Charlie Horse has very set ideas of just how his pub should be run. No food (apart from crisps and nuts) and very definite ideas about what kind of customers are welcome in his hostelry.Until one day an inspector calls...Please note this is a short story and is quite difficult to categorise - there are slight elements of fantasy (although it has a contemporary setting) as well as a smattering of mystery, and also is intended to have a slight Pratchettesque feeling to it.

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When a blackened skeleton is unearthed on a building site in the City of London, no one can have the slightest idea of its extraordinary link to a plot to assassinate the Queen of Englandover 500 years ago. But there is one very conspicuous clue. On the index finger of the body's right hand is a gold ring topped with a brilliant, round emerald. DCI Jack Pendragon has just transferred from Oxford to Brick Lane Police Station - in part to escape his own past. Immediately, he finds himself investigating three particularly gruesome murders. And he will need all the experience he has acquired from two decades on the force to track down a killer for whom an eerie obsession has become total madness. A killer who draws his murderous inspiration from a Renaissance family whose power and cruelty remain a living legend. ### About the Author Michael White has been a professional musician, a science lecturer, newspaper columnist, science editor for GQ magazine and a series consultant for the Discovery Channel's The Science of the Impossible. First published in 1991, he is now the author of 27 books, including the bestselling Equinox and The Medici Secret. He was awarded the Bookman Prize in the US for best popular science book of 1998 for his biography of Isaac Newton, The Last Sorcerer and is an Honorary Research Fellow at Curtin University. He lives in Perth, Australia with his wife and four children. For more information visit Michael White's website at www.michaelwhite.com.au

"This book is a treasure and a guide. It is a type of healing for the intellect and the heart." - (Rebecca Lee)A lyrical and intimate account of how a poet, in the midst of a bad divorce, finds consolation and grace through viewing the paintings of Vermeer, in six world cities. In the midst of a divorce (in which the custody of his young daughter is at stake) and over the course of a year, the poet Michael White, travels to Amsterdam, The Hague, Delft, London, Washington, and New York to view the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, an artist obsessed with romance and the inner life. He is astounded by how consoling it is to look closely at Vermeer's women, at the artist's relationship to his subjects, and at how composition reflects back to the viewer such deep feeling. Includes the author's very personal study of Vermeer. Through these travels and his encounters with Vermeer's radiant vision, White finds grace and personal transformation."White brings [sensitivity] to his...