Rumpole and the Golden Thread
10 best books like Rumpole and the Golden Thread (John Mortimer): Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume II, Canto for a Gypsy, Sailing Close to the Wind: Reminiscences, Let's Put the Future Behind Us, Wings Above the Diamantina, Hadon of Ancient Opar, The Singing Detective, The Ghost Runner: The Tragedy of the Man They Couldn't Stop, The Chicken Dance, The War-Torn Kingdom
| Author | Arthur Conan Doyle |
| ISBN | 0553212427 |
Since his first appearance in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes has been one of the most beloved fictional characters ever created.
Now, in two paperback volumes, Bantam presents all fifty-six short stories and four novels featuring Conan...
| Author | Martin Cruz Smith |
| ISBN | 0345306155 |
Another hidden gem from Smith, his first series, two books long. The protagonist lives on the edge of Roman culture in New York City and consults with/assists the police with special problems. Here, the sacred Hungarian crown of St. Stephen is to be displayed in a church before it is returned to the Communist...
| Author | Dennis Skinner |
| ISBN | 1782061592 |
Dennis Skinner, the famed Beast of Bolsover, is adored by legions of supporters and respected as well as feared by admiring enemies. Fiery and forthright, with a prodigious recall, Skinner is one of the best-known politicians in Britain. He remains as passionate and committed to the causes he champions...
Former bureaucrat Max Borodin is one of Moscow's most successful businessmen. He strolls through the wreckage of today's Russia with ease - convincing people to do his bidding, providing its citizens (both friends and clients) with the luxury goods they covet, and generally leading a prosperous...
| Author | Arthur W. Upfield |
| ISBN | 0020259700 |
The discovery of a stolen red monoplane on the dry, flat bottom of Emu Lake meant many things to many people: for Elizabeth Nettlefold, it meant a new purpose in life; for Dr. Knowles, brilliant physician and town drunk, it meant the revival of a romantic dream; for person or persons unknown, it meant a...
| Author | Philip José Farmer |
| ISBN | 0879976373 |
Opar...the Atlantean colony in the heart of Tarzan's Africa.
Opar...in the words of Edgar Rice Burroughs, a hidden city of "gold and silver, ivory and apes, and peacocks."
Opar...is the starting point of this fabulous novel of twelve thousand years past, when Africa had in inland...
| Author | Dennis Potter |
| ISBN | 0571145906 |
I remember when this was first shown on television – I remember the effect it had on me. That television could be like that! Here was something that proved television could be something more than mindless drivel. Of course, I was wrong – and The Singing Detective was just the exception that proves...
| Author | Bill Jones |
| ISBN | 1845966066 |
The mystery man threw off his disguise and started to run. Furious stewards gave chase. The crowd roared.
A legend was born. Soon the world would know him as 'the ghost runner'. John Tarrant. The extraordinary man whom nobody could stop. As a hapless teenage boxer in the 1950s, he'd been paid...
| Author | Jacques Couvillon |
| ISBN | 1599900432 |
On his birthday, Don Schmidt spends the day waiting patiently for his big surprise--a cake, presents, maybe a Chinese clown . . . . But instead, his batty parents get into their monthly argument. This time it's because his mother has to feed the chickens. It ends with her shouting the same thing as always...
I was absolutely in love with these books as a kid, circa the mid-90s; for me they were sort of a half-way point between a Choose Your Own Adventure novel and a modern computer-based RPG.
The Fabled Lands books aren't so much a story as they are an adventure in a world. Each book can be played alone,...
| Author | Raymond Chandler |
| ISBN | 0140108998 |
'"Damn You, Eichelberger!" I said, and hit him with all my strength on the side of the jaw. He shook his head and his eyes seemed annoyed.'
Walter Gage is hired by his fiancee to find Mrs Penruddock's stolen pink pearls. His investigations need to be discreet because it would be embarrassing if word...
Britain's railways have been a vital part of national life for nearly 200 years. Transforming lives and landscapes, they have left their mark on everything from timekeeping to tourism. As a self-contained world governed by distinctive rules and traditions, the network also exerts a fascination...
| Author | Michael Moorcock |
| ISBN | 1565041844 |
This is actually the collected novels of the Kane series: City of the Beast, Lord of the Spiders and Masters of the Pit (all US titles, I gather the UK ones differ).
It's a good homage to ERB but, unlike Stirling's In the Court of the Crimson Kings, it's also a (at times not-so-subtle) subversion...
| Author | Peter Lovesey |
| ISBN | 0396066275 |
A sadistic practical joker is haunting the popular music halls of London, interfering with the actors and interrupting their acts by orchestrating humiliating disasters that take place in view of the audience. A trapeze artist misses her timing when the trapeze ropes are shortened. A comedian who...
| Author | Donald E. Westlake |
| ISBN | 0446400947 |
Prolific author Donald E. Westlake has won three prestigious Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America, and his screenplay for The Grifters was nominated for an Academy Award. Now he delivers a one-of-a-kind fantasy thriller, an epic struggle of good versus evil. Heaven and hell and everything...
| Author | Robin D. Laws |
| ISBN | 1908983019 |
Pulse-pounding action meets cosmic horror in this exciting collection from the rising stars of the New Cthulhuiana. Steel your nerves, reach into your weapons locker, and tie tight your running shoes as humanity takes up arms against the monsters and gods of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Grab...
| Author | Clark Ashton Smith |
| ISBN | 1597800309 |
Published in chronological order, with extensive story and bibliographic notes, this series not only provides access to stories that have been out of print for years, but gives them a historical and social context. Series editors Scott Conners and Ronald S. Hilger excavated the still-existing manuscripts,...
| Author | Lord Dunsany |
| ISBN | 1568821166 |
Lord Dunsany is best known as a favorite of other writers--such as H. P. Lovecraft, who counted him second only to Edgar Allan Poe as an influence on his work. Lovecraft readers will be interested to know that two ideas Lovecraft got from Dunsany were (1) an artificial pantheon of gods and other entities...
The novel begins as Ursula Blanchard, waiting woman to Queen Elizabeth I, is having a lesson in picking locks under the watchful eye of her majesty's secretary of state. An unusual lesson indeed for a respectable woman of the court, but Blanchard is no ordinary lady in waiting. She does have the proper...
| Author | P.G. Wodehouse |
| ISBN | 0140050337 |
A Pelican at Blandings, the 11th book in the Blandings Castle series, was a big disappointment for me. I always expect P.G. Wodehouse to buck me up with his humor, but this one lacked the funny.
It's typically Wodehousian in its convoluted plot, but the writing feels dull. I have a tendency to...
| Author | Eric Newby |
| ISBN | 1888173890 |
The only continuous land route between Western Europe and the Pacific coast of the USSR, the Trans-Siberian Railway covers nearly a 100 degrees of longitude, seven time zones and 5900 miles in a journey lasting 192 hours and 35 minutes. In 1977 Eric Newby set out with his wife, an official guide and a photographer...
| Author | Diana Preston |
| ISBN | 0618002014 |
On November 12, 1912, a rescue team trekking across Antarctica's Great Ice Barrier finally found what they sought -- the snow-covered tent of the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott. Inside, they made a grim discovery: Scott's frozen body lay between those of two fellow explorers. They had died just...
| Author | Spike Milligan |
| ISBN | 0140149708 |
Spike Milligan's string of World War II memoirs gets high accolades, and they deserve their praise. However, something often overlooked is that Spike recorded the audio book versions of each of the books himself! They are treasures! He is a gifted reader, creating voice characterizations for all...
| Author | Ernest Bramah |
| ISBN | 1587152096 |
Kai Lung's Golden Hours By Ernest Bramah. Preface: Hilaire Belloc. Man is born to make. His business is to construct; to plan; to carry out the plan: to fit together, and to produce a finished thing. That human art in which it is most difficult to achieve this end and in which it is far easier to neglect it...
