Death at Hallowtide (Quill and Thornapple #1)

“What’s at the back of the field?” I asked. “Beyond the stream? Where the railing is?” Dermot turned to follow my pointing finger, and smiled. “That,” he said, “is your poison garden.”

Corrbofinn. A place where things are… different. Where Jessica Quill has inherited a house and land. And where she has just become the number one suspect in the murder of local wide boy Tony Millar.

Jessica’s life has entered uncharted waters. A job she hates, a cheating partner, her unexpected inheritance, and the final straw: tripping over a corpse in the rain when she comes to rural Ireland to arrange the sale of her property.

But Herne’s Acre is no ordinary place. It’s a key crossing-point on the borderlands between the mortal world and the otherworlds of the sidhe. And now it is to be sold by a stranger unfamiliar with the true nature of Corrbofinn, a source of considerable anxiety for Thornapple, that very civil servant of the Borderlands Commission.

Bewildered, grumpy, and armed only with knowledge of toxic plants and classic detective stories, Jessica pursues her own inquiries to clear her name. Corrbofinn yields some of its mysteries along with new friends—human, canine, and… Well. You know.

Increasingly conflicted, Jessica’s sensible self squares off against her dreams of a different life. But she makes enemies, too, leading to a deadly showdown on Hallowe’en, when the borders between worlds are at their most fluid and uncanny.

Hollowmen

“It seems to me—and I no longer claim objective recall—that the morning on which I first arrived in Quettopolis looked much like this morning just breaking. One year ago. I was right at least that it was my last job.”

The Moufet Institute’s mission is to protect endangered lepidoptera, but its experts are becoming bystanders, sidelined by the ‘Players’ and their pursuit of corporate self-perpetuation. Cuffe, recruited to create the rhetoric to underpin a new corporate vision, finds her initial confidence eroded by the grotesqueries of the Institute and its environment—the punitive process with its absent defendant, the disregarded but omnipotent Registry, the quarterly Hunt, the Forest as it re-asserts itself.

Then the Institute is galvanised by the discovery of a breeding pair of a rare moth species in a country in the throes of a military coup. The Institute in turn is riven by competing ambitions—the scientific specialists trying to save the moths, the Players trying to save the goose that lays the golden eggs. Meanwhile, no-one has been paying enough attention to what is happening in the basement…

Hollowmen is an intricate and unsettling work, its shifting, interleaved narratives by turns ironic, lyrical, witty, and savage.

Fluctuation in Disorder

An encounter with an alien enemy. A strange epiphany in a fog-bound park. A collector of the names of the dead faces their own death. Rebel divinities respond to the prayers of despairing creation for deliverance. Bureaucrats find their grip on reality dissolving in odd ways.

In these ten finely crafted and unsettling stories, Maxwell’s slipstream style interweaves strands of naturalism, science fantasy, and the experimental irreal, illuminated by sharp flashes of wit and language of lyrical precision. Many of the characters exist in a state of slippage, alienated from the world they thought they knew by an encounter with something that is indifferent to them, but to which they cannot remain indifferent.

More than twenty years separate the earliest and the most recent of the stories in this collection, but certain persistent preoccupations provide loose thematic links—environmental crime and retribution; the ways, both overt and insidious, in which institutions can corrupt or sacrifice those within them; the interpretations and recording of past events by unreliable narrators; and the pervasive, irreducible weirdness of existence.

And the WIldness (Flux Avellana #1)

“So the actual reason I was calling you is because—get this—I am not going to Prague this summer at all. Surprise! Thanks, Villa. Just ruin my life for me.”

Villa Grace is in disgrace. Her expulsion from school has ruined the prospect of a family holiday in imperial Prague, where her mother is organising a conference. Two of her three siblings are barely speaking to her, as all four face into a ‘holiday’ sweltering on Cobwell Farm in the back of beyond of drought-stricken Hibernia.

But the power-hungry St. Maur Ker family has breached the border between mortal and sídh for their own gain. Cobwell, on the threshold of myth, is about to become the centre of a battle between older, wilder forces and the technomantic ambitions of one of the empire’s great aristo–corporate clans.

Caught up in this conflict, the children are forced to face up to the dark underbelly of their parents’ corporate environment, and to confront their own conflicting ambitions and loyalties.

Good Red Herring (Muinbeo Chronicles #1)

“Some of these stories really started decades, generations, ago, and now come to their close. New things begin to arise from the past, like phoenix feathers separating from the flame. The winding down of the old stories and the starting of the new arose from a death; a murder, if you will believe such wickedness. We warn you. We are the last—eh—people to pretend that Muinbeo is some kind of Island of the Blessed.”

Those enigmatic entities, the Storytellers of Muinbeo, know that History has something waiting in the wings. To set the scene for their audience, they relate a gripping tale about a death and its consequences.

When her mentor is bitten by a rogue werewolf and “joins our hairy brethren howling at the moon,” apprentice detective Salmon Farsade is assigned to Hal McCabe, Detective Chief-Inspector and vampire, just in time for a murder.

Fen Maguire has been stabbed, throwing the normally peaceful community of Ballinpooka into shock. The investigation into her death lifts the lid on more than just the name of her killer: political corruption, Outland conspiracy, academic deceit, and plain old-fashioned greed. A second murder follows: the clock is ticking, and as they seek a key to unlock the truth, the detectives are both helped and hindered by the various human and not-so-human beings that populate Muinbeo.

A Wild Goose Hunt (Muinbeo Chronicles #2)

“You did not tell the Abbess a single lie,” Diamond said, “but you didn’t tell her the truth.”

As a good Sombrist, Hunter Sessaire is aware that not only lying, but also curiosity, is very much frowned upon by his community. As an apprentice archivist, he cannot resist the temptation to try to puzzle out how a manuscript could have been stolen from the room within the Sombrists’ stronghold known as the Labyrinth. A room that opens only during a planetary alignment. An alignment that has not yet taken place.

But this is not the only enigma abroad in Muinbeo this winter. Seemingly disparate occurrences remain opaque even to those normally in the know, such as Detective Chief Inspector Hal McCabe, scratching his head over the inexplicable vanishing of his apprentice, Salmon Farsade, and the dramatic and destructive theft of an ancient silver hand from the local school museum.

The boundaries of Muinbeo, carefully managed to keep the Outland and its machinations by and large outside where they belong, have become a bit more porous than McCabe would like, not least when he begins to suspect that some of the uncanny events may have their roots in a controversial Outland archaeological dig in Aegypt… Once again we are led into a maze of mystery by those not entirely reliable narrators, the Storytellers, in this enthralling sequel to Good Red Herring.

If Our Crops Fail, We Fail – Farming, Climate Change and how you can make a difference

In spite of all the technology of the modern world, we live in societies that are still fundamentally agrarian. If climate change makes agriculture all but impossible in large areas of the world there is a widespread risk of famine and solely relying on international trade to cover any shortfalls is unlikely to be a sound strategy to resolve this. Active engagement with the issue across society will be required to help mitigate the effects.

If Our Crops Fail, We Fail – Farming, Climate Change and how you can make a difference outlines what the nature of the issues facing agriculture from climate change are, which potential solutions are likely to have merit and practical steps we can take as individuals, communities and nations to help address the issue.

Nero – The Last Caesar

Born to Agrippina, sister of “Caligula”, Nero became heir to the Roman Empire – in exchange for his childhood. At 14 he addressed the Senate, at 15 presided over major court cases, and at 16 became Emperor of Rome.

Dominated by his mother, controlled by the Senate and manipulated by his Commander, Nero fought to retain his socialist ideals, only to be worn down and broken by the politics of Rome.

Adored by the people, revered by foreign statesmen, but loathed by his peers, Nero was driven to suicide at the age of 30. His reputation lives on, epitomising the wealth and decadence of ancient Rome. But history is written by the winners…

A modern story set in an ancient world, this is the real Nero, told in his own words and based entirely on fact. Prepare to be surprised.

Tales Of The Turf & Other Worlds

Welcome to the unique world of The Turf, where the Sport of Kings has been wholeheartedly embraced by a gaggle o giggly schoolgirls who, together with a collection of entertaining racecourse characters, will introduce the reader to the delights, and sometimes darker side, of horseracing.

In an Other World from horseracing we meet such diverse characters as vampires, popstars and serial killers, all of whom are guaranteed to raise a laugh, and possibly an eyebrow, along the way. This largely humorous collection of short stories makes an ideal bedside book or travelling companion, one that you will want to dip back into again and again.

Gala Day

Pete Allen is a jockey desperate to regain the glory days of his youth and it seems young trainer Sebastian Churchill can offer him the chance he needs.

But does that chance come with a price tag?

And can Pete ultimately afford the cost?