Showing results by author "Holt" in All Categories

The doughnut is a thing of beauty, a circle of fried, doughy perfection - a source of comfort in trying times, perhaps. For Theo Bernstein it is far, far more. An accident at work lost Theo his job (and his work involved preventing a Very, Very Large Hadron Collider from blowing up, so he's unlikely to get it back). His wife has left him; he doesn't have any money; and news arrives that his good friend, Professor Pieter van Goyen, renowned physicist and Nobel laureate, has died.

INTRODUCED BY HAZEL HOLT 'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' Richard Osman 'I'd sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen' Philip Larkin When Barbara Pym died in 1980, she left a considerable amount of unpublished material. This volume contains an early novel, Civil to Strangers, three...

When the Supreme Being and his son decide that being supreme isn't for them anymore, it's inevitable that things get a bit of a shake-up. It soon becomes apparent that our new owners, the Venturi brothers, have a very different perspective on all sorts of things. Take Good and Evil, for example. For them it's an outdated concept that never worked particularly well in the first place.

The classic guide to teaching children at home for a new generation of homeschooling parents In 2019, there were more than two million children being homeschooled. That number doubled during the pandemic and is now likely to continue increasing as more parents worry that school might not be the...

As the leader of the Taylor Gang, Soul Taylor's only concerns are his family, his money, and eliminating anyone who threatens his way of life. Love was never on the table for him, but life has a way of throwing curveballs when you least expect them. A one-night stand with a beautiful "stranger" turns into a love story that he never saw coming. Uncovered secrets threaten to crumble the very foundation Soul and Neeya have worked so hard to build, and when tragedy strikes, the two of them find themselves picking up the pieces of their broken hearts.

'A definite must for all fans of comic fantasy' - ENIGMA 'Wacky humour bubbles through the polished narrative ... Holt doesn't skimp on the flashes of brilliance' - SFX Ever been offered a promotion that seems too good to be true? You know - the sort they'd be insane to be offering to someone...

J.W. Wells seemed to be a respectable establishment, but the company now paying Paul Carpenter's salary is in fact a deeply sinister organisation with a mighty peculiar management team. Paul thought he was getting the hang of it (particularly when he fell head over heels for his colleague Sophie), but death is never far away when you work at J.W. Wells, unlike the stapler - that's always going AWOL. Our love-struck hero is about to discover that custard is definitely in the eye of the beholder. And that it really stings.

Monsters are roaming the streets of London. Of course, some monsters are scarier than others: Unicorns? No bother. Vampires? Big deal. Werewolves? Ho hum. Lawyers? … Aaargh! Duncan's boss doesn't think that he's cut out to be a lawyer. He isn’t a pack animal. He lacks the killer instinct. But when his best friend from school barges his way back into Duncan’s life, with a full supporting cast of lawyers, ex-wives, zombies and snow-white unicorns, it’s not long before things become distinctly unsettling.

A single billing entry shouldn’t matter. But this one does. Nora Voss has spent ten years inside hospital systems —processing cases, trusting documentation, moving patients through structures designed to hold. Not question. When a routine file reveals a follow-up procedure billed after a patient’s death, Nora does what she’s trained to do. She verifies. What she finds isn’t an error. It’s a pattern. Records that look complete. Transfers authorized without authority. Cases sealed, archived, and kept just active enough to be used. Every step documented. Every step defensible.

A heart-warming tale of Armageddon from one of the funniest, most original voices in comic fiction today.... The third planet out from the star was blue, with green splodges. Dirt. Oh, the bomb thought. And then its courage, determination and nobility-of-spirit subroutines cut in, overriding everything else, adrenalizing its command functions and bypassing its cyberphrenetic nodes. Here goes, said the bomb to itself. Calibrate navigational pod. Engage primary thrusters. Ready auxiliary drive.

Starting a new job is always stressful (especially when you don't particularly want one), but when Paul Carpenter arrives at the office of J. W. Wells he has no idea what trouble lies in store. Because he is about to discover that the apparently respectable establishment now paying his salary is in fact a front for a deeply sinister organisation that has a mighty peculiar agenda. It seems that half the time his bosses are away with the fairies. But they're not, of course. They're away with the goblins.

Welcome to Dawson, Ahriman & Dawson! The team of commercial sorcerers at Dawson, Ahriman & Dawson can help with any metaphysical engineering project, large or small. (Though by definition, they all tend to be pretty large.) They can also create massive great puddles of chaos that might one day swallow up the entire universe. Take, for example, the decision to recruit a certain bearded fellow whose previous work experience mainly involves reindeer and jingle bells. It might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but is he really the best person to save the world from Tiamat the Destroyer?

Being the Dark Lord and Prince of Evil is not as much fun as it sounds, particularly if you are a basically decent person. King Mordak is just such a person. Technically he's more goblin than person, but the point is that he is really keen to be a lot less despicable than his predecessors. Not that the other goblins appreciate Mordak's attempts to redefine the role. Why should they when his new health-care program seems designed to actually extend life expectancy, and his efforts to end a perfectly reasonable war with the dwarves appear to have become an obsession?       

A happy workforce is a productive workforce. At the moment, the Wizard's employees are neither. The goblins are upset with their working conditions, the dragonslayer has thrown a hissy fit over his medical insurance (or lack thereof) and everyone is upset about the terrible canteen coffee. Yet the Wizard hasn't got time to worry about revolution in the workplace - he's about to see his brilliant business plan (based on entrepreneurial flair and involving one or two parallel worlds) disrupted by a clueless young man.

Polly, an average, completely ordinary property lawyer, is convinced she's losing her mind. Someone keeps drinking her coffee. And talking to her clients. And doing her job. And when she goes to the dry cleaner's to pick up her dress for the party, it's not there. Not the dress - the dry cleaner's.And then there are the chickens who think they are people. Something strange is definitely going on - and it's going to take more than a magical ring to sort it out.

From prolific metal guitarist and songwriter for Exodus (and formerly Slayer) Gary Holt comes a deeply personal memoir of his "destruction-laden" life, along with a firsthand account of the genesis of the Thrash Metal scene, from its origins in the Bay Area to its world domination. As the...

1803. The Napoleonic Wars. A Royal Navy warship is ordered to pursue an enemy frigate to the icy waters far south in the Indian Ocean. There, it must capture the enemy ship and retrieve a mysterious sea chest, contents unknown, failure not permitted. For the determined young captain and his eager crew, this already dangerous mission turns into a battle with a mysterious vessel that appears not in the sea, but unbelievably, impossibly, in the sky above. But nothing could prepare the crew for what lay beyond the 50th latitude of south.

A first-hand account of one of the most memorable summers of the 90s. Stuart Pearce became the face of England's bid to win the 1996 European Championships when his maniacal explosion of joy and relief at scoring a penalty in the quarter-final shoot-out against Spain captured the mood of a...

Izzy's family is under the spotlight when her dad comes out as Danielle, a trans woman. Izzy is terrified her family will be torn apart. Will she lose her dad? Will her parents break up? And what will people at school say? Izzy's always been shy, but now all eyes are on her. Can she face her fears, find her voice and stand up for what's right?

Maurice has just killed a dragon with a breadknife. And had his destiny foretold...and had his true love spirited away. That's precisely the sort of stuff that'd bring out the latent heroism in anyone. Unfortunately, Maurice is pretty sure he hasn't got any latent heroism. Meanwhile, a man wakes up in a jar in a different kind of pickle (figuratively speaking).