Showing results for "gordon griffin" in Literary Fiction

What should you do if the world has turned against you? When Father Anselm is asked this question by an old man at Larkwood Priory, his response is to have greater resonance than he could ever have imagined. For that evening the old man returns, demanding the protection of the church. His name is Eduard Schwermann and he is wanted by the police as a suspected war criminal.

Fetherhoughton is a dreary town in 1950s northern England. Father Angwin has lost his faith. Sister Philomena strains against convent life. The inhabitants of the town go about their lives in a haze. Then a stranger appears, bringing with him the hint of something new. But who is Fludd? An angel come to shake the dwellers from their stupor, or is he the devil himself, a wanderer of the darkest places in the human heart?

Kenneth Toomey is an eminent novelist of dubious talent; Don Carlo Campanati is a man of God, a shrewd manipulator who rises through the Vatican to become the architect of church revolution and a candidate for sainthood. These two men are linked not only by family ties but by a common understanding of mankind's frailties. In this epic masterpiece, Anthony Burgess plumbs the depths of the essence of power and the lengths men will go for it.

Englishman Edward Prendick finds himself shipwrecked on the open ocean. When a passing ship takes him aboard and revives him, things are starting to look less gloomy for the young scientist. Yet little does he know things about to get much worse. He is taken to an abandoned island occupied only by Dr. Moreau, a disgraced English scientist for his unethical treatment of live creatures. Prendick finds that the Doctor has been up to old habits, using the island's animals to create animal-human hybrids.

Born at the beginning of the 20th century, Raphael Ignatius Phoenix is determined to take his own life as the new millennium begins and he turns 100 years old. But before he ends it all, he wants to get his affairs in order, and that includes making sense of his own life. He decides to write it down, remembering the experiences, the myriad encounters and, of course, the 10 murders he committed along the way.

France, 1963. Taken out of his home town as part of a nationwide “initiative”, Inspector Lucas Rocco finds himself in the village of Poissons-Les-Marais, Picardie – and answerable to his former army CO Francois Massin. On his first day he finds a murdered woman wearing a Gestapo uniform lying in a British military cemetery. When the body is removed from the mortuary before Rocco can finish his investigation, he traces the paperwork to the dead woman’s father, industrialist Philippe Bayer-Berbier.

The price for a country. The price for a King. The price for a marriage. The second book in the Tom Neave Trilogy 1647. The King has surrendered to Parliament. Lord Stonehouse, to show his loyalty to Parliament, has named Tom as his successor. But Lord Stonehouse’s son, Richard, is also...

By the Booker-shortlisted author of Astonishing Splashes of Colour; a wittily observed slice of modern life as it plumbs the gulf between nostalgia and reality. Who is the Roundabout Man? He doesn't look like a tramp, yet he lives on a roundabout in a caravan and survives on the leftovers from a motorway service station. He calls himself Quinn, the name of a boy in a world-famous series of children's books. When Quinn's reclusive existence is invaded, he has to face his past, and the uncomfortable truth of who he really is.

Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, 1736. A foggy September evening. When a child is killed by an unknown horseman, musician sleuth Charles Patterson, the only witness close enough to see that the collision was no accident, vows to hunt down the rider. But there are distractions. Richard Nightingale, a fashionable “ladder-dancer”, arrives from London to cause havoc with the ladies.

Detective Inspector Frank Elder's first case was unsolved. A dead woman, lying on a bed, immaculately dressed. The murderer was never found: free to kill again. Eight years later, Elder's estranged wife contacts him in his Cornish hideaway. Her friend's sister Claire has mysteriously disappeared. Elder reluctantly agrees to help. Then Claire is found dead, arranged with meticulous detail on her bed, and it doesn't take long for Elder to make the connection.

The first instalment of a page-turning trilogy set against the backdrop of the English Civil War. September 1625: Plague cart driver, Matthew Neave, is sent to pick up the corpse of a baby. Yet, on the way to the plague pit, he hears a cry – the baby is alive. A plague child himself, and now...

Shipwrecked and cast adrift, Lemuel Gulliver wakes to find himself on Lilliput, an island inhabited by little people whose height makes their quarrels over fashion and fame seem ridiculous. His subsequent encounters with the crude giants of Brobdingnag, the philosophical Houyhnhnms, and the brutish Yahoos give him further insight into human behavior. Presented through Swift's satiric hall of distorting mirrors, mankind is cast as diminished, magnified, and bestial - the composite of which is an uncompromising reflection of human nature.

Gogol's great comic masterpiece paints an hilariously satirical picture of provincial life in 19th century Russia. Its publication in 1847 not only provided inspiration for succeeding generations of Russian writers, but fanned the already flickering flames of social discontent which were eventually to flare up and consume Russia in the revolution of 1917.

Could he not put together a memory for her? Perhaps he could become her memory. To build it from fragments, or make it up. And most of all bring back Grace. Her own mother. John visits his ageing mother Mary in her nursing home by the sea, and mourns the slow fading of her mind. Hoping to shore...

A poignant imagining of Thomas Hardy’s relationship with his last muse. A celebrated author, in the winter of his life, awaits a visit from a beautiful young actress – the leading lady in a staging of his most famous tragedy. But his wife is troubled. An anxious and sickly woman, she watches the growing intimacy between her husband and the young woman, and becomes tormented by the idea that they will betray her.

Yes! Old Scrooge is dead, to begin with.... In this romance sequel to Charles Dickens' beloved classic, A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge dies suddenly just days before Christmas. Tiny Tim, now a young man who lost his sweetheart love, Becky, battles anger and lost faith with the new loss of his best friend. Scrooge’s ghost returns to to teach Tim a much needed lesson about faith...and the real meaning of Christmas!

What price betrayal? The bloody saga of revolution and republicanism reaches its climax in the final instalment of the Tom Neave trilogy.1659. Tom Neave, now Lord Stonehouse and feared spymaster for the republic, must do what he can to maintain the reins of power. With Oliver Cromwell dead, a ruthless struggle for control of the country begins. A Royalist rebellion is easily put down, but is of concern for Tom - his son Luke is among those imprisoned.

Retired teacher Lewis Sullivan always imagined living by the sea. He lives instead in the Midlands village in which he was born. His grown-up daughter visits every day, bringing soup. He does not want soup. He frequents his second-favourite pub, where he can get half a shandy and a speciality sausage. When a childhood friend appears on the scene, Lewis finds his life and comfortable routine shaken up.

Suddenly, there was a high voice screaming in the darkness: "Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!" It was Long John Silver’s parrot, Captain Flint! I turned to run . . .’But young Jim Hawkins does not escape from the pirates this time. Will he and his friends find the treasure before the pirates do? Will they escape from the island, and sail back to England with a ship full of gold?