Loughborough University English PhD student Amanda Bigler is set to publish her first novel, The Takers, this month.

The Takers centres on an 18-year-old high school student whose life is irreversibly changed by a freak car accident. It is based around the concept of emotional vampirism, which is the physical need to manipulate and extract the emotions of others in order to live.

Author Amanda says she developed the idea for the book after watching a documentary on people who believe that they can sense, feel, and feed on emotions, otherwise known as ‘empaths’. She also alludes to Celtic lore and the symbol on the front cover resembles a triskelion. 

Amanda, who already has a short story published in a collection entitled Haunted, spent two years writing her new novel, with a further two years editing and marketing it. She intends her latest work to be part of a trilogy.

The Takers is due to be published on 15 November in the USA and is available through online bookshops including Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo.