All My Novels

READ MY NOVELS FREE ONLINE

I just write for fun, and I do hope you’ll get some enjoyment from my novels. They are all free to read online. There are modern novels (social comedies with a dash of romance), Regency novels, a modern fairy tale, and several SF volumes.

    Click on the links below (highlighted in blue) to find the full texts.

If you like Angst, 21st-century agonised soul-searching, darkly traumatic tales of drug-addicted street life, or piercing sagas of authentically ethnic characters struggling with deprived and brutal conditions that inevitably strangle their creativity, thee stories are not for you. My modern novels take a light-hearted look at late 20th-early 21st century life, with most of the characters coming from very ordinary middle-class Australian and New Zealand suburbia, and leading, on the whole, pretty ordinary lives, with the usual helping of highs and lows, opportunities and restrictions. You could, I guess, call them all social comedies which use a love story as a narrative device.

The Puriri Chronicles are a group of stories which take place in Puriri County, a fictional New Zealand district north of Auckland whose small, semi-rural towns are rapidly being overtaken by sprawling suburbia and its values as the 20th century nears its end. Each novel is complete in itself, with a new set of characters, but in each we meet Polly and Jake from the first novel again, and as the chronicles proceed, many of the other characters also reappear:

The Pohutukawa Bay Affair: When Polly meets Jake no-one expects it to go anywhere. Well—the lady lecturer and the self-made millionaire? Jake Carrano has a chequered history in both his personal and his business life, rumoured bribes to Arabs being perhaps the least of it; he’s agin the government and the trade unions as well; and he’s pushing fifty. Polly Mitchell, who teaches linguistics at the university, is more or less the antithesis of everything he believes in. Except that she’s very, very pretty! But for a while things seem to go along swimmingly. Then a business rival is murdered on Jake’s patio, and everything goes pear-shaped… The two lovers, the detective on the case, Jake’s ex, her second husband and stepson, Polly’s academic colleagues, and even a local motel owner are radically affected by the repercussions of the murder.

The Members of the Institute: a tale of the fates of those involved with the new Pacific Institute of Political Studies in Puriri township. Most of the academic staff are recruited from overseas but they all, newcomers or New Zealanders alike, have to cope not only with new jobs in a new environment, but with all the vicissitudes of life itself: rotten marriages, broken relationships, brand-new relationships, past mistakes, and the usual complement of births, deaths and marriages. Although told with a light touch, this is in many ways a study of human vulnerability, as the members of the Institute come to terms with their new lives.

The Antipodean Dream: As the visiting celebs fated to star in a New Zealand university drama club’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream grapple with a strange new environment, some of the locals find themselves more involved than they ever wanted or intended to be with the production and its leading players. And ditto for the stars, for whom there are some life-changing shocks in store, as new personalities and new circumstances gradually impinge and they discover they are out of their comfort zone as mere visiting firemen, and face to face with reality.

The American Refugee follows Sol Winkelmann’s struggles to find his feet in a new country as he determinedly emigrates to New Zealand in spite of warnings about mid-life crisis and the huge change it will be from life in Florida. The background of scruffy Blossom Avenue in an obscure rural area of North Auckland, with its “kids and ducks” lifestyle and its population of struggling artists and perennially broke schoolteachers, contrasts strongly with the choice suburb and the circle of well-off professionals frequented by the lady who is one of the reasons why Sol decides to emigrate… Conflicts and complications ensue, as Sol and this up-market lady find they’re also attracted to other people. And the inhabitants of Blossom Av’? As usual, they just get on with it.

The Conquest Of Carter’s Bay is set against the impact in the late 1990s of a new university, privately funded by Sir Jake Carrano, on a rundown, semi-rural area at the far edge of Puriri County. Will the university bring prosperity to the region, or will it merely despoil the environment? Opinions are divided, especially as it’s set up as a cash-generating corporate entity designed to bring in overseas exchange. Alan Kincaid, its CEO (“Vice-Chancellor” in older, staider institutions) is there to further his career, seeing his job as a stepping-stone to greater things; the academics and support staff have varied motives, personal or professional or both. But one thing is sure: scruffy little Carter’s Bay has had its chips. Those who know Kincaid from way back are also sure that nothing is going to change his icy personality. And his distant cousin Catherine Burchett is miserably sure that he’s going to grab the family farm off her. But life is never predictable…

Another Country, the final volume of the Puriri Chronicles, brings us into the 21st century to follow Polly Carrano’s progress when she’s left a widow after twenty-two years of marriage to the billionaire Jake Carrano. People cope with such crises—or don’t cope—in different ways. Polly more or less copes. Not all of her family and friends understand when she donates the Carrano mansion for a children’s hospital and goes to live in a tiny beach house miles up an obscure inlet in North Auckland—but she came from an ordinary Kiwi farming family and was never comfortable with Jake’s lavish lifestyle. According to her old friend Jan Harper, Polly’s “the sort that needs a man.” Yes, well, taking up with a succession of them is one way for a still-pretty woman to cope. But none of them seem to be able to take the combination of femininity and intellectual detachment that’s always typified her. Another Country is a light-hearted but sympathetic account of Polly’s search for another life, a life that really suits her.

These stories all revolve around Australian characters. The first series, however, “The Captain’s Daughter” Quartet, is set mainly in England, with backgrounds of a British TV series in the making and a country village. When the series turns out to be a great success, the scene moves to Australia for the filming of the movie based on it, and a new cast of characters and a setting in the hills of New South Wales are introduced.

The Captain’s Daughter centres round a British television series in production. Possibly for anyone else a fellowship at London University entailing a sociological study of the dynamics of a workplace group would not result in a masquerade as “Lily Rose Rayne”, the 21st-century Marilyn Monroe, darling of the tabloids, and singing, tap-dancing telly actress—but Rosie Marshall from Sydney isn’t anyone else! In the intervals of filming The Captain’s Daughter, a silly saga of the Royal Navy flying the flag in the ’50s, the unquenchable Rosie stumbles from crisis to crisis, trying to conceal that the fact that she’s actually doing the telly stuff for her research, falling apparently hopelessly for a dishy but much older and very up-market real Royal Navy captain, falling into bed with a dishy British actor…

The Captain’s Wife: Now married, Rosie’s idea is that she’ll give up the TV stuff—not least because she’s pregnant. She’s got more than enough on her plate, with a big sociological research project to finish off and another one in the pipeline. But it’s a case of the best-laid plans, as Rosie plunges herself into finding someone to take over her television rôle in The Captain’s Daughter, and copes with the ups and downs of married life – “a lot harder than in your up-yourself carefree bachelor-girl days you ever imagined it was gonna be. I mean, three days back from your honeymoon and barely over the jet-lag when his new orders arrive?” And then there’s the baby, due in September. September 2001…

The Captain’s Daughter Downunder, the third in “The Captain’s Daughter” series, centres round Rosie’s cousin Dot Mallory. Bright, sensible Dot has been leading an ordinary Aussie suburban life, with a good job in IT. She’s come through a fair bit, but things are going well. But when the movie company arrives in Australia to film The Captain’s Daughter, everything changes, not just for those directly involved. The more so as Rosie, now famous as “Lily Rose Rayne”, is the star, and Dot’s a dead ringer for her, and David Walsingham, the sardonic composer she met 5 years back and decided never to think about again, is doing the music for the movie.

Summer’s Lease: A Story of the Captain’s Cousins: In a tale of life, love, and mishaps, Colin Haworth, invalided out of the British Army after being shot up in Iraq, plunges himself into setting up a crafts enterprise in a Hampshire village, alternately hindered and helped by villagers and in-comers alike. Alongside some hilarious scenes of village life and the idiocies of a new TV production in which two of Rosie’s Aussie cousins are involved (The Captain’s Daughter: The New Generation), there are disappointments as well as successes, and deaths and disasters as well as weddings and new beginnings.

It’s early in the 21st century, and The Lallapinda Revenge takes us from Outback South Australia to Sydney suburbia, over to Europe, and back to South Australia. It introduces the temp agency, RightSmart, which will reappear in the Australian novels in “The Ecolodges” series:

The Lallapinda Revenge: Hugo Kent, the CEO of the big multinational, KRP, is “an innately fastidious man” who for many years has avoided extra-marital relationships. That is, until he meets the blonde, curvaceous and unscrupulous “Kitten” Manning. The four Manning sisters from Sydney have vowed revenge on those responsible for their grandfather’s losing Lallapinda, a large South Australian outback cattle station, and KRP owns the bank that foreclosed on him. In this light-hearted Aussie take on How To Marry a Millionaire, reality gradually impinges on the girls’ schemes, and the course of the great revenge does not run smooth. As the plot unfolds a bright and not always flattering light is shone on bourgeois Australian life in the first decade of the 21st century.

This series of modern social comedies takes as its background some environmentally-friendly hospitality establishments in Australia and New Zealand.

The Project Manager is a spin-off from The Captain’s Daughter quartet, and the prequel to “The Ecolodges” series. When go-getting Hill Tarlington gets out of the British Army he drifts for a bit, at one point heading up a war-gaming course for execs on the Yorkshire moors, but eventually takes a job as project manager with YDI, a large hospitality concern which specialises in converting old country houses into up-market hotels but is also getting into the ecolodge market. The job goes well but when he bumps into the unimpressionable Hattie Perkins, whom he stupidly lost track of back in the war-gaming days, the course of true love definitely doesn’t run smooth. For one thing, Hill’s family is posh and she’s an unpretentious Aussie. For another thing, who, exactly, is Hattie Perkins…? There are a lot of trials as Hill knuckles down to the Hattie project—a Gulf Syndrome scare, for one—but a lot of laughs, too.

The first of the New Zealand ecolodge stories takes us to New Zealand’s central North Island, where Hill Tarlington’s preliminary investigation of an ecolodge site in The Project Manager bears fruit. It picks up the story around the time that his British firm, YDI, is looking for an architect:

The Ecolodges By The Lake: The original ecolodge by New Zealand’s Lake Taupo is Pete McLeod’s and Jan Harper’s Taupo Shores Ecolodge, a converted fishing lodge which is really just a comfortable motel under a trendy name; but YDI is planning a new ecolodge for further round the lake. The architect who is hired for the new, very exclusive Fern Gully Ecolodge is Max Throgmorton, the son of the local Jackson family’s up-market English cousin Moyra. Max falls for one of the Jackson girls and things are looking good, and then the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami strikes, resulting in an emergency at a neighbouring permaculture venture for Pete and Jan to deal with and some surprising consequences for both the Jacksons and the Throgmortons.

Summer Season continues the story of Taupo Shores Ecolodge, as the elderly Pete McLeod’s daughters from his first marriage, Jayne and Libby, both now in their forties, arrive from Brisbane to spend the Christmas holidays. When two well-off unattached men of the right age rent one of the very up-market houses on the far side of the big lake for the summer, more than one person makes the comparison with Pride and Prejudice. But although pleasant, unassuming Andrew does seem right for the sweet-natured widowed Jayne, there’s considerable doubt as to whether tall, dark, dashing Aidan is going to be Libby’s Darcy… Everybody’s weaknesses are more than revealed, if some strengths are, too, as the ecolodge undergoes a crisis that eventually results in the lesson that most mere human beings are pretty fallible and need to be cut some slack.

The Australian ecolodge stories move the setting to obscure Potters Inlet, a tiny finger of the sea winding inland for miles from the coast of New South Wales.

The Road To Blue Gums: Jack Jackson’s a jobbing builder from New Zealand with a failed marriage and a failed business, and Gil Sotherland’s a former British Army officer with a collapsed lung and a wonky shoulder—but they both end up in Potters Road, three hours’ drive out of Sydney over bad back roads. Running along the crest of a tiny peninsula, the road ends in magnificent views eastwards down narrow Potters Inlet and northwest to the endless blue ranges of the Great Dividing Range. All it contains, scattered amongst the sparse native bush of the area, is an embryo B&B and a couple of ancient bungalows—but because of Gil and Jack, Blue Gums Ecolodge will eventually rise there. And they themselves will find new interests, new jobs, and new loves in Potters Road. The Road To Blue Gums continues the story of RightSmart, the temp agency first encountered in The Lallapinda Revenge, as Jack goes job-hunting in Sydney. At the same time we find out what has become of some of the characters from The Captain’s Daughter Downunder, now settled in Potters Road.

Temps: The unquenchable Iain Ross—once described by a British Army superior as “insubordinate, subversive, individualist, undisciplined, lacking due respect for authority, and incapable of functioning as part of a team”—gradually comes to terms with life, love and the pursuit of suburban happiness after his Army career fizzles out ingloriously, the lovely Veronica rejects him, and his ex-Russian mafia stepfather packs him off to a new start in Australia. We get a sometimes hilarious, sometimes horrifying, sometimes sympathetic look at the modern Aussie way of life, as Iain signs on with RightSmart, a small Sydney employment agency, and takes on temp jobs ranging from “green frogging” for a suburban garden centre promotion, to butlering at the exclusive Blue Gums Ecolodge. Meanwhile, Veronica decides to try her luck as a temp in Australia… Temps continues the story of the firm of RightSmart and its personnel, first encountered in The Lallapinda Revenge, and of Blue Gums Ecolodge in Potters Road. Whether Iain will opt to throw in his lot permanently with either of them remains to be seen.

One of the themes from Temps is picked up in the other Australian novels, which all show us typical Aussie 21st-century suburbia—the lifestyle of most of the population, never mind the myth of the “wide brown land”.

The Lalla Effect: In real life a fairytale encounter doesn’t always have a happy ending. So in 1994 when Lalla Holcroft, a pretty but unpretentious New Zealander with little self-confidence and (QED), a bossy mother, arrives in Canberra and is taken for a different Miss Holcroft altogether by Peter Sale, a rich English businessman who isn’t a martinet but is used to expecting to get his own way, their affaire does not end well. Ten years down the track Lalla, far more sure of herself, is working in the Cook Islands at a luxury hotel, and this is when Peter catches up with her and is jolted out of his bleak, if comfortable, bachelor existence. As the story continues into the 21st century and the scene moves to Australia, we find out whether Lalla will be the making of him.

The Trials Of Harriet Harrison: At forty-one Harriet’s had more than time enough to discover that there are no kindred spirits in the entire world. Certainly not in Australia, where she’s fated to live. A brief encounter with a Lord Peter Wimsey lookalike during a trip to Oxford doesn’t turn out well. She’s scarcely back home when her father dies and her mother comes down with Alzheimer’s. Her sister and brother-in-law are decent people, but snowed under with mortgages, teenagers, and two jobs. So Harriet’s the one who has to cope, a very square peg in an uncomfortably round hole. Her varied misadventures, not least with assorted males who judge her not unattractive dark-haired person by its cover, provide some hilarious vignettes of the suburban wilderness that is modern Australian life. To add to the laughs, the tale is illustrated by an appropriate assortment of revered Aussie icons, ranging from the famous “Big” things to the even more famous lamingtons.

Dead Ringers: A Tale Of Trethewin: Art fakes, arson, and aliases. Not what mild-mannered Alex Cartwright expects, when he buys the old Trethewin training stables, way out on the far outskirts of the Adelaide Hills. The Trethewin property includes a large stone house that Alex isn’t interested in, a boutique winery that was the previous owner’s heavily subsidised hobby, and a lovely, frank, sunny-natured young woman named Cassie—not to mention her ubiquitous little nephew. Alex’s life is back in England with the successful air freight company started by his late grandfather and he has no intention of staying longer than is necessary to see if the stables can be resurrected… Life is seldom so cut had dried, as he discovers. The stable block being burned to the ground is the least of it. A knife-toting old enemy resurfaces and Alex, who freely admits he’s no hero, more than has his hands full.

The Frazer Inheritance consists of two novels about the heirs to a tontine, an agreement whereby the last survivor of those who put their money into the pot takes all; this tontine is rather different, in that eighty percent of the original investment and whatever has accrued from it is to go to the last survivor’s legal heirs. In this instance, the Muller siblings from Adelaide, Australia: Linnet (a plant geneticist), Rose (a suburban housewife), Jimmy (an architecture student) and “Buffy” (Barbara, a would-be model).

Part 1: Adelaide’s Daughters: It’s over 70 years since the tontine was drawn up: some investments have been lost and some frankly embezzled, so the inheritance seems rather problematic. A family crisis intervenes, but then the Mullers discover that 80% of the hugely rich French company, ULR, should be theirs… By turns comic, tragic, and suspenseful, the narrative follows the fates of Linnet and Rose as they exchange humdrum middle-class Australia for French country-house life and Parisian chic, and as their lives become entangled with those of the richissime Bellecourt family who own ULR. Some of the Bellecourts are generous and honourable. Some aren’t. When the sisters have to cope not only with new lives and new loves in a strange new environment but with envy, spite and back-stabbing, it’s not easy.

Part 2: La Barbara’s Revenge: coming soon!

The “Regency” novels, set during the two decades after Waterloo, are comedies of manners, intended as pure fun—but I hope you’ll find the characters are rather more than cardboard cut-outs. The titles are listed here in chronological order.

The Spanish Cousins: In the wake of Waterloo, when Wellington, though recognising his services in an undercover position, advises Sir Harry Ainsley not to re-settle back in England, Sir Harry and his Spanish wife decide instead to send their children home. Paul may open up Ainsley Manor and the town house, and Gaetana may be brought out by his Cousin Patty Maddern—their “Tia Patty”—with her own three elder girls! The young Ainsleys, brought up on the Continent, are not thrilled at this prospect, but Mrs Maddern, after the initial shock, is aux anges and enters with horrid keenness into her rôle of chaperone and hostess, hatching a thousand matrimonial schemes… Not all of which are destined to come to fruition!

The Ogilvie Connection: If the Parker girls had never met their Ogilvie cousins, none of it would ever have happened—such was certainly to be Mrs Parker’s happy conclusion. The scene ranges from humble beginnings in a country parish and a girls’ school to the fashionable London Season, with a downriver adventure on barges, yachting in the English Channel, and a Continental tour. Mishaps and misunderstandings ensue, as the Parker and Ogilvie girls’ lives intersect with those of the saturnine Aden Tarlington, the dashing Sir Noël Amory, his uncle Colonel Amory, the retired Commander Carey, R.N., young Lord Lavery and his twin brother, and, not least, the eccentric zoologist Dr Fairbrother with his houseful of parrots and monkeys. But Henrietta Parker, dîte “Henry”, and Pansy Ogilvie return from the Continent considerably more mature and inclined to look more kindly upon their would-be suitors—so perhaps, in the end, Mrs Parker is right!

The Portuguese Widow follows the misadventures of charming, half-Portuguese Nan Baldaya Benedict, twice widowed at barely 21 years of age. Regency Bath is taken aback by Nan’s cosmopolitan household: the retinue of faithful Indian ayahs and bhais, and the French chef. Then, horrors! Her late mother’s scandalous history is raked up. A move to London results in the fortune hunters discovering her nabob’s fortune, the grandes dames looking down their noses at her, and an encounter with a notorious rake. Proper English ladies have nothing to do with theatrical persons, but the warm-hearted Nan plunges herself into a theatrical venture led by the stout and fruity-voiced Mr Perseus Brentwood and the lugubrious Mr Emmanuel Everett. Few of these encounters are likely to do anything for the reputation of a lady anxious to establish herself creditably. And, of course, there’s the unfortunate episode of the duel…

Raffaella: The half-Italian Raffaella dalla Rovere—she who was once scruffy little Raffy Andrews—arrives in England with no money and a large cat, Giampaolo dalla Rovere, the greatest ratter in all of the Romagna. Widowed very young, her only advantages are her dark-haired good looks and her unquenchably optimistic disposition. This is the story of how the indomitable Raffaella, in spite of the disadvantages of a notorious mother and no fortune, manages to cut a dash in London Society, holding her own amidst the grandes dames and the cronies of Wellington himself, and of her eventual, and somewhat unexpected fate—but not until after a second marriage which horrifies her conventional English relations.

The Patchwork Parasol: George IV is on the throne, but Regency attitudes still prevail. Unless the Earl of Sleyven should condescend to hold an open day for the county, very minor gentry like the Burdens of Bluebell Dell have no contact with the Maunsleigh estate. That is, until Jarvis Wynton, the new earl, back in England after long service in the Indian Army, bestows a casual kiss on a pretty auburn-haired country lass who’s trying to reach a patched parasol which has been blown into a tree. The “lass” turns out to be the respectable Miss Burden. Sparks fly as two determined and stubborn personalities collide. Many obstacles have to be overcome before he will admit she is the woman for him and she will admit she is love with him. The reappearance of an old flame who is out to get Jarvis back looks like ruining everything—until a far greater catch appears on the scene, and the “Russian intrigue” results in a hilarious victory for Miss Burden’s supporters, as the actors playing the Russians throw themselves into the masquerade with a will. Nevertheless, there are no easy solutions in life, as “Midge” Burden and Jarvis Wynton discover.

The Old Chip Hat: In a tale of masquerades, deception and play-acting, almost no-one is quite what they seem, from a group of London theatricals with their stage names to other, more serious double identities. Are Peebles the meek clerk, the cheery working-class Bert Dinwoody, the solid retired merchant Mr French, and even that rich land-owner, Lord Sare himself, who they appear to be? Is bright, talented little Miss Martin merely playing a rôle, as she joins the actors’ company on a summer tour of southern England? Gradually the three Martin siblings’ scheme to establish themselves creditably in the stuffy upper-class society of England in the 1820s unravels, amidst plot and counter-plot, and masquerade upon masquerade.

Tamasha, or The Great Tamasha Cookbook & Family History: A family saga of the British Raj, Anglo-India, Regency period, with contemporary Indian and English recipes, diaries and letters—love, intrigue, and delicious food! The “Tamasha” project starts in South Australia around 2010, when the Widdop sisters’ aunt remembers an old tin trunk in the garage. The discovery in it of the beginnings of a family history with old letters, a diary, and lots of old recipes sets them off on an historical quest which results in Tamasha, the story of their Regency forebears, Ponsonby Sahib and the four Lucas sisters, Tess, Tonie, Josie and Tiddy. We see three generations of the family, the scene switching from 21st-century Adelaide to India and England in the early 19th century, as the Lucas sisters grow up, and to England 30-plus years later, circa 1867, as the sisters, now elderly ladies, recount their family history and a granddaughter writes it down as the story Our India Days, on which the Widdop sisters from Adelaide largely base their narrative.

Peg Buffitt: When the two households of the conventional Beresfords and the eccentric, harum-scarum Buffitts collide in the innocent person of Peg Buffitt, dispatched to spend the fashionable Season with her mother’s “Cousin B.” in London, nothing goes as anticipated. For one thing, Mrs Buffitt is a year late in accepting the invitation and Mrs Beresford has left to spend a year abroad. Complications ensue, some hilarious, some alarming, and some even salutary, as the dashing Corinthian Jack Beresford, with the help of his meek Aunt Sissy and the eager co-operation of the fashionable Lady Stamforth, the erstwhile “Portuguese Widow”, becomes the pretty but independent-minded Peg’s unwilling host. A host of minor characters (some of whom we’ve met in the previous Regency stories), ranging from the unscrupulous master of the artistic pastiche, Mr Frederick Greenstreet, to the London fashionables and the haughty grandes dames who rule the roost at Almack’s, combine in a colourful and amusing evocation of 1820s England.

The Fortunate Formbys: The Formbys are generally acknowledged to be one of the fortunate families of tiny Waddington-on-Sea. Joe Formby, that prosperous printer and bookbinder, has four pretty, bright grown-up daughters and two sturdy sons. With no pretensions to gentility, the Formbys are happy in humble New Short Street. By the year 1830, however, things begin to change: the dashing Luís Ainsley arrives from Spain and settles in the district, the Formbys are taken up by a wealthy cousin who’s gone up in the world… But a family tragedy and a lot of prejudice need to be overcome before the Formbys can once again be considered fortunate. Alongside the scenes of the Formbys’ sometimes hilarious, sometime turbulent family life, we also follow the fates of Luís Ainsley and his father Sir Harry from The Spanish Cousins, and of Richard (Dicky) Baldaya and his sister Amrita from The Portuguese Widow, and meet again the charming Nan, the “P.W.” herself.

Isabella Down To Earth: Once Oberon, King of the Fairies, makes the mistake of introducing his daughter Isabella to the mortal realm, she develops a taste for mortal men. Ben is the man in question, a young merchant banker from New York, NY, not given to fantasies of any sort and no believer in fairies. The Fairy Land, which operates on fairy logic, comes into collision with the realities, some good, some bad, some simply hilarious, of modern urban life as we mortals know it—from Starbucks and Grand Central to the Bonn tower blocks by way of the Tube, the panto and the London Eye, and back to the wizards of Wall Street. Complications arise: Ben blots his copybook; Isabella’s back home but so miserable that primroses sprout from her tears. Merlin’s merely doddery, Puck’s merely irritating, Grimalkin hasn’t the power to help, Oberon’s thunderous… Perhaps the Faerie Queen, Titania, Queen of All the Fairies, Great Majesty, Queen Mab, will sort it out! Nobody puts much faith in that one, given her past record. How will Ben and Isabella ever live happily ever after?

    This modern fairy tale is at once a celebration and a critique of the way we live now. Seen through fairy eyes, some of our urban commonplaces take on quite a new shine. To a fairy, the dubious modern treats of muffins, donuts, Oreos, and hamburgers, with or without gherkins, all have a certain appeal. Coffee hits, trendy ethnic restaurants, underground railways, all look different in a fairy perspective. As do the big urban centres like London, New York, Paris and Bonn and their great urban icons. “Starbucks” strikes as magical; London’s “pickle” is puzzling. The Empire State? We-ell, fairies can fly. And some of the old tales that we’ve known since our childhood turn out to be not what we expect. They were, after all, written down by mortals. Fairy logic sees them rather differently. Even Father Christmas, in his Realm of Snow, isn’t quite how we envisage Santa. Or take the Danish icon of icons, in Copenhagen: the Fairy Isabella will have to summon all her strength to break the spell that holds the little mermaid captive in her bronze prison.

The SCIENCE FICTION novels combine fun and adventure as a trio of space traders hyper round the two galaxies and then head off to the third.

Tales From The Third Moon: Stuck on the third moon of Pkqwrd waiting for his ship to be re-blobbed, the xathpyroid BrTl meets a friendly Thwurbullerian affine who encourages the beings they encounter to tell stories to while the time away. There are folk tales, hunting ballads, ancient legends, romances, adventure stories… As the series of travellers’ tales proceeds, the audience finds aspects of them oddly familiar. Perhaps, as Philosopher P’ll Vt Mgly-w’llah of Whtyll once remarked, “There is nothing new in the Known Universe,” after all. As for how true they might be… The female mammalian humanoid, Dohra, tells an exciting romantic adventure about her mission to Gr’mmeaya disguised as a candidate for the ruler’s hareem, but did any of it really happen? BrTl’s Captain, Jhl Smt Wong, a humanoid, is off on a Wavey-Spacey secondment to a diplo junket. If only she’d hurry up and get here, maybe she could sort out fact from fiction! Not to say, with her mind-powers, stop that plasmo-blasted Thwurbullerian in its tracks before something disastrous happens!

Two Galaxies Lost Cause: The space traders’ mission to Old Rthfrdia for Fleet Commander Shank’yar Vt R’aam rapidly begins to feel like a Lost Cause, as Captain Jhl Smt Wong, having traversed the x’nb web and World Shield while comatose under the influence of klupf, sinks into the personality of a Playfair Pleasure Girl. Meanwhile her trusty ship-companions, the xathpyroid BrTl and the it-being Trff, unable to join her until Old Rthfrdia’s official F-Day celebrations begin, realise uneasily that she’s fallen for one, or maybe both, of the chief mammalian humanoid protagonists she meets on the primmo dump… Then there’s the complication of the pwld muck. Are their jobs as space traders—along with the rest of the intergalactic freight haulage industry—about to vanish? And is Jhl’s personality going to be permanently altered by the combined effects of the pleasuring-blob and the klupf? As complication piles on complication and Jhl becomes immersed in the humanoid problems on Old Rthfrdia, BrTl begins to suspect that maybe this is the devious Fleet Commander’s ultimate goal…

The Admirable Clone: It’s over 30 IG years since the two galaxies’ Expedition Fleet took off for the Third Galaxy. Intergalactic travel has now vastly improved and the trip’s been reduced from 20 IG years to just over 3 IG months in the special ships called “PBTTs”. Tourists can now travel back and forth. So Su Vt R’aam, Shank’yar’s and Jhl’s youngest child, sets off for the two galaxies, accompanied by the household’s most responsible servant, Clone Vt R’aam Thirty-Two. Su’s adventures and misadventures on the very varied worlds of the two galaxies combine with an edgy tale of failing blob technology, as it begins to look as if this is the end of intergalactic society as sentient beings know it. As the youngest Vt R’aam child, with her mother now middle-aged and her father elderly but still spry, Su is pretty much the pet of the household, and so when trouble arises Jhl’s old ship-companions BrTl and Trff immediately get involved. In fact, if Trff hadn’t got involved— Well, read on!

Food & Drink of the Two Galaxies: Selections from the famous “Morpo's Pocket Dictionaries” of Intergalactic Foods and Intergalactic Beverages. The popular, the unusual, the tempting from the many worlds of the two galaxies. Find the description & a colourful illustration here: from staples to cocktails, & many more! Over 100 entries, all verified by “Morpo’s.” If you came across it in the stories of the two galaxies, here’s where to find out what it is!