Showing results by author "Nick Aaron" in All Categories

When all the Christians were thrown to the lions Daisy Hayes was a sculptress, and blind since birth. In 1964 a French priest came to visit her at the collective studio in north London where she worked. He was fascinated by the impaired artist and told her, “There’s this program at the Vatican Museums, where people like you get an opportunity to study archaeological artifacts by touch. Are you interested?” — “Of course, mon Père!” In AD 64 a blind masseuse working at the baths in Rome overheard some important men preparing to set fire to the city and seize power. When they ...

Die Vision einer strahlenden Zukunft, die der Imperator für die Menschheit hatte, liegt in Schutt und Asche. Horus’ Rebellion breitet sich in die hintersten Winkel des Imperiums aus und erfasst beinahe täglich neue Welten und Systeme. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird die Frage laut: Waren die Zeichen schon immer da? Nur eines ist sicher - die Galaxis wird nie wieder Frieden kennen, weder in diesem Zeitalter noch in tausend anderen...

Caught in a deadly trap In AD 79 the emperor Vespasian was dying and some prophetess was announcing the end of the world. Meanwhile Desiderata had to deal with a fresh criminal plot from her old enemy Numa. You’d think that things couldn’t get any worse, but that was counting without Mount Vesuvius literally blowing its top above Pompeii. What on earth were our blind ‘seeker of justice’, her deaf husband Simplex, and uncle Balbus doing there that summer, a true case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time? It’s a complicated story, but as it happened, they had not one, but ...

Second-guessing a double agenda While treating a patient in the fall of 1972, Daisy managed to winkle out of him that he worked for MI6. Then she blabbed about a planned visit to East Berlin with her friend Margery, who was a chemistry researcher at King’s College. Back at the office, the man asked his spooks to do some background checks. It turned out that without even knowing it his blind physiotherapist and her chum had an indirect connection to a high-ranking communist party boss… Meanwhile, in East Berlin, clever operatives of the GDR secret services realized that Margery must know...

Nur aus großen Konflikten können wahre Helden hervorgehen. Die Galaxis steht in Flammen und ein Krieg unvorstellbaren Ausmaßes zerreißt das Imperium. Die Champions des Licht und der Dunkelheit betreten das Schlachtfeld, um für ihre Herren zu kämpfen. Sie bitten nicht um Gedenken oder Ehren – sie wollen sich einfach nur in ihr Schicksal stürzen, denn nur so können sie erfahren, was die unbekannte Zukunft für sie bereithält.

Murder of an early Pope Nerva, the future emperor of Rome, called the Christian faith “Desiderata’s lost cause”. At the time the ‘Universal Church’ counted only a few thousand faithful rather than untold millions, and he didn’t think it would last, as the Second Coming of the Messiah was looking more and more like a no-show. His blind friend Desiderata would demur and argue. Then in AD 76 the first elected Pope was brutally murdered, and Desi realised that the very survival of her faith was at stake. Delegates from all over the empire had come to Rome for the Pope’s ordination...

When past mistakes come home to roost In the summer of 1989 the Iron Curtain was unraveling, and Daisy Hayes had just become a pensioner who liked to do her ironing while listening to the latest news on the radio. The doorbell chimed. A police officer handed over a summons—printed in Braille. Daisy was being asked to testify about a baffling and gruesome murder, and had to follow the policeman at once. During the ride to New Scotland Yard, even before the first interview took place, the blind lady reflected that, though she knew nothing about this case, she would not be able to prove her ...

In the clutches of a pervert, Daisy fights back 1967 in Swinging London. The Beatles had just released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. At Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park the hippies staged sit-ins to legalise marijuana. And even though she was blind since birth, it did not escape Daisy Hayes’ attention that “The times they are a-changin’…” But just as she reached middle-age and the height of her powers as an artist, Daisy was visited by a ghost from her past. An accomplice in an old story of revenge appeared at the opening of her new sculpture exhibition and made demands ...

Haunted by the loss of a childhood world While visiting her son Jonathan in prison, Daisy heard a strange story. He’d befriended an old man who was serving a life sentence for a crime he hadn’t committed. Of course every inmate says that, but Johnny-John believed this man’s protestations of innocence and begged his mother to look into it. The facts of the case had taken place in Zambia long ago, when it was a British colony, so Daisy started her investigation among ex-colonials who’d returned to England. However, it soon became clear that the people holding the key to the mystery ...

Seeking Desi's true identity The last days that Daisy Hayes spent in Rome in 1964 were quite exciting. She and Father Contini went back to the crypt and made some disturbing discoveries. Not about Desiderata herself, but about the archaeologist who had investigated the place in the thirties. The quest now led them to the German town of Trier, where they teamed up again in the fall of that same year to continue their research. In AD 67 things were looking good for Desi and the Pomponius family in their beautiful domus: they lived like princes. But as her friends the Christians went through ...

Death falls out of the sky While Daisy and Darren roamed the countryside around Bottomleigh House in their faithful little car, they chanced upon a small airfield called Gremian Hill, which caught their fancy at once. They were told by members of the local parachuting club that a blind person or a paraplegic too could skydive, and they became regulars to find out more. But soon tragedy struck, a parachute failed to open and one of their new friends fell to her death under suspicious circumstances. What’s more, the chutes were kept under lock and key in a special shed, so sabotage seemed ...

The delayed curse of the mark of Cain In 1949 Daisy Hayes had a patient more or less her own age, Odile Speed, with whom she had a good rapport at once, and who told her about a strange kind of duel, interrupted for many years, from a short story by Pushkin. Then on Christmas Eve of 1952 our blind sleuth extraordinaire stumbled on the scene of a murder just being committed. She bumped into the culprit and the victim died in her arms. The police interrogated her at once. But soon it became clear that the testimony of a blind witness was bound to be worthless in a court of law, the results of...

It all started with a scream in the night Then there were blood splatters on the rug. There was a murder, it seemed, but no corpse. And two of the hotel’s guests went missing. Which one was the victim, and which one the killer? In the absence of a dead body, could the whole thing be a hoax? Especially as the Manor Hotel was hosting the ‘Murder Convention’, a periodic gathering of mystery writers. So was this a macabre game or... the perfect crime? No shortage of candidates to tackle the case, with some guests putting their oar in according to their own pet theories; the police in the ...

Looking for an Armenian treasure In 1992 Daisy Hayes had inherited Bottomleigh House and was struggling to keep it afloat financially. Then she got a letter from an archaeologist asking her to help make sense of a mysterious message that had just been dug up in Rome. Time to hook up again with Morag, her deaf friend from the ‘project’ in 1964, and to go back to the Eternal City. In AD 64, after Feli’s death, Desiderata had scores to settle and a ‘twin sister’ to bury. Her new friends the Christians gave her sanctuary, but her relationship with them was a bit strained. Soon the ‘...

Auf Befehl des Kriegsherrn Horus brennt die gesamte Galaxis und jeden Tag verlieren Millionen Menschen ihr Leben. Doch einst stand der Titel des Kriegsherrn für Ehre, Loyalität und den grimmigen Stolz auf die Stärke der Space-Marine-Legionen. Vielleicht lässt sich etwas Licht in dieses Dunkel bringen, indem man den unzähligen Fäden des Schicksals und des Widerstands folgt, die sich schon immer um die Primarchen und ihre Söhne rankten. Vielleicht lässt sich so die Bitterkeit verstehen, die selbst an der standhaftesten Seele nagt.

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