Books:
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The author asserts his copyright to the works below. They may only be downloaded by individuals to read for private enjoyment and may NOT be used in other way - certainly not for gain - or for any use whatsoever of other parties - without my express permission
| The Hypnotist | (24,172 words) |  |
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| Robert Cook discovers at an early age that he has the power to persuade others to do what he wants. Later, having become a moralist and philosopher, he decides to dedicate his powers to doing good, but is frustrated that he can only operate at a local level. A chance encounter with a politician leads to much greater opportunities.... A comic fantasy of 24 172 words. | |||||||
| A Funeral | (8,995 words) | |
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| Jim Simpson has reservations about attending the funeral of a former colleague forty years after last seeing him. The event leads to revelations not only about the deceased but also startling ones about himself. Black humour. | |||||||
| This Green And Pleasant Land | (44, 821 words) | |
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| My favourite writer, Anthony Trollope, wrote a great novel in 1875 entitled The Way We Live Now. In tribute, I offer This Green And Pleasant Land, a chronicle of momentous events, fictional and factual, between September 2015 and September 2016. It is set in the village of Fairley Parva (Burbage, my home village) in Leicestershire - home of the amazing footballing Foxes - who get more than a passing mention. | |||||||
| The Recruit | (28 193 words) | |
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| Aalim is a young, clever policeman whose career is going nowhere - until one day a man calling himself Jayson shows up. He offers him the chance to work for British Intelligence in a very dangerous part of the world. The offer of two million pounds is tempting but the mission will turn out to be not all it seems. | |||||||
| THE ROAD TO REDEMORE 1450-1485 | (71 182 words) | |
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| The discovery of a manuscript in medieval French, reporting eye-witness accounts of the Battle of Bosworth, leads its translator to depict in alternating chapters the fears, ambitions and vices of Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later Richard III) and of Henry Tudor (later Henry VII) as their lives converge in late August 1485 on that famous battlefield near my home in south Leicestershire. This is part history, part novel. | |||||||
| BRANWELL | (79 949 words) | |
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| This is the tragic story of the mercurial, wayward brother of the Brontë sisters, narrated by Anne who knew him best in the final years of his troubled life. | |||||||
| THE STRANGER | (14 480 words) | |
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| A novelist encounters an unusual fellow on Westminster Bridge and is curious to learn his secret. | |||||||
| SLEEPING BEAUTY AND THE BEAST | (20 702 words) | |
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| This is a modern take on Pygmalion, a tale about redemption and transformation. Trevor Briggs, an ex-GP turned counsellor, convinces himself that he can bring out the latent spiritual beauty of a girl who has trained as a beautician but who is confused and dissatisfied with her superficial life. When she disappears he fears she may have committed suicide although the police suspect him of murder. It is only long afterwards, that he realises the truth of what must have happened to her….. | |||||||
| The Imperfect | (25 716 words) | |
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| Patrick Bray cannot quite make his mind, after a rather fruitless and misspent time post qualifying, whether a career in teaching is really for him, A decision to try his hand in a multi-racial, inner-city school seems at first to be a wrong one, in view of the many obstacles he finds himself up against there; however, instead of daunting him, those challenges arouse his natural idealism and tenacity, leading inevitably to conflict. | |||||||
| The Brook | (19 872 words) | |
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| Mark Crane is determined to break free of a past characterised by parental inadequacy and neglect, and determined to give his own family the loving attention which he was denied as a child. Yet he finds himself haunted and pursued by a dark character from his infancy, to the extent that his resolve and new life are placed in jeopardy. | |||||||
| Cousin Charlotte | (20 620 words) | |
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| Cousin Charlotte is a beguiling, perplexing and elusive character in Tom Joyce’s life. He has loved her, boy and man, and just as he thinks he might be escaping her influence, she reappears in his life, bringing new surprises, some funny, some sad. | |||||||
| The Polish Girl | (6 524 words) | |
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| Harvey is keen to help a young unhappy waitress but his kindness threatens to rebound on him. | |||||||
| The Refugees | (18 595 words) | |
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| I am very grateful to my old university friend, Penny Hoja, for donating her novella The Refugees to my charity website. It centres on two strangers thrown together by events from which they are escaping, and who find a little solace in each other’s company before the past of one of them threatens to wreck their plans. Penny writes – "I am of German-Czech extraction and I prize the novella form. It is neither a short novel, nor, indeed, a long short story, but exists in its own right, a relentless account of events which take place in unusual circumstances and often run to tragedy, once a tipping point is reached. Unlike the novel, the novella cannot and does not digress and meander; it is more akin to a mountain stream following a course which in retrospect appears inevitable. It is, like the drama, the most immediate and true to life of the literary arts." | |||||||
| Deadly Sins and Sinners | (14 764 words) | |
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| This is a collection of verse written mainly in anger, despair and disillusion - albeit often with grim humour - over the way we mistreat the planet, each other and, not least, ourselves. If you find any particular poem too disturbing, please close your eyes, and pass on to the next. | |||||||
| Epics | (18 300 words) | |
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| EPICS encompasses three verse dramas and two poems, one quite long. King Harold discusses, tongue somewhat in cheek, the events of 1066. In Sodom and Gomorrah sinners tell God why they should not be punished. In The Return of Satan, in a bid to restore harmony to his creation, God puts the denizens of heaven to the test. Can they withstand temptation if authority is perceived to weaken? Finally, Genesis and Adam retell, from different angles, the story of Creation and the Fall. | |||||||
| Boots: | (3 076 words) | |
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| A shopping trip begins well but then starts to go badly wrong. | |||||||
| El Paradiso: | (4 981 words) | |
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| A wry look at a three-star hotel, somewhere in Spain. | |||||||
| In Your Dreams: | (8 040 words) | |
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| Lionel’s company can offer clients the chance - so he says - to dream of past experiences and make significant alterations to them. Steven is tempted to try it out. | |||||||
| Jack of Hearts: | (13 082 words) | |
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| Jack McDonald admits he is no angel. But does he deserve to be punished by one - before his time? (sexually explicit) | |||||||
| Edwin Swellingfoote: | (13 725 words) | |
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| Saskia Flikkemar, a Dutch adoptee, has returned to her native Earlstone to try to find out the truth about her early childhood which her adoptive aunt, now dead, refused to discuss with her. | |||||||
| Belladonna: | (15 654 words) | |
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| An ailing musician revisits a favourite haunt in Charnwood Forest and meets an enigmatic, possibly shady character whose motives she is determined to pin down. | |||||||
| The Gentleman: | (15 902 words) | |
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| When, by chance, Madeleine sees her attacker briefly on television, it revives a trauma which she was beginning to forget. The story ends up on the desk of reporter Paul Bishop at a time when he is least prepared to deal with it. This is a short sequel to Prisoners. | |||||||
| Doctor Merveille: | (19 513 words) | |
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| A failing Comprehensive is transformed by an amazing teacher from the Ivory Coast. Deputy Head, Richard Kelly, comes to see that those talents are more extraordinary than anyone realises, and when an equally extraordinary new pupil, Nathan Stringfellow, arrives at the school, a conflict of long standing is reignited which Kelly, the disciplinarian of the school must somehow get to grips with. | |||||||
| The Pretender: | (20 378 words) | |
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| A retiring teacher begins to realise that his younger colleague is not what he seems, and becomes a hapless victim in his web of intrigue. | |||||||
| The Snow: | (20 963 words) | |
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| The narrator has doubts that he still loves his ailing wife. Extreme weather means that he must put himself to the test to get the drugs she needs to stay alive. | |||||||
| Lucy: | (21 937 words) | |
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| Julian is lonely and drifting through life when, one day, the photograph of a ladies cricket team in the local paper catches his eye. The girl at the back captivates him so much that he calls the editor for clarification. This provides him with the name of the lady to whom the old photograph belongs. She turns out to be related to the cricketer. Whimsy sets off an unexpected chain of events. | |||||||
| The Rose: | (22 963 words) | |
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| Oliver cannot bear to take his leave from his wife’s ashes. Needing to make a fresh start, he departs for Normandy, taking her with him in an urn. This is a tale of compulsion and obsession. | |||||||
| The Trojan Horse: | (24 122 words) | |
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| Jack Driscoll, a computer expert working in the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, has gone missing. Richard Armitage, a fluent German speaker, offers to help Driscoll’s eccentric partner, Marion, to track him down – an offer he comes to regret. | |||||||
| The Birdwatcher: | (25 882 words) | |
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| Michael Collins, minor author, has much to justify his (reluctant) misanthropy and preference for birds. His solution to a predicament from which he sees no escape is, by any measure, a drastic one. Based on a true event in Germany, this is not a tale to read if you are a little low. | |||||||
| The Catsitters | (30 189 words) | |
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| Anna, a pre-pubescent girl, a misfit at school, agrees one summer to look after Napoleon, the purry, furry pride and joy of her glamorous French teacher. On the periphery of events, Anna is developing acute observational skills and begins to notice odd things about Madame Forrestier. With the run of her house, she slowly fits together an astonishing and disturbing puzzle. (Not a children’s story!) | |||||||
| The Instrument: | (30 223 words) | |
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| Emily cannot come to terms with her divorce. To cheer herself a little, she buys an antique piano. The discovery she makes at the bottom of the case sets her on a quest to find out about the fate of its original owner – an investigation which will transform her own fortunes. | |||||||
| The Wild Way: | (30 800 words) | |
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| Marilyn hopes that her husband, resettled in a beautiful valley, will shake off his depression and drink problem – result of a traumatic experience as a detective in Hong Kong. He, however, has only told her a fraction of the appalling truth – and nothing of the nemesis which is in pursuit of him. | |||||||
| Prisoners: | (36 283 words) | |
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| After a young black boy is stabbed to death one rainy night in Manchester a young black reporter, determined to bring his killers to justice in the face of police apathy, goes undercover in Moss Side. | |||||||
| The Cottage: | (37 675 words) | |
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| Is the old cottage in the Cotswolds haunted by the ghost of Susan Mason, victim of a ghastly murder? Richard and Yvonne are not deterred by its jinx reputation and set to work restoring it. But can Yvonne’s deteriorating mental health be explained away simply by traumatic experiences she has experienced in the final stages of her career? When Richard discovers a secret long hidden, the jinx theory begins to seem more and more plausible. (Sexually very explicit) | |||||||
| The Amoralist: | (49 465 words) | |
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| An aloof detective, transferred from Yorkshire to Earlstone, stumbles on local police corruption and is forced to make some very difficult and risky decisions. | |||||||
| Slaves: | (49 736 words) | |
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| DI Box has had a quiet professional life, and now, towards the end of his career, he is confronted with the most appalling and challenging crime. | |||||||
| The Astonishing Adventures of Professor Fist: | (50 095 words) | |
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| Bookish Professor Fist, having lost his wife, receives bereavement counselling from one Doctor Mephistopholous. He falls under his hypnotic spell but is determined to win back his freedom. | |||||||
| Cases: | (54 897 words) | |
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| Set in Blackpool, an ex-taxi driver struggles to establish himself as a private detective with hair-raising and often hilarious results. | |||||||
| The May Blossom: | (55 314 words) | |
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| Jacob has never forgotten the lovely face of a girl he met fleetingly in his teenage years. Returned to his native Earlstone from abroad, he advertises for her to get in touch with disastrous consequences for himself. | |||||||
| The Idea: | (58 089 words) | |
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| Set in a fictional central European state in a post-capitalist environment, the novel tells the story of Neno, an evangelist for a perfect political concept designed to free the people from want and oppression of every kind. Through his and other eyes, the reader witnesses the dream begin to turn sour. | |||||||
| Johnny Fairplay: | (58 448 words) | |
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| A Midland detective takes leave to investigate an unsolved murder in Yorkshire – the murder, years ago, of his own father. | |||||||
| Callie: | (58 758 words) | |
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| A young French teacher becomes very involved in the fortunes of a talented and precocious teenage girl from a deprived background, and makes a determined effort to save her from harm, placing his own career in jeopardy. | |||||||
| The Brother and Sister Scholl: | (61 055 words) | |
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| An English assistant becomes embroiled in a campaign in a Bavarian town to change the name of the local school to celebrate the bravery of a young brother and sister opposed to Hitler in wartime Munich. Set in 1971 and 1933-42. | |||||||
| Earlstone: | (62 107 words) | |
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| is the drab and derelict setting for many of my stories. A reporter becomes more and more involved in a campaign to breathe new life into the town and finds himself set against corrupt local interests. | |||||||
| The Exiles: | (65 074 words) | |
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| A young man of Portuguese descent flees to the Algarve after his marriage fails, and encounters a new set of people and their problems, and ultimately great danger. | |||||||
| The Me I Used To BE: | (42 679 words) | |
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| Tales of a wonderful childhood - and a misspent youth - in Earlstone. | |||||||