検索キーワード： ナレーター "Ben Onwukwe" すべてのカテゴリー

During her lifetime Violet Paget, who wrote as Vernon Lee, was referred to as 'the greatest of modern exponents of the supernatural in fiction', and yet today she remains on the periphery of the genre. This collection of her uniquely weird short stories and dark fantasies proves why she was once considered among the best of the genre, and why she deserves to return to those ranks today.

1882. North of Edinburgh, on the edge of an isolated loch, lies an institution of crumbling stone, where a strange doctor collects orphans with unusual abilities. In London, two children with such powers are hunted by a figure of darkness—a man made of smoke.

The real nightmare begins when the missing person returns. PC Gareth Bell is about to arrest a cocaine dealer on Brighton Marina, when he makes a shocking discovery that turns his world upside down: the dealer is his long-lost brother, Jake, someone he thought had died years ago. But their reunion is short lived. For Jake is on the run from a cold-blooded killer, whose network reaches all the way into the police force itself. Now that his brother’s life is on the line, Bell has only two choices. Family, or duty?

A short story from the British Library Crime Classic collection Murder by the Book. A devotee of Sherlock Holmes and prominent Sherlockian scholar, S.C. Roberts wrote several works about Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective. In this story, Holmes and Watson are tasked with discovering who is stealing large quantities of books from the circulation library of a London club. With no clear suspect or motive, Holmes must rely on clues that are hidden in plain sight. 

A man is writing a book about prison life, using the first-hand stories of previously incarcerated women. Angered by his treatment of her, one of the women burns the manuscript—but she is later discovered murdered in the nearby woods. Detective Inspector Roberts is tasked with uncovering whether there is more to this case than meets the eye.

A struggling writer battles constant interruptions during his day, until a final visit from unexpected guests pushes him to his breaking point. A tongue-in-cheek nod to Edmund Crispin’s own troubles as a writer, this short story is both an ironic commentary on what it means to ‘work for yourself’ and arguably one of Crispin’s most personal pieces of crime fiction.

Norwell Roberts, the Met's first Black police officer in 1967, found out he had a new job the same way the rest of the country did—from a Daily Telegraph headline that read 'Met to Have First Coloured Policeman'. From that day forward his face became a symbol—of acceptance, of a diverse police force, of a changing Britain. He was turned into the poster boy for progressive policing—but his day-to-day reality was anything but. Greeted with prejudice, ridicule and rejection, he refused to quit. 

PC Gareth Bell watches the psychopath who stabbed Bell’s partner stroll out of court a free man. Somebody on the inside tampered with the evidence, and now one of Brighton’s most dangerous criminals is back on the streets again. Bell’s personal mission for revenge takes him onto the other side of the law and into the dark, violent underworld of the glamourous seaside city. Soon he faces a horrifying choice: risk everything he holds dear, or let the man who tried to kill his partner walk free.

Samuel has lived alone on an island off the coast of an unnamed African country for more than two decades. He tends to his garden, his lighthouse, and his chickens, content with a solitary life. Routinely, the nameless bodies of refugees wash ashore, but Samuel—who understands that the government only values certain lives, certain deaths—always buries them himself. One day, though, he finds that one of these bodies is still breathing. 

Sixteen-year-old Charlie Ovid, despite a brutal childhood in Mississippi, doesn't have a scar on him. His body heals itself, whether he wants it to or not. Marlowe, a foundling from a railway freight car, shines with a strange bluish light. He can melt or mend flesh. When a jaded female detective is recruited to escort them to safety, all three begin a journey into the nature of difference, and belonging, and the shadowy edges of the monstrous. What follows is a story of wonder and betrayal.

The extant letters of Pliny, written between AD 97 and 112, give us a unique insight into Imperial Rome under the early Antonine emperors. Organised into 10 books, the letters reflect a wide range of topics, mirroring Pliny’s own public and private interests. Among many other subjects, the letters also include an eye-witness account of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, with the final book containing the exchange of letters between the writer (whose career culminated as Governor of Bithynia) and the emperor Trajan. 

While building a pipeline near the Okavango Delta, a contractor unearths the remains of a long-dead Bushman. Rookie Detective David 'Kubu' Bengu of Botswana CID and Scottish pathologist, Ian MacGregor, are sent to investigate, and MacGregor discovers the skeletons of eight more men. Shortly after the gruesome discoveries, the elder of a nearby village is murdered in his home. The local police are convinced it was a robbery, but Kubu isn't so sure...and neither is the strange woman who claims that an angry river spirit caused the elder's death.

When a TV producer offers journalist Sam Dean the job of tracking down a suspect in the brutal murder of a young woman and her child, he's reluctant to get involved. But when a colleague is stabbed to death on set, it’s clear something bigger is going on. And when threatening anonymous notes start arriving, Sam is forced to dig for the truth.

In 1980s London, Black political leaders who can straddle the racial divide are a rarity. So when a rising Black politician, Aston Edwards, is murdered, the effects quickly ripple through London’s Afro-Caribbean community. Then a young Black boy is arrested for his murder, surrounded by rumours of an affair with Aston’s wife. Sammy Dean, journalist turned investigator, is determined to find the truth. When a Black activist’s death is written off as a suicide, Sam begins to think the two cases are linked. With tensions running high, can Sam find the truth before the city erupts?

In the 1980s, London is a melting pot of cultures, but race and class create sharp divisions. Black British journalist Sam Dean looks for stories, not missing persons. When and old friend asks for help tracking down a White Conservative MP’s daughter, he feels he can’t say no. Virginia’s disappearance is tangled with the fate of Roy, a young mixed-race boy who reminds Sam of his own son, and Sam becomes determined to find the truth. 

Sent from London to New York to bring a dying friend’s message to his daughter, Mary, Sam Dean arrives in Queens, steeped in a mesh of Caribbean and Hispanic culture, looking forward to reconnecting with family and old friends. But his relaxing holiday turns dark when Mary disappears, and Sammy is caught up in a world of murder, sex and corrupt politics that threatens to turn his world upside down.

Ralph and Robyn live at Crocodile Lodge, their family ranch in South Africa, where they help with the animals, aid the conservation effort and learn the land. That is, until a mysterious predator starts terrorising the reserve. On the trail for answers, the siblings discover the fearsome culprit: the largest crocodile they've ever seen, uncannily similar to the long-extinct Sarcosuchus Ralph recognises from his favourite game, Predasaur. And when a nearby village is ravaged by a deadly disease, the stakes are higher than ever.

In today's throwaway culture, there's a counter movement growing that urges us to 'make do and mend'. The Repair Shop has brought this waste-conscious message to an even wider audience, with its regular viewing figures of seven million in the UK alone, cementing itself as a classic series in the vein of Antiques Roadshow. This new book concentrates on the show's much-loved experts. Each of the experts shares their own stories and their repairs, capturing in the process the magic and ethos of the barn.

The Brutish Museums sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonisation of museums. Since its first publication, museums across the western world have begun to return their Bronzes to Nigeria, heralding a new era in the way we understand the collections of empire we once took for granted.

During a violent snowstorm, the Royal Family gather at Balmoral Castle for a traditional Christmas. As per King Eric's wishes, almost all of the servants have been dismissed. The large castle is inhabited by only eight people—King Eric, his wife Princess Marjorie, his brother Prince David, his two daughters Princesses Emeline and Maud, Maud's husband Thomas Crockley, Maud's sons Princes Matthew and Martin, the royal chef Jonathan Alleyne, and head of security Tony Speck.