Fourteen impossible mysteries from the masters of the Golden Age detective story.‘Lock your door and enjoy’ – KirkusLocked-room mysteries have baffled and delighted readers for generations. They present the reader with a seemingly impossible crime – a body found inside a windowless room that’s been locked from the inside, for example – before revealing an ingenious and satisfying solution.This unique collection features fou...

What really happened back in the first century, in Jerusalem and around the Sea of Galilee, that changed the shape of world history? Who is this figure that emerges from history to have a profound impact on culture, ethics, politics, and philosophy? Join historian John Dickson on this journey through the life of Jesus. This book, which features a self-contained discussion guide for use with Life of Jesus DVD, will help you and your friends dig deeper into what is known about Jesus’ life an...

Who was Jesus?Historical sources portray a person who was complex, multi-layered, and often contradictory to the tidy portrait that much of modern Christianity paints him as. Even the gospel accounts render him as both judge and healer, teacher and temple, servant and savior.A Doubter's Guide to Jesus is a persuasive and often challenging investigation into the historical figure found in the earliest sources. These sources, which include references...

'The Starberths die of broken necks' goes the legend in the village of Chatterham . . .The Starberth family governed the now-abandoned Chatterham prison for many years, and each male heir must spend the night of his twenty-fifth birthday there, alone, overlooking the hanging site of Hag's Nook.Meanwhile, after a chance encounter on a railway platform, Dorothy Starberth and young American graduate Tad Rampole fall in love. Rampole is here in rural Lincolnshire to ...

The most famous of all locked-room mysteries - a classic in the crime genre.If you like the new KNIVES OUT film WAKE UP DEAD MAN you'll love this!***'***The sheer ingenuity of the plot is a delight' Daily Mail'A key influence on WAKE UP DEAD MAN' Radio Times'The first deadly walking of the hollow man took place when the side streets of London were quiet with snow and the three coffins of...

Rita Wainwright's love affair with Barry Sullivan is flamboyant enough to deserve a dramatic ending, so that when the pair of them vanish over a cliff one rainy night, leaving a farewell note for Rita's husband, no one doubts for a moment that it is a case of suicide – except for Doctor Luke, one of the few people who genuinely liked her.Sir Henry Merrivale – the fabulous 'H.M.' – is staying in the area, having his portrait painted as a Roman senator. Although confined to a bath-ch...

Is the world better off without Christianity?Combining narrative with keen critique of contemporary debates, author and historian John Dickson gives an honest account of 2,000 years of Christian history that helps us understand what Christianity is and what it's meant to be.To say that the Christian Church has an "image problem" doesn't quite capture it. From the Crusades and the Inquisition to the racism and abuse present in today's Church--both in Catholi...

The Ten Commandments have influenced non-religious Western culture more than it might imagine. This guide to the famous rules does more than explain what they are or what they say, but why we need them.This moral code in the Old Testament of the Bible—from which sprang ideas of justice, compassion, human rights, and freedom—has had such a strong impact on our society that it seems to represent what most of us think of as basic ethical reasoning. Even atheists like ...

Christianity, depending on who you ask, is either a scourge on our society, narrow, delusive, and inevitably producing hatred and violence; or the foundation of some of the best elements of our culture and a continued source of hope, comfort to those in need, and moral inspiration. Are we talking about the same people here? Are we looking at the same history?Crusades, witch hunts, slavery, colonialism, child abuse … the history of the church offers plenty of ammunition to its critic...

Having lost all his money in hare-brained get-rich-quick schemes, old Angus Campbell has nothing to leave his heirs but the proceeds of his life insurance policies. After he falls to his death from a locked bedchamber in the tower of Shira Castle in the Scottish Highlands, his family gather. They are joined by amateur sleuth Dr Gideon Fell, who tries to solve the mystery. Is it suicide, or is it murder?From Shira to Glencoe Gideon Fell trains his forensic intelligence on trying to ...

Soils and national characters differ; but fairy tales are the same in plot and incidents, if not in treatment. The majority of the tales in this volume have been known in the West in some form or other, and the problem arises how to account for their simultaneous existence in farthest West and East. Some - as Benfey in Germany, M. Cosquin in France, and Mr. Clouston in England - have declared that India is the Home of the Fairy Tale, and that all European fairy tales have been brought from...

Mister Hamilton, John Dickson's first collection in eighteen years, is an appealing, questioning mix of elements. Over a base of South Island bedrock (granite, schist, greywacke), Dickson has peopled this quietly fiery collection with day-to-day working voices and narratives, sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, sometimes charged with a political consciousness and lyrical intensity. Shot-through with veins of jazz, rock and blues, quizzical religiosity and a streak of the absurd, th...