Discworld: Ankh-Morpork City Watch

If you find yourself ruminating on questions like "Where have all the dragons gone?" then this is the story for you. Explore the crazy, creepy land called Discworld, where you'll discover that the dragons aren't asleep or dead - they're dormant, packed in like huge, scaly sardines. Join in the search for the key to their closed-in, comatose world in this eighth fantastical Discworld novel.

In the four decades since his first book appeared in print, Terry Pratchett has become one of the world’s best-selling and best-loved authors. Here for the first time are his short stories and other short form fiction collected into one volume. A Blink of the Screen charts the course of Pratchett’s long writing career: from his schooldays through to his first writing job on the Bucks Free Press, and the origins of his debut novel, The Carpet People; and on again to the dizzy mastery of the Discworld series.

The town of Ankh-Morpork is in big trouble and the City Watch is desperate for a few good men to protect it. But all they've got are the dwarves Corporal Carrot and Lance-constable Cuddy, the troll Lance-constable Detritus, Lance-constable Angua, who is believed to be a woman and, worst of all, Corporal Nobbs, who has been disqualified from the human race for shoving! These underdogs need all the help they can get, for they've been given only 24 hours to clean up the war-torn town.

Who's murdering harmless old men? Who's poisoning the Patrician? As autumn fogs hold Ankh-Morpork in their grip, the City Watch has to track down a murderer who can't be seen. Maybe the golems know something - but the solemn men of clay, who work all day and night and are never any trouble to anyone, have started to commit suicide....

A weathercock has risen from the sea of Discworld and suddenly you can tell which way the wind is blowing. A new land has surfaced and so have old feuds. And as two armies march, Commander Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch has got just a few hours to deal with a crime so big that there's no law against it. It's called 'war'.

Sam Vines is a man on the run. Yesterday, he was a duke, a chief of police, and an ambassador. Now he has nothing but his native wit and the gloomy trousers of Uncle Vanya. And if he can't make it through the forest to civilisation, there's going to be a terrible war. But there are monsters on his trail. They're werewolves - and they're catching up. Sam Vimes is out of time and already out of breath....

Truth! Justice! Freedom! And a hard-boiled egg! Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch had it all. But now he's back in his own rough, tough past, without even the clothes he was standing up in when the lightning struck. Living in the past is hard. Dying in the past is incredibly easy. But he must survive; he has a job to do.

Koom Valley? That was where the trolls ambushed the dwarfs, or the dwarfs ambushed the trolls. It was far away. It was a long time ago. But if he doesn't solve the murder of just one dwarf, Commander Sam Vimes of Ankh-Morpork City Watch is going to see it fought again, right outside his office.

From Snuff: Vimes looked at the cover. The title was The World of Poo. When his wife was out of eyeshot he carefully leafed through it. Well, okay, you had to accept that the world had moved on and these days’ fairy stories were probably not going to be about twinkly little things with wings. As he turned page after page, it dawned on him that whomever had written this book, they certainly knew what would make kids like Young Sam laugh until they were nearly sick. The bit about sailing down the river almost made him smile.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse. And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder. He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. They say that in the end all sins are forgiven.