Showing results by author "Lynne Truss" in All Categories

Twenty six short stories about the eccentric inhabitants of Meridian Cliffs, a small wind-battered town on England's South Coast. Welcome to Meridian Cliffs. Located at exactly 0 degrees 0 minutes west, and 0 degrees 0 minutes east, it's where the Greenwich Meridian meets the Channel, and time stands poised at absolute zero. But due to ever-increasing coastal erosion, it's getting smaller every day.

After the notorious 'Middle Street Massacre' of 1951, when the majority of Brighton's criminals wiped one another out in a vicious battle as the local police force enjoyed a brief stop en route for an ice cream, Inspector Steine rather enjoys life as a policeman. No criminals, no crime, no stress. He just wishes Sergeant Brunswick would stop insisting that perhaps not every criminal was wiped out that fateful day. So it's really rather annoying when an ambitious - not to mention irritating - new Constable shows up to work and starts investigating a series of burglaries.

A cottage on the coast on a windy evening. Under a pool of yellow light, two figures face each other across a kitchen table. A man and a cat. The story about to be related is so unusual yet so terrifyingly plausible that it demands to be told in a single sitting. The man clears his throat, and leans forward, expectant. 'Shall we begin?' says the cat….

The August bank holiday is approaching, and after two extremely high-profile murder cases, Constable Twitten is eagerly anticipating a quiet spell at work. But then they find the bodies - and the milk bottles. Three seemingly unconnected victims - a hard-working AA patrolman, a would-be beauty queen, a catty BBC radio personality - have all been killed with the same highly unusual murder weapon.

When you are an inoffensive retired librarian with bitter personal experience of Evil Talking Cats, do you rescue a kitten from the cold on a December night? Do you follow up news items about cats digging in graveyards? Do you inquire into long-ago cats who voyaged around the world with Captain Cook? Well, yes. If you are Alec Charlesworth, that is precisely what you do - with unexpected and terrifying consequences.

Brighton, 1957: a sunny seaside resort with a sinister underbelly. This den of villainy is policed by the touchingly innocent Inspector Steine, who naively believes he wiped out all the hoodlums in the Middle Street Massacre six years earlier. Can long-suffering Sergeant Brunswick and keen Constable Twitten persuade him that a criminal mastermind is at large - and that the station's charlady, Mrs Groynes, might bear investigation?

At a certain age, women gain a huge confidence about themselves because they realise that life’s too short to waste. These six women are in their 40s and each has a very different – and sometimes surprising – story to tell, from the husband who unexpectedly disappears, to the dreaded ‘other woman’, and the sisters who take an adventurous trip on the Nile together.

It's September in Brighton, and the city is playing host to weeks of endless rain and lashings of villainy. A trusted member of a local gang has disappeared part way through planning a huge heist, a violent criminal obsessed with boiling the heads of policemen has escaped Broadmoor and is rumoured to be headed towards the city, while at Gosling's department store, an American researcher has been found dead in the music section.

1957: In the beach town of Brighton, music is playing and guests are sunning themselves when a young man is found dead, dripping blood, in a deck chair. Constable Twitten of the Brighton Police Force has a hunch that the fiendish murder may be connected to a notorious nightspot, but his captain and his colleagues are - as ever - busy with other more important issues. Inspector Steine is being conned into paying for the honor of being featured at the Museum of Wax, and Sergeant Brunswick is trying (and failing) to get the attention of the distraught Brighton Belles who found the body.

Six men have reached a certain age, their 40-something years, and each has a very different – and sometimes surprising – story to tell, from the brother who receives an unexpected letter to a compulsive philanderer, and a news photographer sent on an unusual assignment. All are funny, touching, and as beautifully observed as would be expected from the author of the phenomenal best sellers Eats, Shoots & Leaves and Talk to the Hand.

During her time at the newspaper she faced disdain from fellow sports writers; undertook last-minute, pre-fight research into 'The Rumble in the Jungle' (Muhammad Ali won, surprisingly); tried unsuccessfully to interpret bizarre commentary and memorize results statistics; wept at football matches and discovered a lasting love for golf. She was even nominated for Sports Writer of the Year.

Recorded in front of a live audience, these wry, funny tales introduce us to the varied creatures who make their homes on the shoreline, in garden ponds and in our attics. In 18 comic monologues, they reveal the truth about what life is really like in their respective habitats - and it's much more eventful than you might think.