Ian Sansom
Author
Series
Mobile library volume 1
Summary
Introducing Israel Armstrong, one of literature's most unlikely detectives in the first of a series of novels from the author of the critically acclaimed Ring Road. Israel is an intelligent, shy, passionate, sensitive sort of soul: he's Jewish; he's a vegetarian; he could maybe do with losing a little weight. And he's just arrived in Ireland to take up his first post as a librarian. But the library's been shut down and Israel ends up stranded on the...
Author
Series
Mobile library volume 3
Summary
When mobile librarian Israel Armstrong's library-on-wheels is stolen at an annual library convention in London, he sets out with his irascible companion Ted Carson to find it. Their search leads them to a suspicious convoy of New Age travelers.
Author
Series
Mobile library volume 2
Summary
Israel Armstrong, one of literature's most unlikely detectives, returns for more crime solving adventure in this hilarious second novel from 'The Mobile Library' series.
The second in the 'The Mobile Library ' detective series, 'Mr. Dixon Disappears' once again features the magnificently hapless Israel Armstrong - the young, Jewish, duffle-coat wearing librarian who solves crimes, mysteries, and domestic problems all whilst driving a mobile library...
Author
Series
Mobile library volume 4
Summary
Israel Armstrong lends the library's copy of American Pastoral to a troubled teenage girl and soon she disappears. Israel thinks there may be a connection, but he needs figure out what it is and find the girl, all while dealing with the trauma of a breakup and his impending 30th birthday.
5) Ring Road
Author
Summary
A warm, humane, and sharply observed tale of small town life that is by equal turns hilarious and moving. Big Davey Jones is coming home. He's been gone almost 20 years now, but nobody's forgotten him. Davey's a local hero - his miracle birth as the seventh son of a seventh son brought fame to this little town and they've been grateful ever since. But Davey's home town has changed much in the intervening years. The traditional family business like...
Author
Summary
One poet, his poem, New York City, and a world on the verge of change.
W. H. Auden, a wunderkind, a victim-beneficiary of a literary cult of personality, became a scapegoat and a poet-expatriate largely excluded from British literary history because he left. And his poem, "September 1, 1939," was his most famous and celebrated, yet one which he tried to rewrite and disown and which has enjoyed-or been condemned-to a tragic and unexpected afterlife.
These...
Author
Summary
Let us suppose for a moment that paper were to disappear.
Would anything be lost?
Everything would be lost. Paper surrounds us. Not only as books, letters and diaries, but as beer mats and birth certificates, board games and business cards, fireworks and flypaper, photographs and playing cards, tickets and tea bags. We are paper people.
But the age of paper is coming to an end. E-books regularly outsell physical books. E-tickets replace the...
Author
Series
Summary
Welcome to Westmorland. Perhaps the most scenic county in England! Home of the poets! Land of the great artists! District of the Great Lakes! And the scene of a mysterious crime . . . Swanton Morley, the People's Professor, once again sets off in his Lagonda to continue his history of England, The County Guides.
Stranded in the market town of Appleby after a tragic rail crash, Morley, his daughter Miriam and his assistant, Stephen Sefton, find...
Author
Series
Summary
Love Miss Marple? Adore Holmes and Watson? Professor Morley's guide to Norfolk is a story of bygone England: quaint villages, eccentric locals-and murder ...It is 1937, and disillusioned Spanish Civil War veteran Stephen Sefton is broke. So when he sees a mysterious advertisement for a job where "intelligence is essential," he eagerly applies.
Thus begins Sefton's association with Professor Swanton Morley, an omnivorous intellect. Morley's latest...
10) Death in Devon
Author
Series
Summary
Love Miss Marple? Adore Holmes and Watson? Professor Morley's guide to Devon is a story of bygone England; quaint villages, eccentric locals-and murder… Swanton Morely, the People's Professor, sets off for Devon to continue his history of England, The County Guides. Morley's daughter, Miriam, and his assistant, Stephen Sefton, pack up the Lagonda for a trip to the English Riviera. Morely has been invited to give the Founder's Day speech at All Souls...
Author
Summary
I don't recall if I saw my first gunman in my childhood nightmares or on my childhood streets.
There were plenty in both and they looked very much like each other.
So begins Reggie Chamberlain-King's introduction to The Black Dreams, a thrilling and compelling collection of specially commissioned stories that explore the emotional geography of growing up and living in Northern Ireland.
The fourteen stories gathered here criss-cross coast,...
12) Essex Poison
Author
Series
Summary
October, 1937: Swanton Morley, the People's Professor, sets off to Essex to continue his history of England, creating The County Guides. Morley's daughter, Miriam, continues to cause chaos and his assistant Stephen continues to slide deeper into depression and despair... Morley is an honorary guest at the Colchester Oyster Festival. But when the mayor dies, suspicion falls on his fellow councilors. Is it a case of food poisoning? Or could it be murder?...