David Elvar: 25 books

A friend whose only pastime appears to be food, a letter that purports to be some kind of magic spell, a bullying oaf obsessed with some mythical treasure - what else does a gentleman of leisure need in his life? Toadmix is about to find out...

Elisa is fourteen years old. She has an English mother and a Sicilian father. She was born in England but raised in Sicily, and when her parents split up, she returns willingly to England with her mother. This is where the problems start. Unfortunately for her, her father has the law on his...

I doubt that Zeus ever guessed it might come to this, gifted with foresight though he be. Worsted by his own art, or so he would have it, but he fashions the world to his liking alone and how else should he feel when his creations grow according to their will rather than his own? Jealousy? Pride? Yes, and in measure to befit the God of Gods.

So how did I come to this? Oh, I doubt it not: you will have heard the manner of my death, handed down to you second or perhaps even third hand, each retelling receiving just that little extra embellishment, another grain of shock to add spice to the feast. Very possibly if I know the tongues that wag in this parish. But whatever you heard, be assured you know less than the half of it.

Only by stepping outside of yourself can you hope to understand yourself. Only by stepping outside of life can you begin to understand life. I tried to do both. I rolled up my portion of Space and Time, and as I stood naked in the middle of nowhere and nowhen, I started to think. And that is why I’m here.

She swung round…blinked once—twice—maybe a third time…and started backing away.This is it, she was thinking wildly, this is the clincher. You’re not dead at all, you’re just having the mother of all nightmares. You’ll wake up any second now and you’ll be back home. In bed. Still...

Sometimes, perhaps too many times, kindness is not what it seems...

‘Look to yourself, Myles Phillipson! ’Tis a fine thing you think you have done but this miserable parcel of land you lust after will prove the dearest a Phillipson ever got. You will never prosper. The time shall come when no Phillipson will own an inch of land. And while stand the walls of your fine new house, we will haunt it night and day. You will never be rid of us! NEVER!’

There was wealth here, he could feel it. Wealth they could tap, wealth they could liberate. They felt no qualms about what they did: most profit is earned on the sweat of another, most is undeserved. Most is then simply being returned to where it belonged. Not stealing, more a repositioning of resources. Another sanitising label. They had learned well from their political masters.

No one suspected, did they. Maybe we’d just gotten too caught up in our own sense of goodwill to wonder. Let’s face it, where famine stalks, death’s just a few steps behind, the oldest and the weakest the first losers, but where were the bodies?

‘It is a curse we have lived with, this past century and more, sir,’ he said. ‘That post holds down the ghost of one Peter Christian Holm, one-time administrator of the mill here and the surrounding farms.’‘Holds down the ghost!’ I repeated, aghast. ‘But how? And why?’‘Let me tell you the story, sir. Let me take you back into our past...’