Showing results by narrator "Ben Onwukwe" in All Categories

During her lifetime Violet Paget, who wrote as Vernon Lee, was referred to as 'the greatest of modern exponents of the supernatural in fiction', and yet today she remains on the periphery of the genre. This collection of her uniquely weird short stories and dark fantasies proves why she was once considered among the best of the genre, and why she deserves to return to those ranks today.

While building a pipeline near the Okavango Delta, a contractor unearths the remains of a long-dead Bushman. Rookie Detective David 'Kubu' Bengu of Botswana CID and Scottish pathologist, Ian MacGregor, are sent to investigate, and MacGregor discovers the skeletons of eight more men. Shortly after the gruesome discoveries, the elder of a nearby village is murdered in his home. The local police are convinced it was a robbery, but Kubu isn't so sure...and neither is the strange woman who claims that an angry river spirit caused the elder's death.

Odysseus’s thrilling adventures continue in the gripping third instalment of the historical Greek fantasy, the Olympus Series. Prince Odysseus and the daemon Bria must penetrate the haunted caverns beneath Dodona, seeking a way to save their doomed nation, Achaea, from the might of Troy. The startling revelation that follows will set Odysseus on his most daunting mission yet, as he seeks to reunite the divided Achaean kingdoms before the rapacious Trojans strike.

When a Londoner retreats to the Cornish Coast for a break, he encounters a veiled woman. Could it be the ghost of intrepid explorer Miss Alice Trellings, who disappeared whilst staying at the hotel?

Share looks at how new business models are being created based on the disruptive idea of ‘sharing’. Uber, Airbnb, Skype, Alibaba, Google, Netflix and WeChat (China’s answer to Whatsapp) are all based on the sharing of information, assets and human capital, and a new and dynamic economy is already emerging. Traditional consumer and industrial models of Western capitalism are having to adapt to the ‘sharing’ concept, but few traditional organisations seem to understand the implications of the ‘share’ mindset for how they operate and compete.

Deep within the archives of time-and-motion pioneer Lillian Gilbreth lies a secret. Famous for producing solid light-tracks that captured the path of workers' movements, Gilbreth helped birth the era of mass observation and big data. Did she also, as her broken correspondence with a young Soviet physicist suggests, discover in her final days a 'perfect' movement, one that would 'change everything'?

Detective J. T. Ellington returns in this slick and fast-paced follow up to the critically acclaimed Heartman. 'It's quite simple Mr Ellington. When you find Fowler, just ask where we can find the truth.' With these words, private detective J.T. Ellington embarks on a seemingly simple case of tracking down a local GP with a dubious reputation and retrieving a set of stolen documents from him. For Ellington, however, things are rarely straightforward.

"You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit." One day, the artist Basil Hallward is painting a picture of his muse Dorian Gray with his friend Lord Henry watching. Dorian listens as Lord Henry confidentially presents his hedonistic world view, saying beauty is the only thing in life that truly matters. It makes Dorian wish that his painting would age instead of him. Not long thereafter, Dorian sees his girl perform Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and is so turned off by her bad performance that he rejects her.

Just when Inspector Daniel Jouma believes calm has returned to Mombasa, all hell breaks loose. Bodies are piling up in the morgue and Jouma's new boss wants answers. Meanwhile, Jake Moore faces up to the might of Kenya's most ruthless - and dangerous - property developer. Then a chilling secret, long thought to be buried, brings the crime-busting duo together once again.

Set along the Great Barrier Reef, ‘The Black Bell Buoy’ recalls the story of two members of the Marine Board who were sent to secure a giant buoy near a dangerous piece of coral. Only one man makes it home though as rumours of a hideous octopus abound.

Ex-Flying Squad cop Jake Moore's career was cut short by a bullet; ten years on, he runs a game fishing business that is about to go to the wall. But old habits die hard, and when cerebral Mombasa detective Daniel Jouma - seemingly the only good policeman in a city where corruption is king - asks for his help in solving a baffling murder case, he cannot help but become involved.

Reported to be an account of a real haunting experienced by the author at a house in Rye, this story features fleeting glimpses of an apparition in a walled garden.

Fifteen-year-old Dimkpa dreams of the day his father will be made village head. He will return to school and maybe even go on to university; his mother will no longer have to break her back foraging wild food to sell at market; they will have the money to build a fine tomb for his aunt Okike; and his family's status as ohu ma, the lowest Igbo caste, won't matter anymore. But when his father is passed over for a younger man, breaking tradition, Dimkpa realizes that he must make his own fate.

‘A Wicked Voice’ reuses the theme of music from beyond the grave from Vernon Lee’s first ghost story, ‘Winthrop’s Adventure’. Here, young composer Magnus is writing an opera, determined to go against the conventions of his predecessors, but he soon finds himself haunted by a voice beyond the grave which overpowers him and stops him writing.

Best mates Karl and Abu are both 17 and live near King's Cross. It's 2011 and racial tensions are set to explode across London. Abu is infatuated with gorgeous classmate Nalini but dares not speak to her. Meanwhile, Karl is the target of the local "wannabe" thugs just for being different. When Karl finds out his father lives in Nigeria, he decides that Port Harcourt is the best place to escape the sound and fury of London, and connect with a Dad he's never known. Rejected on arrival, Karl befriends Nakale, an activist who wants to expose ecocide....

1970, Bristol. What's buried doesn't always stay buried. It's a new decade, and J.T. Ellington has taken himself out of the investigation game. But when an old friend asks him to help a doctor whose son disappeared hours after his wedding, J.T.'s commitment to a life lived under the radar is tested. His quest hurls him back into the underworld he's worked so hard to leave behind. Charred remains in a churchyard, the savage beating of a Hindu priest and a series of cold-blooded threats are stark warnings to J.T. and to everyone he holds dear.

Mining diamonds is a lucrative business, but it soon proves itself deadly. Shortly after Kubu joins the CID, the richest diamond mine in the world is robbed of 100,000 carats of diamonds in transit. The robbery is well-executed and brutal. Police immediately suspect an inside job, but there is no evidence of who it could be.

In this short story, Captain Chisholm’s pride and joy, The Swordfish, is taken from him by a mutinous crew. But the sea seems to take matters into its own hands to reunite the old captain with his beloved ship.

St Pauls, Bristol, 1980. Joseph Tremaine Ellington, now 57 years old, has long abandoned his former career as an enquiry agent for the safety of teaching. But his old life draws him back. One of the very few lights from Ellington’s dark and violent past has flickered out. His fiancée, Ruth Castle, is dead - leaving him again heartbroken and alone to bring up his 15-year-old niece, Chloe. Ellington’s days are long and lonely, his nights tormented by old ghosts.

As Roger Lytollis travels Britain, he encounters a man at Liverpool's Beatles statue convinced that Rod Stewart was in the Fab Four. In Edinburgh, he walks into a row over Greyfriars Bobby's nose, and in Glasgow, learns why the duke of Wellington wears a traffic cone on his head. London brings a controversial nude statue and some hard truths about racism. On a Pedestal is the first book to examine public statues around the nation.