The year is 1847 and the Irish potato crop has failed for the third year in succession. 'Irish Jack' Spellman a highly successful ganger on the vital West Coast railway line from the South of England to Scotland has decided he must go home to County Roscommon to protect his family. Once in Ireland he is arrested for murder and is certain to hang. Joseph Locke, the engineer building the line has a lot at stake but not as much as Irish Jack. Without Irish Jack the line won't be completed on time and Locke's reputation will be ruined. More than prestige is involved, Irish Jack's female friend,...

The criminals in a northern English city are asking for it. A feeble law enforcement establishment is being run ragged. The family of a hospital pathologist, Jack Preston, is killed by a drunken criminal driving the wrong way up a motorway exit. The culprit, Darren Darnell, receives a derisory sentence because the trial judge makes an excuse for him Hard line Detective Hugh Mason, whose own career is on the skids, senses that Jack Preston isn't the usual grieving victim. He manipulates Preston who kills Darnell in a totally unexpected way. Mason's career then takes an upward path but so does...

Peter Scattergood is the kind of boy that everyone knows is going wrong, very wrong. He hasn't met anyone that he can't defy and insult or any rule that he can't ignore. Then he causes a nasty accident and seeking to escape hides in a deserted cellar underneath his school. The cellar is occupied by a dormant being of unknown origin. The being, which calls itself an eidolon, denies that it is any kind of ghost, spook, spirit, angel or anything supernatural. It insists that it is part of nature like the trees and hills. Peter rouses it from its dormant state. It became dormant after an incident...

* Organisers, are you stuck for an ENTERTAINMENT IDEA for your students, parishioners, social group, society, choir or whatever? Why not try an improvised murder mystery play? With a mid performance break for refreshments it's a pleasant way to pass an evening and even raise some funds * You will need a cast of twelve players (NO ACTING ABILITY is needed) and one of the twelve to be the MC to steer events and guide the audience. The twelve (apart from the MC) are all SUSPECTS in a murder investigation. * Each character is given his or her 'part' but not those of other actors. There are NO...

After 1945 the world was dominated by the USA in the west and the USSR in the East. The European powers were eclipsed. All this was decided on the outcome of a single battle: the Battle of France starting on 10th May, 1940. This alternative history charts a different course in which Britain and France decisively defeated Germany in 1940 and the Soviet Union collapsed shortly afterwards.

QUESTION Where are the Picts? Where are the 'missing' Anglo-Saxon kingdoms? Where are the ancient monasteries which represented the start of a new civilisation in Britain after the fall of Rome? ANSWER Those peoples, kingdoms and institutions of learning were destroyed by the second wave of savage barbarians to sweep over the British Isles . . . the Vikings A race of destroyers still so popular that people name rugby league teams after them. Sorry historian Peter Sawyer and inhabitants of Scandinavia and Minnesota: the Vikings really were savage In this book the Vikings are sent back to...