Millions of people travel on Londons tube every day yet we usually give our fellow passengers only a cursory glance. But each one of these nameless passengers has their own story to tell. At Notting Hill the mysterious secretary harbouring her secrets travels to work; at Highburyand Islington Adam has a sudden change of heart; & at Holborn a disastrous reunion is about to take place... With her characteristic mix of compassionate humour & biting realism this vintage collection of stories is Maeve Binchy at her very best. ...

The Music Fairies desperately need Rachel's & Kirsty's help! Jack Frost & his naughty goblins have stolen the fairies' Magical Musical Instruments which means that music is being ruined for everyone! Jack Frost plans to use the instruments to help him win a national talent competition in the human world & with the help of the enchanted instruments he's bound to win. If this happens humans will find out about Fairyland & then all the fairies will be in danger! Victoria must find her violin
- how can Rachel & Kirsty help her?
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One night Arthur Bryant witnesses a drunk middle-aged lady coming out of a pub in a London backstreet. The next morning she is found dead at the exact spot where their paths crossed. Even more disturbing the pub has vanished. Bryant is convinced that he saw them as they were over a century before but the elderly detective has already lost the funeral urn of an old friend. Could he be losing his mind as well? Then it becomes clear that a number of women have met their ends in London pubs. It seems a silent secret killer is at work striking in full view...and yet nobody has a clue how or why
- or where hell attack next. The likeliest suspect seems to be a mental patient with a reason for killing. But knowing who the killer is & catching him are two very different propositions. As their new team at the Peculiar Crimes Unit goes in search of a madman the octogenarian detectives ready themselves for the pub crawl of a lifetime & come face to face with their own mortality.
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One night Arthur Bryant witnesses a drunken lady coming out of a pub. The next morning she is found dead at the exact spot where their paths crossed. Even more disturbingly the pub has vanished & the street has changed. Bryant is convinced that he saw them as they looked over a century before
- is elderly detective losing his mind? Then it becomes clear that a number of women have met their ends in London pubs & the likeliest suspect seems to be a mental patient. But knowing who the killer is & catching him are two very different propositions. As their new team at the Peculiar Crimes Unit goes in search of a madman the octogenarian detectives ready themselves for the pub crawl of a lifetime & come face to face with their own mortality... This recording is unabridged. Typically abridged audiobooks are not more than 60 per cent of the authors work & as low as 30 per cent with characters & plotlines removed.
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In Victorias Wars: The Rise of Empire" Saul David explores the early part of Queen Victorias reign when the British Empire was well on the way to becoming the greatest empire the world had ever seen. This is the story of how it happened & the people who made it happen. In a fast-moving narrative ranging from London to the harsh terrain of India Russia & the Far East Saul David shows how Britain ruthlessly exploited her position as the worlds only superpower to expand her empire. Yet little of this territorial acquisition was planned or sanctioned by the home government. Instead it was largely the work of the men on the ground & to those at home it really did seem that the empire was acquired in a fit of absence of mind. Saul David creates a vivid portrait of life on the violent fringes of empire & of the seemingly endless & brutal wars that were fought in the name of trade civilization & the balance of power. " Splendid.. .a terrific treasure-chest of anecdotes.. .a splendidly brisk cool & judicious narrator". (" Daily Telegraph"). " Incisive & acute.. .thorough & occasionally revelatory [ David] always finds a telling phrase an eye-catching detail or a human story". (" Sunday Times"). Saul David is Professor of War Studies at the University of Buckingham & the author of several critically acclaimed history books including " The Indian Mutiny: 1857" (shortlisted for the Westminster Medal for Military Literature) " Zulu: The Heroism & Tragedy of the Zulu War of 1879" (a Waterstones Military History Book of the Year) & most recently " Victorias Wars: The Rise of Empire"." ...

Dreaded & reviled by many these nineteenth-century buildings provide a unique window on how the Victorians housed & treated the mentally ill. Despite initially good intentions they became warehouses for societys outcasts at a time when cures were rare. Isolated hidden in the countryside & surrounded by high walls most have been closed since the 1980s their original use largely forgotten. In The Victorian Asylum" Sarah Rutherford gives an insight into their history their often imposing architecture & their later decline & brings to life these haunting buildings some of which still survive today." ...

Birminghams Victorian heritage is still surprisingly well preserved despite much demolition during the twentieth century & major redevelopment in the last few months & years. In this book Roy Thornton looks at a selection of the citys Victorian architecture some of the lost buildings as well as the survivors to illustrate the range of building that took place during Birminghams most prosperous decades. A wide range of old & new photographs maps plans drawings & paintings are also included. Public buildings churches houses industrial buildings schools & hospitals are all discussed together with a special study of Corporation Street
- arguably the city centres best-preserved Victorian thoroughfare. Victorian Buildings of Birmingham" will appeal to anyone interested in the history of Britains second city."
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Planned with the same passion as a landscape garden filled with monuments that represented the start of the art of craftsmanship in stone & equipped with expensively constructed & fashionably designed gatehouses & chapels of rest the Victorian cemetery was a matter of real civic pride. It was also the ultimate expression of the cult of the dead that gripped every Victorian. This beautifully illustrated study of the Victorian cemetery tells the fascinating story of this historical & architectural phenomenon which provided Britains towns & cities with some of their most extraordinary & charming reminders of the sensibilities of an age long gone. ...

This slim brilliant very scary novel (John Sandoe Books) came out in 1953 four years after Little Boy Lost". It is about a young married woman who lies down on a chaise-longue & wakes to find herself imprisoned in the body of her alter ego ninety years before. It impressed PD James author of the " Preface" as one of the most skillfully told & terrifying short novels of its decade. And Penelope Lively described it as disturbing & compulsive commenting: This is time travel fiction but with a difference...instead of making it into a form of adventure what Marghanita Laski has done is to propose that such an experience would be the ultimate terror...so Melanie/ Milly clings to the belief that she is dreaming for as long as she possibly can; the point at which she is forced to abandon this comfort & search for other explanations is her plunge into nightmare. In the stifling menacing atmosphere in which Melanie finds herself there is another dark unspoken theme. Sex. Milly has been in some way disgraced... Once again the chaise-longue is the hinge between the two planes of existence. The site of rapture of ecstasy
- that is the implication..."
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The nineteenth century was a time of unprecedented transformation & nowhere was this more apparent than on the streets of London. In only a few decades London grew from a Regency town to the biggest city the world had ever seen with more than 6.5 million people & railways street-lighting & new buildings at every turn. In The Victorian House Judith Flanders described in intimate detail what went on inside the nineteenth-century home. Now in The Victorian City she explores London's outdoors in an extraordinary revelatory portrait of everyday life on the streets. From the moment Charles Dickens the century's best-loved novelist & London's greatest observer arrived in the city in 1822 he obsessively walked its streets recording its pleasures curiosities & cruelties. Now with him Judith Flanders leads us through the markets transport systems sewers rivers slums alleys cemeteries gin palaces chop-houses & entertainment emporia of Dickens' London to reveal the Victorian capital in all its variety vibrancy & squalor. From the colourful cries of street-sellers to the uncomfortable reality of travel by omnibus via the many uses for the body parts of dead horses or the unimaginably grueling working days of hawker children no detail is too small or too strange. No one who reads Judith Flanders's The Victorian City will view London in the same light again. ...