Marcus Ronay, ex-British agent, prematurely retired after a professional miscalculation during the Spanish Civil War, is a man without an occupation, without a future. Until, that is, the cataclysmic events which shake Europe in the early summer of 1940. As a great German military machine thrusts inexorably through Belgium, compelling the Expeditionary Force to retreat toward the Dunkirk beaches, it is Ronay who conceives a plan to buy precious time for the British.

It was Lord's, it was June, the sun was shining, the Nineties were Gay, God was in his Heaven, the Queen was on the Isle of Wight and Dr William Gilbert Grace, the great cricketer, was on splendid form and his innings had just reached fifty.

Sir James Manson - smooth, ruthless City tycoon discovered the existence of a ten billion dollar mountain of platinum in the remote African republic of Zangaro.

With a hired army of trained mercenaries, Manson planned to topple the government of Zangaro and replace its dictator with a puppet president.

The life and death hunt for a notorious Nazi criminal unfolds against a background of international espionage and clandestine arms deals, involving rockets designed in Germany.

Built in Egypt and equipped with warheads of nuclear waste and bubonic plague. But who is behind it all????...

In the spring of 1963, after the last attempt to assassinate President de Gaulle had failed, Colonel Marc Rodin, Operations Chief of the OAS, launched the plan of the Jackal.

The Jackal was an anonymous Englishman.....

"Whichever option I choose, men are going to die." This is the Devil's Alternative, the appalling choice facing the President of the United States of America and other statesmen throughout the world.

The Inspector Morse books were written by Colin Dexter.

John Thaw, the actor who played Inspector Morse in the TV films, sadly lost his battle against cancer and died on 21st February 2002 at his Wiltshire home.

The works of Agatha Christie

The dates of the first publication or stage play and the US titles are listed. The English titles are in parentheses if they are different.

Unless otherwise stated the
publishers are Dodd, Mead in New York and Collins in London.

AT BERTRAM'S HOTEL

UK publication: 1965 (Collins) US publication: 1966 (Dodd, Mead)

Raymond West and his wife again decide to do something for Miss Marple, and give her a week's stay at Bertram's Hotel in London, which she had loved as a girl. She is about 75 years old by this point, and the story is slower-paced, giving her woolly thought processes time to be explored.

HICKORY DICKORY DOCK

US title: HICKORY DICKORY DEATH UK publication: 1955 (Collins) US publication: 1955 (Dodd, Mead)

The story has no real connection with the nursery rhyme. Poirot is introduced to the affair through Miss Lemon, making her first appearance in a Poirot novel. Her sister, who runs a boarding house for students, has had an outbreak of petty theft. Poirot investigates, and the trail leads to murder.