Trow M. J.

With the beginning of a new school year under way, Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell prepares to get stuck into his curricular routine and is looking forward to his forthcoming wedding to fiancée DS Jacquie Carpenter. The immediate task in hand for senior staff members is the hiring of a new Assistant Head teacher, for which the school caterers have prepared a private buffet. But during the lunch meeting disaster strikes, as guests and staff alike become seriously ill in a matter of minutes. After being reluctantly thrust into the role of Acting Headmaster, Maxwell works in conjunction with the police, including his lovely Jacquie, to try to unravel the mystery. But with certain fingers pointing at him, and Jacquie worried that the attack has infiltrated his life in a way that could soon get out of control, is Maxwell in more danger than he thinks?

Intrepid 19th-century private investigators American Matthew Grand and Englishman James Batchelor return in their second mystery. July, 1868. On receiving a commission from Matthew's cousin Luther to look into the suspicious death of Lafayette Baker, Head of the US National Detective Police, private investigators Matthew Grand and his business partner James Batchelor leave London for Washington DC. They find a country still scarred by the bitter legacy of the Civil War and even in death Lafayette Baker remains one of the most hated men north or south of the Potomac. The newly-created Ku Klux Klan wanted him dead. So did the Washington brothel-keepers, bar-owners and gamblers whom Baker had closed down. What does beautiful former spy Miss Belle Boyd know that she's not telling them? And could the President himself be involved? Matthew Grand finds he has come home to a mixed reception, while Batchelor struggles as an Englishman abroad. Will either of them survive long enough to uncover the truth?

Having had his retirement snatched from him by malfunctioning technology, Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell finds himself facing yet another year at Leighford High School. Jacquie's hopes of a dedicated house husband are dashed and she is annoyed further when a family holiday becomes an impromptu school trip, families welcome. Less than a week into their trip to the Isle of Wight the situation takes another turn for the worse when the wife of Tom Medlicott, the new Head of Art, goes missing, forcing Jacquie to play the role of woman policeman. Back in Hampshire, when Medlicott himself is found dead at the bottom of the stairs Henry Hall is also drawn into the investigation, but with the man's entire family lying at the bottom of the morgue, his suspect list is non-existent. Then Maxwell stumbles by accident on the linchpin to the whole case. He knows the reason, all he has to find is the murderer. And to find him - or her - he will have to cross more than the Solent. With the answer lying in a missing piece of paper, divorces and deceit, will Maxwell survive to apply for retirement again?

For Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell, the only mystery that has arisen so far this year at Leighford High is the question of how to use a computer. The 'dinosaur' Head of Sixth Form just cannot get to grips with technology, and doesn't see the need to know how to send a text or an email, when a simple note or phone call will suffice. However, it soon becomes vital that he learns when some of his female pupils begin to receive strange and threatening messages, with the anonymous sender claiming to know intimate details about the girls' personal lives. Then Max starts to receive messages too, and two of the girls go missing. When a body is found it seems that the prank has taken a sinister turn. And Mad Max may well be the next target. With his job under threat from the ambitious IT technician, Nicole, and the formidable Pansy Donaldson, as well as facing increasing pressure from his wife to retire, will Max manage to crack the case? Or is the chance of him reaching retirement looking more unlikely by the day?

Kit Marlowe was the bad boy of the Elizabethan drama, a schemer and player who inhabited a seamy underworld in which plots proliferated. When he died, stabbed through the eye at 29, it seemed he had met with the death that had been coming to him. But is this the whole story? Or did he know too much about those in power and so had to be expunged? This investigation of Marlowe's death - and the life which provoked it - unravels the evidence to suggest a new answer to a murder which has puzzled us over four centuries. Author of 'Tambourlaine', 'The Jew of Malta', and 'Doctor Faustus', Marlowe was the leading literary light of his generation. But while he excited admiration, he also made powerful enemies. For Marlowe had also become involved in a world of spies and counter-spies, and developed perilous interests in alchemy, witchcraft and the School of the Night. This work gives an insight into Marlowe's complex world.

And so the Cid rode out of the gates of history - and into legend. Viewed at one level, Rodrigo Diaz, from the little town of Burgos in Castile, was just another warlord, like countless others. That he fought for Muslim as well as Christian sent a shudder of outrage through the whole of Christendom; the man was a traitor to his God as well as his king. Why, then, was an epic film starring Charlton Heston made about the man known as El Cid? Why is he the national hero of Spain and why is there a statue to him in his native Burgos, and in New York City, three thousand miles and a thousand years away from the man and his times? Acclaimed author M.J. Trow peals back the layers of legend. He reveals the facts of the Cid's life and places his life in the context of the times, looks at how the Cid became the hero of the Reconquista in his own time and in later centuries, examines the way Spain's politicians and ruling elite have used the icon of the Cid, and discusses why the man and his story have fascinated numerous writers, from the 16th century to modern times.

An exploration of the crash-and-burn bard whose wayward life-style and bad-boy reputation led to his death at 29, stabbed through the eye in a tavern brawl in Deptford in 1593. Born the son of a Canterbury shoemaker, Marlowe went on to write "Tamburlaine", "The Jew of Malta" and "Doctor Faustus". He was soon the leading literary light of his generation. But he was also mixed up with political intrigue, spying, witchcraft, alchemy and the School of the Night, and was awaiting trial for atheism when he was killed. The book investigates the conspiracy surrounding Marlowe's death, the subject of conjecture for over 400 years. It proposes that Marlowe was a victim of a contract killing, a desperate measure to prevent him from revealing the names of other atheists including members of the Government and, perhaps, even Lord Burghley himself. There were plenty of motives for Marlowe's death and, in the seething melting pot of Elizabethan England, plots, real and imagined, were everywhere.