August 07, 2024
Get your first look inside the Target adaptation of the Season 1 adventure, released 8th August 2024.
Today marks the release of four novelisations of the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby Sunday's onscreen adventures. Space Babies, 73 Yards and Rogue all join the Target range of novelisations, while The Church on Ruby Road also gets an additional paperback release.
To celebrate the release of 73 Yards, written by Scott Handcock, you can read an exclusive excerpt from the novelisation below. There are also extracts from Space Babies and Rogue available to read here and here.
Get your copy of 73 Yards, written by Scott Handcock, in paperback or audiobook here.
She noticed that the woman was dressed in a long black smock. Perhaps some kind of mourning dress? Maybe that’s why the woman was up here, to visit the memorial (if that’s what it was)? There was something unnerving about her too, as though the fabric of that dress was stealing all the light around her – like stepping into a darkened room on a sunny day. The contrast was startling.
‘Okay, very clever!’ congratulated Ruby at the top of her voice. ‘Are you part of this? Where’s the Doctor? What have you done to him?’
Whatever the woman was saying, Ruby wished she could hear her. It seemed to be the same thing she’d been saying before, with the same practised signals. But what was she saying, and how was she saying it? Ruby couldn’t make out any expression. Was she smiling, solemn, angry? A combination of the above? From where Ruby now stood, the woman’s face was just a shape, haloed beneath a thatch of long white hair.
And yet, there was something not quite right about that face … It seemed a little too round, too white – a deathly white, white as chalk – and … was that some kind of curve across her cheek? It only seemed to affect the left side of her face, creasing up from mouth to eyelid. A scar, perhaps?
Shaking away the thought, Ruby had an idea. She pulled out her phone, unlocked it and aimed it at the woman like a weapon. She zoomed the camera lens in, as close as she could, and –
Snap!
Ruby took a photo. Then another, followed by another, just to make certain. From this far away, the woman’s face was still obscured, but she was sure that if she zoomed in … No. Ruby was wrong. The face was still little more than a blur, an assortment of pixels. Worse, the environment around the woman seemed unaffected.
Almost like she didn’t want to be seen.
Ruby lowered her phone and looked up at the stranger. Desperation was taking hold now.
‘Can you help me?’ she asked, her voice tinged with
fear. ‘Please?’
But the woman didn’t answer … or if she did, the answer hadn’t changed. Those same repeated motions: the rubbing of palms, the shrugging. Over and over. On and on.
Get your copy of 73 Yards, written by Scott Handcock, in paperback or audiobook here.