This title tells of Lennox Berkeley, one of the most influential British composers of the mid-20th century, and the musicians he knew. Berkeley had a ring-side seat when he lived in Paris, studied with Nadia Boulanger, and wrote reviews about musical life there from 1929 to 1934. His unknown letters to Boulanger reveal her mesmeric power.

Winner of the CWA Gold Dagger: Scotland Yard s James Pibble puzzles over the murder of a pygmy tribesman in the middle of London in this first class mystery (The Times Literary Supplement).

Oddball cases are James Pibble s specialty. But the brutal bludgeoning of the revered elder of a New Guinea tribesman may be his strangest yet.

The corpse, in striped pajamas, lies in the middle of a room completely absent of furniture. Seven women squat on the floorboards. One knits. Another sits cross-legged at his feet. They all chant incantations in a strange...

A strange malady afflicts the children of McNair House in this British mystery featuring former Scotland Yard superintendent James Pibble, from CWA Gold Dagger winner Peter Dickinson Recently given the sack by Scotland Yard, James Pibble arrives at McNair House on a private matter, only to find that this charitable institution is not at all what it seems. The children who live here have a rare disease called cathypny, which renders them sleepy and fat. It also imbues them with special telepathic powers, which is how one boy instantly pegs Pibble as a cop. A dreamy nine-year-old named Marilyn...

This brilliant crime novel by CWA Gold Dagger winner Peter Dickinson is set in the Caribbean, where a researcher becomes trapped like a rodent in a maze When it comes to his rats, David Foxe is an expert. He decides when they eat, when they exercise, when they take their medicine and when they die. For the sake of the Company, he performs all manner of experiments on his helpless subjects, testing various drugs designed to improve the animals nature. After a particularly grueling series of tests, he is sent on a working vacation to the Southward Islands. This Caribbean paradise is ruled by...

Three dystopian novels by an award-winning author that imagine a world where humankind has suddenly and violently rejected modern technology.

Something has gone very wrong in England. In a tunnel beneath Wales one man opens a crack in a mysterious stone wall, and all over the island of Britain people react with horror to perfectly normal machines. Abandoning their cars on the roads and destroying their own factories, many flee the cities for the countryside, where they return to farming and an old-fashioned life.

When families are split apart and grown-ups...

A blind boy and his brother set out on a motorcycle in search of their ghost-hunting grandfather It all starts with the postman. Jake cannot see the mail, but he is an excellent listener, and he can tell by the sound the mail makes when it hits the floor that bad news is coming. At the top of the pile is a very thin letter rejecting Jake's brother, Martin, from every college he applied to. Even worse, there is no news from their grandfather, an eccentric ghost hunter whose supernatural investigations have carried him into the wilds of northern England. Martin cashes in his college savings to...

In an ancient kingdom, a boy and his hawk challenge the gods All his life, Tron has been destined to join the priests who rule his strange desert kingdom. When the old king grows sick, a ritual is called for to restore his health: the sacrifice of a blue hawk, the symbol of the god Gdu. For the first time, Tron is chosen to take part in the ritual. Just before the bird is sacrificed, the young priest notices that its eyes are cloudy. The bird is sick, and to give its soul to the king would be to kill him. And so Tron steals the bird away. The priests are enraged at his disruption of the...

For one young boy, a box full of nothing is a ticket to adventure While skipping school, James sees his mother on the street. He ducks inside an abandoned store, where an aged shopkeeper asks what he wants to buy. When James says nothing, the old man sells it to him: a heavy cardboard box stuffed full of top-quality nothing. James tries to explain this to his mother, but she doesn t believe him and throws the box over the fence and into the dump. He sneaks in to retrieve his new possession and finds himself trapped in another world. The dump is an eerie place populated by hyperintelligent...

To save his friend, a daring young boy infiltrates a healing center If it weren t for the migraines, Barry would be an ordinary boy. When a crushing headaches strikes him during the school day, he goes to the nurse s office to beg for aspirin. He is waiting for her help when a chubby-faced six-year-old girl puts her hands on his neck. Heat flows through them, and when it stops, the headache is gone. Her name is Pinkie, and she has the power to heal. When her stepfather uses her ability to found a highly profitable healing center, Barry fears the gentle little girl is being exploited. On the...

A boy with psychic powers struggles to save his loved ones When Davy s mother deserts their family, Davy s father packs his children into a rickety old car and takes them on a vacation. They drive to their mysterious old grandparents house in the sprawling Welsh countryside, a place so rural that running water is a novelty. It is there that Davy learns he has the gift. He has always seen the pictures images in his head that tell of the future or the past but his grandmother explains that the gift is both a remarkable power and a terrible curse. It was the gift that killed Davy s great-uncle...