Tony Pearce-Smith

A collection of 35 classic Agatha Christie stories of murder and suspense.

The peaceful land of Prydain is under threat. The evil Lord of Annuvin is using the dark magic of the Black Cauldron to create a terrifying army of deathless warriors. The Cauldron must be destroyed, and Taran joins Prince Gwydion and his faithful knights, Ellidyr and Adaon, in this perilous quest. Book 2 of 'The Chronicles of Prydain'

Taran dreams of fighting heroic battles instead of being an Assistant Pig-Keeper... until Hen Wen, the magical pig, disappears. With the land of Prydain under threat by the evil Horned King, he is drawn into a dangerous quest. Coming face-to-face with warriors and witches, a princess and a poet, Taran is about to learn what it truly takes to be a hero. Book 1 of 'The Chronicles of Prydain'

Set in the raw, Victorian world of the 'Five Towns', The Card tells the extremely funny and tangled story of Denry Machin's rise from mediocrity to fame through a series of ludicrous and yet perversely successful schemes. He dances, pleads, cheats and inspires his way through life in a series of set-pieces which wonderfully evoke a now long-gone world of civic balls, seaside excursions, newspaper boys and patent chocolate remedies. As everybody said after one of his most stylish coups, Denry 'was not simply a card; he was the card.'

The time has come for Eilonwy, Princess of the Royal House of Llyr, to become a lady, although she would much rather be seeking adventures with assistant pig-keeper Taran. Will Taran lose Eilonwy to the arms of the feeble Prince Rhun or worse still to the clutches of the evil enhantress Achren? Book 3 of 'The Chronicles of Prydain'

A savage assault with a scalpel leaves Dr Tim Fletcher's body badly slashed in a deserted walkway - the first victim in a series of brutal assaults on hospital staff. As panic grips the city, it's up to Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick to find the killer. Faced with a mass of clues that lead nowhere and a past he cannot forget, it's not long before he's pushed close to breaking point.

In 1825 William Savage, an official in the East India Company, witnesses a terrible mass murder, which will lead him into the darkest depths of human nature. Finding the murderers is his highest priority, but this is bigger than he at first suspected. If he wants to find justice, he must first go amongst the murderers, and become one of them.

Based on J. G. Ballard’s own childhood, this is the heartrending story of British boy Jim's four year ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during the second world war. It blends searing honesty with an almost hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint.

July 1919. Ex-flying ace James ‘Max’ Maxted’s attempt to uncover the secret behind the death of his father, Sir Henry Maxted, murdered while serving as an adviser to the Paris peace conference, has seemingly ended in failure – and his own death...  Book 3 of series.

In his memoirs of his life in France, the author is on a mission to win the heart of his belle francaise by sucking up to her family. But will it be enough to entice her away from her French beau, who is singularly unimpressed by his rival from the barbaric north!

Paris in the 1960's caters for every taste, and nowhere more than at the private 'clinic' run by the enigmatic Monsieur Datt on Avenue Foch, which supplies psychedelic drugs and sexual favours to the city's elite - all the while secretly filming guests in order to blackmail them. Into this decadent underworld steps a bespectacled British spy. Sent on what seems like a simple mission, he soon finds himself playing a game where the rules are unknown - and even victory could be fatal.   Book 5 of series.

When fruit is stolen from his golden tree, the King is furious! Prince Jack must locate the culprit, but his simple quest to find the thief soon turns into a thrilling tale of love, friendship and betrayal...

The murder of a Member of Parliament puts an end to Inspector West’s holiday. His wife is naturally annoyed, but West nevertheless hastens back to Scotland Yard so as to take charge of the case. However, the murder turns out to be far more complicated than he expected, with many different mysteries to solve, and there is real danger as he gets closer to the truth.

When he hears a story about a huge dinosaur fossil locked deep inside an Alpine glacier, university professor Stan finds a childhood dream reignited. Whatever it takes, he is determined to find the buried treasure.

But Stan is no mountaineer and must rely on the help of old friend Umberto, who brings his eccentric young assistant, Peter, and cautious mountain guide Gio. Time is short: they must complete their expedition before winter sets in. As bonds are forged and tested on the mountainside, and the lines between determination and folly are blurred, the hazardous quest for the Earth's lost creatures becomes a journey into Stan's own past.

This breathless, heartbreaking epic-in-miniature speaks to the adventurer within us all.

In the court of Elizabeth I, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, is favoured by the Queen and it is rumoured that she may choose him for her husband. But Leicester has secretly married the beautiful Amy Robsart. Fearing ruin if this were known, he keeps his lovely young wife a virtual prisoner in an old country house.

Former Detective Inspector Fin Macleod has returned to Lewis, the island of his birth, intent on restoring his parents’ derelict croft. When a body discovered in a peat bog turns out to have a DNA link to the father of his childhood sweetheart, he becomes involved in solving the mystery.  Book 2 of series.

The Magic Bottle - originally published in 1946 - is the only book for children by much-loved Golden Age crime writer Cyril Hare.

When Philip and his sister Mary opened the oddly-shaped bottle and found that they had released a Djinn, Philip, who knew his Arabian Nights, feared the worst. But the Djinn was an unexpected kind of Djinn, and his release was the start of some very unexpected adventures...

Professor James Moriarty, arch-enemy of Sherlock Holmes, has been away from London for several years realising his plans to set up crime syndicates in America. He is called back to London where his vast criminal empire has been infiltrated by the new crime boss - Idle Jack Idell. X rated, contains offensive language and explicit sex.

A collection of Updike’s short stories which cover the American experience from the Depression to the aftermath of 9/11. X rated, contains offensive language.

Theodore Honey is a shy, inconspicuous aircraft engineer whose eccentric interests in quantum mechanics and spiritualism are frowned upon in aviation circles. But when a passenger plane crashes in unexplained circumstances, Honey must convince his superiors that his unorthodox theories are correct before more lives are lost.

The world of Raymond Chandler is shrouded in secrets and half-truths as deep and deceptive as anything in his magisterial novels. This biography demonstrates Chandler's restless private life, exploring his depressive and obsessive attitude toward his craft, his infidelity, alcoholism and suicidal tendencies.

In this charming and humorous collection, clerical detective Father Brown finds his skills put to the test, and becomes embroiled in a scandal of his own. From a murdered millionaire to a drowned admiral and an aged man who ends up poisoned, Father Brown confronts all manner of human nature, from passion to superstition, and unravels the truth every time.

This is the tale of Major Sinclair Yates, an Anglo-Irish man who becomes the Resident Magistrate in a small Irish village. As he passes judgement on a range of cases and characters that would have driven Solomon to drink, he learns that in Ireland, two and two are just as likely to make five, or three, or even nothing at all...

Set in the Yukon during the great Klondike gold rush, this collection of poems is full of the wild characters, the freezing snow storms and the vast, staggering beauty of the Artic wilderness.

Augustus Cain, a wounded Mexican-American War veteran, has an uncanny skill for tracking runaway slaves. When he finds Rosetta, a proud house slave who has suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her master, the two form an intense bond. X rated, contains graphic violence and explicit sex.

Kim Philby spent his school days at Eton, and during his time at Cambridge he was recruited by the KGB. This biography follows his illustrious career at the heart of MI6. Here, over the course of two decades he passed top secret information to his Soviet spymasters and sabotaged virtually every major Anglo-American operation.

The peaceful rural life of brothers John and William Rother is shattered when John disappears and his abandoned car is found. Has he been kidnapped? Or is his disappearance more sinister - connected, perhaps, to his growing rather too friendly with his brother's wife? Superintendent Meredith is called to investigate - and begins to suspect the worst when human bones are discovered on Chalklands farmland.

Taran the Assistant Pig-Keeper is troubled by his lowly status and determined to discover the secret of his true identity. He sets out to consult the powerful witches of Morva and the mysterious Mirror of Llunet. On his quest to find the truth, Taran must journey through distant realms and undertake a series of challenging tasks, as he learns where true greatness lies.

Book 4 of 'The Chronicles of Prydain'

When Sir Henry Maxted falls from the roof of his mistress’s Paris apartment building in unexplained circumstances, his son, ex Royal Flying Corps ace James ‘Max’ Maxted resolves to find out how and why his father died. Max will soon discover that his search for the truth sucks him into the dark heart of a seemingly impenetrable mystery. Book 1 of series.