Showing results by narrator "James Clamp" in All Categories

It's been eighteen years since Josh Peters left dreary, dying Derton - the seaside town where he grew up - and headed for the bright lights of London. Now his dad is sick and his mum needs him, so he's back - though he's promised himself he won't be staying for long.... Then Josh finds himself unexpectedly detained in Derton, living in his cramped teenage bedroom, with simmering family tensions a little too close for comfort.

Written while Hans Keilson was in hiding during World War II, The Death of the Adversary is the self-portrait of a young man helplessly fascinated by an unnamed "adversary" whom he watches rise to power in 1930s Germany. It is a tale of horror, not only in its evocation of Hitler's gathering...

Snatched up by an unscrupulous and abusive showman, Wild Boy, covered in hair from head to toe, becomes a sideshow freak. Isolated from other children and wickedly abused by the cruel master who bought him, Wild Boy becomes an avid observer, developing Sherlock Holmes - like deductive skills. Although he is tormented and insulted, kicked and spat at, his quick mind takes in everything he sees. When a murder occurs at the fair, Wild Boy is hastily accused. Can he use his powers of deduction to save himself?

As a child, Elisha witnessed the burning of a witch outside of London, and saw her transformed into an angel at the moment of her death, though all around him denied this vision. He swore that the next time he might have the chance to bind an angel’s wounds, he would be ready. And so he became a barber-surgeon, at the lowest ranks of the medical profession, following the only healer’s path available to a peasant’s son. Elisha is good at his work, but skill alone cannot protect him. In a single catastrophic day, Elisha’s attempt to deliver his brother’s child leaves his family ruined, and Elisha himself accused of murder.

Daniel Cook and his sister, Beatrice, are thrilled to be studying dragonology with Dr. Ernest Drake  - they’re even awaiting the hatching of a dragon’s egg in their care! But all is not well: there are rumors of a deadly plague affecting dragons around the world. Could dark dragonologist Alexandra Gorynytchka be behind the mysterious illness?

"For busy, harried or distractible readers who have the time and energy only to skim the opening paragraph of a review, I'll say this as quickly and clearly as possible: The Death of the Adversary and Comedy in a Minor Key are masterpieces, and Hans Keilson is a genius..." —Francine Prose, The...

It should be an open-and-shut case. Samuel Szajkowski, a recently hired history teacher, walked into a school assembly with a gun and murdered three students and a colleague before turning the weapon on himself. It was a tragedy that could not have been predicted. Szajkowski, it seems clear, was a psychopath beyond help. Yet as Detective Inspector Lucia May begins to piece together the testimonies of the various witnesses, an uglier and more complex picture emerges.

Julie kissed Mark at the office Christmas party. She doesn’t seem to remember but he’s not been able to forget. What better day to jog her memory than Valentine’s Day? Calum’s found the girl of his dreams on the internet. Trouble is, he’s not been completely honest about himself. Tonight he’s meeting her for the first time but will it also be the last? Nathan’s organized his usual Anti-Valentine’s party for the office singletons. Sophie’s going - again. Though this year, if she gets her way, they might just be leaving together.

London, 1842. Wild Boy, master detective and former freak-show performer, and Clarissa, circus acrobat and troublemaker, are the secret last hope of a city beset by horror. A poisoner stalks the streets, leaving victims mad with terror - and then dead. Can the Black Terror be traced to a demon called Malphas? With their partnership threatened by rules and regulations, can Wild Boy and Clarissa uncover a cure in time to save the queen and the city?

In 1830s London, scandalous whispers surround the pub known as the Sleeping Dove, a hidden bordello catering to nobles eager to shed the trappings of their stations. Josephine Grant knows the rumors are true - she plays piano at the Dove and is known only as the “Bawdy Bluestocking” to the pub’s faithful.

There’s bad stuff out there. Folks reckon things like vampires don't exist, but they does - Jock from the burger van told me. Plus I found an actual one of ’em, sleeping at the time in the back of a hearse I nicked that first morning. That's how me and Jock got to setting out freeing the world of ’em, using his bag o’ wooden stakes and special bottles of whisky. Course, I knowed that vampires didn’t exist, not when I stopped and done some thinking. And I knowed Jock had mental wossnames, what with his son falling off that roof and him reckoning them immigrants pushed him.

Kosovo, 1999. In the shadow of an impending NATO bombing campaign, James Palatine of the Army Intelligence Corps has joined an elite unit of the SAS for his first mission behind enemy lines. A woman's desperate cry for help draws them to a remote farmhouse, where Palatine makes a split-second decision that he bitterly regrets. Just hours later he sees a chance to redeem himself - in his own eyes, at least - when his unit finds a young girl close to death in the freezing woods

In the second installment of Charlie Williams’s violent and darkly comedic Mangel series, Royston Blake’s gig as head doorman at Hoppers finds him yet again mired belly-deep in trouble. Blake has noticed a change in the behavior of Hoppers’ already dodgy clientele - the norm of beery violence and lechery has given way to trance-like stares and nonsensical blatherings.

When the world gets more frightening, what do you do? Do you hide in your basement, watching 24-hour rolling news about the latest crimes? And what happens when it comes knocking on your door? Do you double-check those locks? Or do what Hamlet did, taking arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them? Pub-doorman-turned-recluse Royston Blake has never heard of Hamlet, but when headless corpses start turning up all over Mangel, he decides to do just that. And what better way to fight evil than by becoming a cop? Who cares if they all say you’re the worst kind of copper a town needs? What matters is results, right?

Released after a three-year stretch in a mental institution, Royston Blake finds that the world has moved on, even Mangel. Gone are most of his old haunts, including Hoppers, where he spent years working the door. In its place: a huge, gleaming new shopping mall, servicing the town’s every consumer need. But not everyone is happy to see the old ways swept aside. A mysterious opposition group calling itself the "Old Guard" has made its mission abundantly clear on the letters page of the local newspaper, and soon sets about trying to recruit Blake as its agent of retribution.

As dodgy English towns go, Mangel doesn’t look like much; but it’s everything to Royston Blake. In Mangel, Blake is head doorman at Hoppers Wine Bar and Bistro, drives a Ford Capri 2.8i, and generally has no trouble getting laid. On any given day, he can walk the streets of his town knowing he’s respected by one and all. That is, until a rumor begins to circulate that Blake’s "lost his bottle", and everything goes to hell. Even his best mates, Fin and Legsy, have heard the talk that the formerly hard-living bruiser has gone soft, lost his edge, and become a pushover in a town where he can ill afford it.

“Where is she? And what was she doing out on the waves that night?” For Hal, now, this summer is different. Sure he’s spending it, as always, with his family at their cottage on the wild west coast of England. But this summer he meets Jackie, beautiful, impetuous Jackie. Lying with her on...