Kirjahaku

If you are taking the air with the love of your life and you see a clapped-out motorcycle and sidecar approaching, seek shelter immediately. Do not become entangled with the young man and girl riding the antique contraption. They are the most dangerous people I have ever met. They never intend to do harm, but any contact will disrupt your life forever. The handsome man with the midnight hair and beard is Christopher Marlowe, the genius who wrote Shakespeare's plays. He is sometimes known as Kit Marlon. The girl is his adopted daughter, Hannah Cato. He has escaped through Time from enemies who wish to cut him into four pieces. The only true Time Walker I know, Kit has no understanding of the twenty-first century and is frightened of gas stoves, immersion heaters, and computers. He cannot open sardine tins, loves Hoola Hoops, and is the master of blank verse. It is safe to read this wonderful book, but do not make Kit Marlowe's acquaintance. Your life will never be the same again.

In the Border town of Jedburgh stands the Queen's House. In 1565 Mary, Queen of Scots, came to hold an Assize, but was driven from the Spread Eagle tavern to the House by a malicious fire. Did someone intend to murder the Queen? Mary rode to Hermitage where her presumed lover, James Hepburn, Earl Bothwell lived, but returned the same day. Why? I was intrigued. Was she running into his arms or running away? From the bench where I sat in the House garden, I borrowed a brother and sister from a school group and the story began. When Detective Constable Susan Duffy views a CCTV tape from a Newcastle charity shop burglary, she is shocked, but no one at her chauvinistic station can be bothered. Then two teenagers disappear after visiting the House and Susan pursues the villain who moves through time to kill everyone in his path who would reveal the truth of an age-old mystery. 'In my ending is my beginning,' as Mary Stuart wrote. In the ending of this story is the beginning of something extraordinary.

Have you ever wondered why it is always the bright child who is killed in an accident? Gifted children we need to advance our technology, to find the answers to our problems, die in incidents where others survive. In my personal experience, I mourn three such children. Daniel Fallon believes an evil presence provokes innocent people to kill gifted children to impoverish us. A whisper of an imaginary slight in an innocent's ear grows from irritation to anger, to homicidal rage, to murder. Daniel Fallon and a young woman, Sheena Galloway, become allies in the struggle to track down this creature and destroy it. My advice: lock the doors, settle in your chair with your favourite crisps, a bottle of strengthening Lucozade, and a stout shillelagh. Don't turn down the lights.

Charlie Henderson, schoolgirl of thirteen, lives in London and attends a failing Academy. Her younger brother, Ralph, is a spoilt brat. Her parents quarrel constantly. Michael, a solicitor, hates his work and brings that unhappiness home. Eileen, her mother, is trapped in their damp, cramped house. The only sunshine in Charlie's life is her friendship with Sarah Shaw. One disastrous day, that friendship is broken forever.Then a miracle changes everything. Michael is offered a job with a firm in Leicester, and they move to The Crooked Cottage in Fenton Parva, a charming village. The villagers are welcoming and Charlie is happier than she ever thought to be. Her mother loves the cottage and village life. Her father is happy in his new position. Ralph is as irritating as ever. Life for the Hendersons is transformed.But, in the paradise of Fenton Parva, there begins a series of events that leads Charlie to a terrifying revelation. Do not read this book in an old dark house alone at night.

Maggie Magee is a teenage girl who lives in a tower block in West Newcastle with her aunt. The most extraordinary events begin to happen when, abandoned by her aunt, her grandfather turns up. Meanwhile, in rural Northumberland, the Carnell family, living in the ruins of Asheldore Hall, conspire to send someone back through time to change history so that what happened in 1899 will not happen and the family's power and prestige will be restored. In the Old Dowerhouse of the Hall live the Temple family: Tom, a retired crafts teacher, his wife Ellen, and their teenage children, Nikki and Stephen, innocents who will be manipulated to serve the wicked purposes of the Carnells. Maggie is unaware of the power she possesses that will take her and grandfather, Michael Magee, the failing Magus, to the edge of the fatal abyss. The threads of the conspiracy tighten and suffocate. Nothing is what it seems. Who can tell the daemons from the angels?

Inspector Davison is haunted by the suspicion that too many Duncaster girls are dying. A senior officer has closed enquiries into seemingly unrelated deaths. John Richards, a bereaved father, is constantly blocked, until he meets Harry Whitehouse, a former police officer who has also lost his daughter. Nothing disturbs the complacency of the quiet Midland town of Duncaster in the Fifties, but there is a supreme evil growing in the shadows. A young teacher, Daniel Leven, begins his third year of teaching in a Duncaster school staffed by older women and a domineering Headmaster, Mr. Deacon. From Daniel's new class, Mr. Deacon chooses the Head Boy and Girl. Daniel begins to be concerned when the girl, Sheila Morgan, begins returning from the Headmaster's errands in distress. Slowly, seemingly unrelated threads draw together the innocent and the wicked in this tale of murder and depravity.

The Brook Randall School for Girls of Military Parentage is a boarding school of good reputation. For teenagers Melanie Mackenzie, Joan Vere d'Urquart, and Laura MaCallaman, it is a tranquil and ordered environment that allows them to overcome the tragedies of their pasts.But when the famous playwright Christopher Marlowe arrives at the school to give a lecture on historical time travel, bringing with him an air of mystery and adventure, the delicate equilibrium of Randall's is shattered. Melanie, it turns out, is a Time Walker: someone who can break the barriers of time and send people back into the past. She is just what Marlowe has been looking for - someone who can return him to his own time and allow him to escape the religious fanatics who have hunted him since the Elizabethan era. But as events unfold, both Christopher Marlowe and the girls find themselves embroiled in a historical time travel mystery spanning the 1600s to the closing days of the Napoleonic Wars.

Two young men, close friends Nicholas Hope, a painter of talent, and Timothy Sharp, a budding writer, are living in Avalon, a city in the South-West of England. Sworn to live free, they take nothing from the State, but support themselves by bar and restaurant jobs, the odd commission, and 'borrowing' from friends. They survive on cigarettes and rum scrumpies. This story relates truly what happened to Nick and Timmy in that fateful summer of 1950.