A game of Scrabble has serious consequences.

A semi-barbaric king devises a semi-barabaric (but entirely fair) method of criminal trial involving two doors, a beautiful lady and a very hungry tiger.

Zena could hardly believe that she was on a plane, gazing down over the North Island. Everything she knew about New Zealand came from Luke’s photographs and postcards: sparkling lagoons, snow-capped mountains and silver ferns.

“Three years,” I tell her, “Three years since I saw you in the courtroom, lying to save your husband. Perjuring yourself and destroying our case.”

Once there was a man named Frederick Alarcy who lived and died. He left a widow and two strong sons, and they lived through their grief on the slopes of Broken Pine Tor

‘Bloody hell!’ said Detective Constable Bright. ‘It’s a minefield!’ ‘There’s more …’ replied Detective Sergeant Dawes with a grimace.

“I heard there’s a Laok in town! Where is he?” Velmar had just raised a frothing mug to his lips when the Dwarf entered. To a novice Laok, such words might’ve caused concern.

Was this the reason his store had seen such a sudden decline in sales? And if so, what was so special about this new wave of bobbleheads?

Perhaps I even saw it as a foretaste of things to come: the hopefully not-too-distant days when my destiny would be fulfilled, and I’d be a key inhabitant, one of the new history makers.

What happened that day saved my life, and there is no way I would call what happened there a small tragedy

Looking round he saw an old woman dragging a bucket across the floor and holding a mop. When she realised that his eyes were upon her, she said in a throaty voice, ‘Oh, don’t mind me, dear. You carry on.’

The forest looked ethereal in the light from the moon overhead. Ghostly, eldritch, like Dave had stepped into another world. The branches swayed with a slight breeze, and the leaves rustled out a mellifluous harmony.

“It’s all right for you; you’re not meeting a brother you didn’t know you had. And I’ll tell you this - I’ve got a bad feeling about him already.

Mrs. Henshaw, grey-haired and ancient before her time, resting her rheumatic twig fingers in her pinny lap, sat facing a large wall mirror and rocked the gloom away.

You won't find me on any map either. I, too, have been buried, not by Tarmac and sand, but by time and indifference.

Corporal Earnest Goodheart is crouched in a ditch on the edge of an orchard between Dunkirk and De Panne. It’s 28th May 1940, just a day into the evacuations.

Knowing the day, you will die is strange. It filled me with a sort of anxious expectance until today. Now I just want it to be over with.

I hate Interstates. They’re boring, dangerous, and packed with people who pay little attention to what they’re doing. I love two-lane roads: the ones that meander through the countryside.

He wondered if he died there, would he grow into the poplar and live forever towering over the valley? It appealed to him, but dying could wait. At sixteen, life offered too much.

Most of our problems involve Grandma Grace, or rather her ashes. “It’s a public health violation,” Mom loves to snap at Dad. “We can’t have your dead mother on a shelf next to the food.