Who would want to kill Hugo Swart, by all accounts a quiet civil employee and pious young bachelor? To Lieutenant Tromp Kramer and his Bantu assistant, Sergeant Mickey Zondi, the case looks straightforward: Swart's manservant did it. But there are no easy answers this time - only a growing conviction that the risks involved in nabbing Swart's killer may be greater than they ever imagined. Read More...

Murder with a bicycle spoke. A technique perfected by Bantu gangs... It looks like a flea bite. Theresa Le Roux was a pretty young music teacher, who gave very private lessons. But for a mix-up at the undertakers no one would have known she had been murdered. Read More...

'Murder was not altogether a bad thing', mused Lieutenant Kramer of the Trekkersburg Murder Squad. But this one was. A twelve-year-old boy is found strangled and hideously mutilated. It looks like the work of a sex killer. Read More...

At first, it looked much like any other dead body. Breathtaking in its own way, of course, but nothing special... Then he saw that it far exceeded his expectations. He saw the arm bones fractured by a knot that must have been tightened by nothing less than a giant of a man, a human gorilla ... Read More...

The best songs and lyrical poems in the English language. Chosen and introduced by James Michie; illustrated with wood engravings by various artists selected by Simon Brett. Read More...

Superintendent Bone - a most unusual detective - discovered that many people wanted Nanny Gray dead. Not just those heirs of Sir Gareth Herne who were passed over when he left all his money to his old nurse. Read More...

Set of all five books in the series. Read More...

Through Russia and Siberian Tartary to the frontiers of China, the Frozen Sea and Kamtchatka. His simple idea - vindicated by experience at every point of his journey, at least in Siberia - was that one should travel as far as possible alone... Read More...

Only when it's too late does Mike Powell realise that he's wasted his talents as a jockey and spoilt his marriage. His riding career is in decline; his beautiful wife, Tessa, has left him. And, to cap it all, he's almost bankrupt, having tried to build a future by pinhooking. Then, on the way to the annual sportsperson awards ceremony, Mike is killed in a car crash. When his old friend Jed Harvard discovers that Mike's estate has been left to an American called George Parker - a man he's never head of before - his suspicions are aroused. Read More...

John Mortimer chose his favourite Rumpole stories for this collection - the ones that made him laugh while writing them, which is, he says, ‘the only reliable test of a successful piece of work’. Read More...