Showing results by author "Brian W Taylor" in All Categories

The Shropshire Hills, summer 1990. The gardens of an old house, Moorecroft House, which had stood there amongst the hills for so long, it seemed to almost be a part of them. If the man in Elizabethan costume who had appeared out of the mist that lay across the gardens that morning was a ghost, how come no one had ever heard of any ghosts and hauntings connected to them before? And if he wasn't a ghost, why did no one who worked in the gardens seem ever to have heard of him, or the horrific double murder he said had happened back in the 1960s,involving a man and a woman who'd worked in the ...

A secret way into another world in another dimension. A land called Madragora by those who lived there, where elves, sprites and fairies live alongside mortals. And where a war between two sorcerers battling for control of the fire ice jewels mined in the depths of the mountains there, jewels which can control the minds of anyone who comes into contact with them, simmered for centuries. It went on for more than five hundred years, always involving that same stretch of road with a cottage at the end of it where three sisters, local people believe to be witches, lived. The latest of these ...

It began with a promise of love and marriage given and a pledge made between people from different dimensions sealed with dragons gold, which had to be taken back by any means possible when that pledge was broken by promises which had formed an important part of it being broken too. Mary Lockyear and Tom Threshold knew nothing of any of this the time they visited Greenaway Cottage on their sunday off, to see if the tales told about the inhabitants of the cottage that they met with elves and fairies, witches and goblins in the dead of night, which Mary believed in and Tom didn’t, were true...

"From the land beyond the Endless Sea, from the land beyond eternity, in a dream there came to me, strangers one and two and three. I saw a stone before my eyes, hot as fire, yet cold as ice, it promised me a paradise, beware the stone, beware it lies! But in my dreams I then perceived, fools and wise men all deceived, and of their senses taken leave. Then the sound of fighting filled my head, my stomach rose at the stench of the dead, armies rose and armies bled, because of the words that the stone had said. Beware the strangers when they come, beware the mother who seeks her son, Beware ...

A secret way into another world in another dimension. A world where elves, sprites and fairies live alongside mortals. And where a war between the sorceress who controls the fire ice jewels mined in the depths of the mountains there, jewels which can control the minds of anyone who comes into contact with them, and those trying to free themselves from her subjugation, has flared up again. It was hard enough for Aurora Bradley, known as Rory to her friends, to escape from that world the first time she stumbled into it accidently through the time portal at the end of her great aunt’s garden...

A man missing since an urban activist group set up a camp outside his egg farm to protest about its continued expansion in the face of unswerving local opposition. Another man who really believes murder can’t be murder unless there’s a body to show for it, and you’ve got to prove him wrong. Chief Inspector Macdonald reckons that this will all turn out to be a Chinese puzzle in the end, but will he be able to solve it if it is?

The wreckage of a millionaire’s plane found crashed onto the side of a Welsh mountain. A burned out holiday cottage deep in the Welsh Marches, with the remains of a body still smouldering amongst the ashes. A mysterious package missing, first from the plane, and then from the cottage, that everyone is looking for, but no one can find. Too busy looking over their shoulders trying to see what the next guy is doing, no one is watching Chief Inspector Macdonald, but he’s the one pulling the strings.

The girl in the bar had been very pretty. And had the sort of body Howarth knew would interfere with his sleeping if he thought about it too much in the night. And once he’d set eyes on her he knew that he was going to think about her a lot in the night, because there had been an unspoken promise in the way she’d looked back at him when she’d caught him watching her surreptitiously, covetously, and he’d felt he had to get to know her better. Howarth was still young enough to have his head turned that quickly by a pretty girl and feel he was able to do something about it. That was ...

Being used to a diet of organised crime, drug manufacturing, smuggling, and dealing in all its many forms, and attacks on them by assassins working for the Russian, and the Chinese, governments, all as a result of their association with Chief Inspector Macdonald, Sinead Grogan and Christopher Caine had been afraid they might find life boring when they gave up working for Macdonald and became private detectives, instead but they were wrong. Fresh from their first success as private eyes Grogan and Caine found themselves surrounded by crooks aplenty when employed by the owner of a hotel in ...

When local councillor Warren Hescott reluctantly agreed to a tree planting ceremony he didn't want, in order to celebrate his twenty five years of service to the community, he said he'd only take part in the event if the tree planted in his honour was the special cedar he knew his old enemy, Hereward Gordon, the former Director of Parks had, out of pure bloody mindedness after being forced to take early retirement, secreted away in his garden in one of the lodges in the grounds of the Hall before he went, rather than using the tree to complete the main avenue of the Hall as he should have ...

The Shropshire Hills, summer 1990. The gardens of an old house, Moorecroft House, which had stood there amongst the hills for so long, it seemed to almost be a part of them. If the man in Elizabethan costume who had appeared out of the mist that lay across the gardens that morning was a ghost, how come no one had ever heard of any ghosts and hauntings connected to them before? And if he wasn't a ghost, why did no one who worked in the gardens seem ever to have heard of him, or the horrific double murder he said had happened back in the 1960s,involving a man and a woman who'd worked in the ...

Being used to a diet of organised crime, drug manufacturing, smuggling, and dealing in all its many forms, and attacks on them by assassins working for the Russian, and the Chinese, governments, all as a result of their association with Chief Inspector Macdonald, Sinead Grogan and Christopher Caine had been afraid they might find life boring when they gave up working for Macdonald and became private detectives, instead but they were wrong. In their youth they had been into banning the bomb, not making them, but when a group of determined former CND women were faced with the prospect of an ...

Local gossip said the burned out cottage at the edge of the marshes, and the stretch of beach that lay in front of it, was haunted. By the ghost of a girl who used to live there, but who set fire to it one day, then deliberately walked into the sea to drown herself, when someone let it be known that the lover she had lived there with had betrayed her with another woman, before abandoning her completely, by going off to fight on the battlefields of First World War France. Dying there as well, so local gossip said. Local gossip didn’t say who the woman had been, or the name of the soldier ...

The body of a man slumped beside the ruins of a house in the woods, whispering dying words about a ‘Destroying Angel’. The body of another man laying in the cottage the first man had lived in; clutching a package to his chest he’d stolen from someone who had just killed him in an unsuccessful attempt to get it back. No good retiring to Shropshire if it’s a quiet life you’re looking for. Not as long as Chief Inspector Macdonald is still there pulling the strings.

Being used to a diet of organised crime, drug manufacturing, smuggling, and dealing in all its many forms, and attacks on them by assassins working for the Russian, and the Chinese, governments, all as a result of their association with Chief Inspector Macdonald, Sinead Grogan and Christopher Caine had been afraid they might find life boring when they gave up working for Macdonald and became private detectives, instead but they were wrong. Working undercover at Greenvale Manor, a private school for girls, situated in the Welsh Marches, passing themselves off as a teacher of Welsh Studies ...

The writer, still working as a parish clerk has moved to a different village where a previous clerk has left him looking for missing gravestones

Look out for the wind the old man said for it may be changing and pointing towards Madragora again. And where is Madragora the young man asked I don’t believe you ever explained that to me fully. A land of dragons sorcerers, elves and pixies is where it is, the old man said and if you watch the movements of the weather vane we fashioned out of dragons gold for the purpose carefully enough it will guide you there because it doesn’t ever point an any other direction than towards Madragora and then only monetarily. Loose that moment as the wind changes and you might never find your way to it.

When Caroline Meredith was a child and her father often went off on trips without her. He always told he couldn’t take her with him because he was chasing the dragon and she would see him as a sort of a St George figure as result. One day after he’d failed to return from one of those trips, and she’d had to investigate his disappearance, she found out what he’d been doing on them and how he had earned his family’s fortune.

Middleton Hall was an eighteenth century landscape garden with lake, woodlands, statuary and buildings originally designed by Humphrey Repton, now swallowed up by urban sprawl. The Borough Council had purchased it from its last noble owner during the 1930s, when local authorities still had the funds for such extravagances, and turned it into a public park. Now, in 1983, it was an anachronism, an uneasy mixture of olde worlde gardens and up to date recreational facilities. The park, like most of the people attracted to work in it, or visit it, was a square peg in the round hole of a forward ...

I was startled by a sudden stirring of the body in front of me as I stooped above it, looking down into a pair of surprisingly alert eyes. He reached up a hand to grasp my arm fiercely as his lips struggled to form the words he was trying to say. “Why…didn’t… they… …?” He gasped, breaking off with the effort of speaking. “Don’t try to talk. I’ll go for help.” I freed myself from his grasp as gently as I could. Standing up again and turning to go. “Too late for that.” He said weakly, “I’m done for. I’ve seen it happen too many times before.” His eyes closed ...