselves sharing a flat. All four are holding secrets from their pasts, but when one of them goes missing, the other three have to learn to trust each other and work together to find her.”

Rachel grew up Lincolnshire and moved to Gloucestershire ten years ago with her husband and children.

She previously worked as a librarian and made the leap into full-time writing after signing with HarperCollins.

She continued: “I embarked on writing as a hobby almost 20 years ago and have seen steady progress, winning short story competitions and securing publication in women’s magazines.

“After I achieved a distance-learning MA in Creative Writing with Lancaster University, a London agency decided that I was good enough to take on, leading to a contract with HarperCollins to publish my first book and then to commit to my next two books.”

‘The Perfect Neighbours’ reached the Amazon Kindle Top Ten chart and number one in the British and Irish Kindle Crime Chart, with total sales worldwide reaching well over 100,000.

The crime and thriller genre of literature is certainly a popular one, and Rachel says it’s a category she has always been drawn to.

“The first book for adults that I can remember enjoying was Agatha Christie’s ‘A Murder Is Announced’,” she said. “This set me on the road to reading many more crime novels so when I decided to have a go at writing a book, crime was the obvious genre for me.

“I’m attracted to crime stories because of the twists, puzzles and ambiguous characters. When HarperCollins took me on, they told me I was a psychological thriller writer. I hadn’t really been aware that crime divided into sub-genres, but now I make a point of reading psychological thrillers by writers like Alex Marwood, Chris Curran and Phoebe Morgan.”

Set in a university, Rachel says ‘The Roommates’ is a very different story to her last book, ‘The Good Teacher’, which was released this summer.

She explains how the plot of the story came to her.

“My books seem to emerge when two ideas collide. I had the idea for the setting of ‘The Roommates’ long before I had a plot.

“When my children went to university, I loved visiting the campus and hearing their funny stories about lectures, halls of residence and parties. I really wanted to write a campus novel with a dark twist if only I could think what to write it about.

“One day I had a vision for a dramatic scene and realised it would make a good ending for a university-based thriller so I worked backwards until I had my plot and characters.”

All in all, with the research, writing and editing ‘The Roommates’ took Rachel around a year to complete.

She added: “I didn’t have to do extra research to depict the university as I had my own experiences as well as my children’s to draw on. However, I did extensive research into how families cope when a relative goes missing as I wanted to do justice to this agonising situation.

“I find writing the first draft daunting but I love editing once I’ve got something to edit. I even like the challenge of working through the structural changes demanded by my editor – but don’t tell him I said that!”

The ebook version of ‘The Roommates’ was published on Thursday 24th October, with the paperback set for release on Thursday 28th November.

And even though all her books so far have received almost unanimously positive reviews, Rachel still admits there are always nerves before a new release.

“I had an incredible response to ‘The Perfect Neighbours’, it was humbling to have complete strangers get in touch to say how much they enjoyed it.

“Releasing a new book is nerve-wracking. As I’m sure many authors will tell you, we tend to like beavering away at our laptops but cringe at having to promote our work. I’m very lucky to have my supportive husband, Nigel, who cheerleads at every opportunity and spreads news of my new publications far and wide.”

To find out more about Rachel and her writing, visit www.rachelsargeant.co.uk