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October 2013

Ancient Sorceries And Other Chilling Tales
May 2013

Evelyn Waugh: a biography
A Talent To Annoy
October 2012

The Savage Wedding
Break of Day
Christmas Pudding (hardback gift edition)
Les Belles Amours
Marianne
July 2012

The Cabala
The Woman of Andros & The Ides of March
The Man on the Bridge
The Love of the Last Tycoon & The Crack-up
Roundabout Way
May 2012

On the Side of the Angels
The Secret City
The World Over
October 2011

Pigeon Pie
The Juniper Tree
Christmas Pudding
July 2011

New Arabian Nights
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab
Uncommon Law
May 2011

When I was Otherwise
The Real Charlotte
October 2010

A Christmas Carol - No Longer Available
The Aloe - No Longer Available
The Gift of the Magi - No Longer Available
Agnes Grey - No Longer Available
July 2010

The Undiscovered Country
Island Pharisees - No Longer Available
Heart of Darkness - No Longer Available
Highland Fling
May 2010

The Man Who Loved Children
Maurice Guest - No Longer Available
Peking Picnic
The Unbearable Bassington - No Longer Available
March 2010

Scenes from the Latin Quarter - No Longer Available
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The Knot of Vipers
The Green Child
January 2010

The Dupin Mysteries
These Charming People
Non Combatants and others
October 2009

Allan Quatermain
A State of Change
Love in Winter
July 2009

We, the Accused
Incandescence
Shirley's Guild
May 2009

Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal
You Shall Know Them
My Name is Aram
Silas Marner - No Longer Available
March 2009

South Wind
The Conclave
Potiki
Two People
January 2009

Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill - Kindle edition
The Voyage
Mr Perrin and Mr Traill - No Longer Available
Love in a Wych Elm & Other Stories
Tales of Sexual Desire
October 2008

Juan in America
How I Became a Holy Mother
Kidnapped - No Longer Available
The Hireling
July 2008

The Hound of the Baskervilles - No Longer Available
Messer Marco Polo - No Longer Available
Green Dolphin Country
The Incredulity of Father Brown
June 2008

The Dark Flower - No Longer Available
The Napoleon of Notting Hill
Dracula - No Longer Available
The Man who Knew Everything - Kindle edition
The Man Who Knew Everything
March 2008

The Green Hat
An Error of Judgement
On Horseback and Other Stories
Plain Tales from the Hills - No Longer Available
You Shall Know Them







May 2009160 pages, paperback
125x195mm, Portrait
ISBN-10: 0955915678
ISBN-13: 9780955915673
Vercors;  Anne Atkins (Foreword)
Very early one morning a doctor is called out to attend the corpse of a newborn baby who has been killed, the father freely admits, by a shot of strychnine chlorhydrate which he himself has administered. The police are called, but where is the mother? ‘She was taken back to the Zoo yesterday.’ ‘The Zoo? Does she work there?’ ‘No, she lives there … The mother is not a woman, properly speaking. She is a female of the species Paranthropus erectus.’

So begins Vercors’ classic novel raising the question: What is man?

Murder or not? The Paranthropus ("tropi" for short) are a large tribe of New Guinea cliff-dwellers who smoke their meat and bury their dead. Simian in many of their physical characteristics, they are normally erect in stance though happy to drop to all fours at a moment’s notice. Australian wool interests hope that the "tropis" will prove to be a dream come true - workers who can be trained to operate a loom without benefit of paycheck.

Newspaperman Douglas Templemore, an idealist, considers the tropis a fine chance for a test case. By killing his son (bred by artificial insemination of a female tropi), Douglas hopes to cause a riot in the realm of race relations. Is he a murderer or merely an owner of a pet, which he has "put to sleep"?

As Templemore comes up for trial the scientific experts file into the witness box; one is deaf, one is shortsighted, one is smooth as candle grease; but none agrees with the next on what constitutes a human being. Is man to be defined by his jawbone? By his rational capacity? By his grasp of metaphysics? Or is the judge right when he muses (without a trace of cynicism) that the tropis must be animals because they are not cannibals?
Vercors - Jean Bruller, who died in 1991, was a French writer and illustrator who co-founded Les Editions de Minuit during the World War II occupation of northern France, publishing his texts under the pseudonym Vercors - an area which was a centre for the Resistance.

Anne Atkins - Anne Atkins is a novelist, broadcaster and journalist. She is the author of several novels and works of non-fiction, and is a regular contributor to Thought for the Day on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.