A novel of the lost and the broken. Of sharing the silences, talking to the stars, and the importance of tin openers.A troubled young woman witnesses her parents final moments. Dying as their crashed car is consumed in flames. Grief-stricken lost and alone her mind withdraws into darkness. Finding empty solace within the walls of her subconscious. She walks away carrying with her a terrible secret she hides even from herself.She follows no direction, save one away from people, because people hurt, people bully and people ask questions. Questions she does not wish to answer, even to herself. Suffering from shock and the beginnings of exposure she just keeps walking.Miles away in Scotland, A man lays beneath the stars, conversing with them as if they are old friends. Once a brilliant academic he has lost everything and is now living in the shadows of his a broken life wracked with the haunting griefs of his past. He walks the roads and sleeps in lost abandoned places. Hitching rides, he carries with him the ghosts of the past. Remembering a place where the cider apples grow in the summer sunshine.Ahead of them both in the depths of Summerset there lays an abandoned cottage in an orchard off Cider Lane. A place forgotten by the world, broken down and half ruined. Drawing them both together unwittingly. It is a haven, a place to rest and regrowth in the summer sun. Stumbling upon it the girl sets about surviving, free of spiteful people and their dangerous questions.When the traveller arrives for the apple harvest, he found in the lost young girl someone as broken and damaged by the world as he once was. Together perhaps they can save each other. Amid ruins of the past.But first, they must learn to trust once more in another. If only they can. While the world is ever waiting to crash in on them once more. Meanwhile, the police search for the girl, and a young officer with his own dark past is determined to save her from the fate that befell his sister. And the world never forgets anyone for long. Winner of the Publisher's Book Club Book of the Month award, November 2015Dark with humour and a cynic's view of the world around us, among the hidden forgotten. The world where everyone must conform to the rules, and what happens to those that chose to walk away. '...An absorbing, melancholy, read...''...altogether beautiful, tragic and sad...''...thought-provoking...'
Step in from the cold, through the saloon door of the strangest bar in creation."The Greyhound pulled away into the thunderous summer storm, leaving in its wake a dishevelled, world-weary figure in the dark, deserted bus station."In a Hicksville town in the western desert Richard is a man come to the end of the road. Grieving after the death of his wife he has travelled the back roads of America in search of an answer to that most impossible of questions. Why? Looking for that answer in all the wrong places. Until he answers a want ad for a piano player and finds himself in Esqwith's Passing Place, an impossible bar, where the patrons all have stories to tell.In the Passing Place, causality is just a set of rules and those rules can be bent. Where no one knows your name, but everyone has a story to tell. Where the answers to that most impossible of questions may lay, 'Why' In a novel that goes everywhere and nowhere, but is about the journey in-between.So Welcome to Esqwith's Piano Bar and Grill. A Passing Place. A place off to one side of reality, where your troubles can just slip on by.An impossible place that bridges dimensions and time itself. Sonny, the doorman, drinks his brandy and tells a story of death row. A green haired girl sits in her tree and speaks of the wolf of winter. The 'Weaver Of Tears', cries her diamonds, and the Gunslinger speaks of death riding in on desert winds. The Greyman tells of his soulless world, before dancing with his mop once more. While in the kitchen the Chef bends causality to make the greatest sandwich in the world, and the devil behind the bar tells tall tales while he pours you a drink.A place where stories are told and retold anew, and a place where something lurks unseen, something from the void, something dangerous, something hungry, something red...Fantasy and sci-fiction collide with horror and the supernatural in a world where reality is a matter of perception..."...swimming in a rich sea of worlds...""...creepily beautiful...""...keep's you drawn into the web of the story..."
Queen Victoria is in the 200th year of her reign, and her Glorious British Empire faces a grievous threat due to the Machiavellian machinations of that most notorious instigator of insurrections Herbert George Wells. An agent of The Ministry, the shadowy branch of the British government that deals with things other Ministries neither need or want to know about. Hannibal Smyth finds himself languishing in a cell on a mountain side in Tibet. A prisoner of the very man he was sent to find. While all around him a fleet is gathering that could set the Empire aflame and plunge India into insurrection. Hannibal must strive to face this plot down, with nothing but his raw courage and the cutthroat razor hidden in his boot.So just the cutthroat then.... Will Hannibal become the hero the Empire needs? Will he face down the dangers of international conspiracies, psychotic maids, bullet trains, crazed scientists, air pirates, clockwork Geisha, Sleepmen, and those blasted fools who want independence? Will he rise to the occasion? Will he defend Queen, Country, indeed the Empire with his life if necessary? Not if he can help it, but unfortunately no one has given him much choice in the matter... Praise for A Spider In The Eye" A must-read for Steampunk fans.""A riveting roller coaster of a book.""...keep's you drawn into the web of the story..."
Step in from the cold, through the saloon door of the strangest bar in creation.Esqwith's Passing Place, where everyone has a story to tell..Hannibal Smyth Esquire, formally of 'She whom is seldom amused' Royal Air Navy, rogue, thief, scoundrel, unwilling agent of The Ministry, and on occasion hero, but only if he can't find a way to avoid it, drops into the Passing Place with a story on his lips.Richard the resident Piano Player in Esqwiths improbable bar, listens on and wonders, just how did Hannibal get that scar?But only because the cat told him to ask...So What follows is a tale of avarice, of strange things in the mountain temples of Nepal, airships, clockwork queens, Russian pirates, Fung-Fu monks, the sexual politics of pork scratchings, of high adventure and low doings. 'A Scar of Avarice' is a cross over novella, set in both the steampunk present of Hannibal Smyth, and the universe of Passing Place: Location Relative.Praise of Passing Place"...swimming in a rich sea of worlds...""...creepily beautiful...""...keep's you drawn into the web of the story..."
Queen Victoria is in the 200th year of her reign, and her Glorious British Empire faces a grievous threat due to the Machiavellian machinations of that most notorious instigator of insurrections Herbert George Wells. The Ministry, the shadowy branch of the British government that deals with things other Ministries neither need or want to know about, needs to send its best available man. But as the best available man is not available, they are going to have to turn to someone else.Enter Hannibal Smyth, a gentleman of nefarious repute. Formally in the service of 'She whom is seldom amused' as an officer in the Royal Air Navy, thief, scoundrel, gambler, drinker, arsonist, womaniser, convicted murderer, and currently resident in the New Bailey, awaiting the shortest of short walks to the gallows. Will Hannibal become the hero the Empire needs? Will he face down the dangers of international conspiracies, psychotic maids, crazed scientists, air pirates, and those blasted fools who want independence? Will he rise to the occasion? Will he defend Queen, Country, indeed the Empire with his life if necessary? Not if he can help it... But then The Ministry doesn't plan on giving him much choice... Praise of Passing Place"...swimming in a rich sea of worlds...""...creepily beautiful...""...keep's you drawn into the web of the story..."
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