Showing results by narrator "John Banks" in All Categories

An extravaganza of suburban noir - complete with one orgy, one brothel and a series of firearms disputes - from Adam Thirlwell, twice selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. This yarn takes place in the suburbs of a giant city. In Brasilia they’re coming off their night shift; in Tokyo they’re having their first whisky sours. That’s what’s happening elsewhere in the world when our hero wakes up. Together with his wife and dog, he lives at home with his parents.

"Dear Mervyn. If you want to prevent a murder, then you must attend the recording at the Sounderama studios on Thursday. Signed: a friend." Vixens from the Void is back! After twenty-five years, the popular leather-clad astro-erotic sci-fi television show is returning! Well, sort of. Actually, some devoted Vixens fans have got the licence to do some audios featuring the original cast, and they've invited Mervyn Stone to write an episode. But that's not the only thing he's been invited to do.

The more I knew of Haffner, writes Adam Thirlwell in The Escape, the more real he became, this was true. And, simultaneously, Haffner disappeared. In a forgotten spa town snug in the Alps, at the end of the twentieth century, Haffner is seeking a cure, more women, and a villa that belonged to his late wife. But really he is trying to escape: from his family, his lovers, his history, his entire Haffnerian condition. For Haffner is 78. Haffner, in other words, is too old to be grown up.

The sharp, funny, entirely original and explosive debut novel by Adam Thirlwell – twice named one of the Best Young British Novelists by Granta magazine. In case you had not noticed, writes Adam Thirlwell in his first novel, Politics, in this book I am not interested in anything so small as the history of the USSR. I am not writing anything so limited. In this epic miniature, therefore, Politics tells the story of three kids in their twenties falling in love with each other in London.

Connor Alasdair’s parents have never lied to him; they’ve always treated him like an adult and included him in family discussions. So why won’t they tell him about the strange red-haired man who keeps visiting their home? Why is his father lying about the monster in their back garden? And why are both parents so insistent that he stops asking questions? Yesterday 1990s suburbia held no terror for a 15 year-old boy.

Doses of concentrated thrills and pure, raw excitement are delivered directly on the heels of the most explosive musical theme in radio - a crashing rendition of Mussorgsky's "Night On Bald Mountain". Produced and directed by William N. Robson, Norman MacDonnell, and Antony Ellis - and featuring stories by Rudyard Kipling, Ambrose Bierce, and more - Escape is capable of chilling spines as expertly as it accelerates heartbeats.

George Simling has grown up in the city-state of Illyria, an enclave of logic and reason founded as a refuge from the Reaction, a wave of religious fundamentalism that swept away the nations of the 21st century. Yet to George, Illyria's militant rationalism is as close-minded and stifling as the faith-based superstition that dominates the world outside its walls. For George has fallen in love with Lucy. A prostitute. A robot. She might be a machine, but the semblance of life is perfect. And beneath her good looks and real human skin, her seductive, sultry, sluttish software is simmering on the edge of consciousness. To the city authorities robot sentience is a malfunction, curable by periodically erasing and resetting silicon minds. Simple maintenance, no real problem, it’s only a machine. But it’s a problem for George, he knows that Lucy is something more.

A global pandemic forces Poe and Tilly to self-isolate together. Things don't go well. They're bickering and on the verge of falling out until Poe finds an old case file: a locked-room mystery he's been mulling over for years. Step forward, Tilly Bradshaw.