Bøker av Andrew Martin

In this book the highly experienced coach international master Andrew Martin explains the basic ideas behind all the different variations you can encounter after 1 d4 d5 2 c4. First Steps is a new opening series and is ideal for improving players who want simple and straightforward explanations.

First Steps is a new opening series and is ideal for improving players who want simple and straightforward explanations.

Detective Superintendent George Quinn - Mayfair resident and dandy with a razor-sharp brain - has set up a new police unit, dedicated to investigating the super-rich. When he is shot in mysterious circumstances, DI Blake Reynolds is charged with taking over. But Reynolds hadn't bargained for Quinn's personal assistant - the flinty Victoria Clifford - who knows more than she's prepared to reveal...The trail left by Quinn leads to a jewellery theft, a murderous conspiracy among some of the most glamorous (and richest) Russians in London - and the beautiful Anna, who challenges Reynolds' professional integrity. Reynolds and Clifford must learn to work together fast - or risk Quinn's fate.Set in the heart of twenty-first-century Mayfair, a world of champagne, Lamborghinis and Savile Row suits, The Yellow Diamond is a brilliant new venture from one of our best loved crime authors - meticulously plotted, wonderfully humane and hugely enjoyable.

North East India, 1923. On the broiling Night Mail from Calcutta to Jamalpur, a man is shot dead in a first class compartment. Detective Inspector Jim Stringer was sleeping in the next compartment along. Was he the intended target? Jim should have known that his secondment to the East Indian Railway, with a roving brief to inspect security arrangements, would not be the working holiday he had hoped for. The country seethes with political and racial tension. Aside from the Jamalpur shooting, someone is placing venomous snakes - including giant king cobras - in the first class compartments of the railway. Jim also has worries on the home front: his daughter has formed a connection with a Maharajah's son, who may in turn have a connection to Jim's incredibly rude colleague, the bristling Major Fisher. Jim must do everything he can to keep his family safe from harm, as he unravels the intrigues that surround him...

Why is the Victoria Line so hot? What is an Electrical Multiple Unit? Is it really possible to ride from King's Cross to King's Cross on the Circle line? This book offers an informative history of everything you need to know about the Tube.

Baghdad 1917. Captain Jim Stringer, invalided from the Western Front, has been dispatched to investigate what looks like a nasty case of treason. He arrives to find a city on the point of insurrection, his cover apparently blown - and his only contact lying dead with flies in his eyes. As Baghdad swelters in a particularly torrid summer, the heat alone threatens the lives of the British soldiers who occupy the city. The recently ejected Turks are still a danger - and many of the local Arabs are none too friendly either.For Jim, who is not particularly good in warm weather, the situation grows pricklier by the day. Aside from his investigation, he is working on the railways around the city. His boss is the charming, enigmatic Lieutenant-Colonel Shepherd, who presides over the gracious dining society called The Baghdad Railway Club - and who may or may not be a Turkish agent. Jim's search for the truth brings him up against murderous violence in a heat-dazed, labyrinthine city where an enemy awaits around every corner.

On the first day of the Somme enlisted railwayman Jim Stringer lies trapped in a shell hole, smoking cigarette after cigarette under the bullets and the blazing sun. He calculates his chances of survival - even before they departed for France, a member of Jim's unit had been found dead. During the stand-off that follows, Jim and his comrades must operate by night the vitally important trains carrying munitions to the Front, through a ghostly landscape of shattered trees where high explosive and shrapnel shells rain down. Close co-operation and trust are vital. Yet proof piles up of an enemy within, and as a ferocious military policeman pursues his investigation into the original killing, the finger of accusation begins to point towards Jim himself . . .

The bestselling author of Underground, Overground recaptures the glamour of a lost age of rail travel and trains by travelling Britain's most famous train journeys.

The Off-Broadway hit musical Godspell became a worldwide cultural phenomenon in 1972 when, just over a year after its award-winning emergence on stages around the world and with the Top 20 Billboard hit "Day by Day," Columbia Pictures decided to film and release it on the silver screen across the globe. In the process, it created cinematic history for its use of locations around New York City (including the then-unfinished World Trade Center) and, at the same time, accomplished the nearly-impossible by taking a small stage show¿one that had been originally created as a college thesis¿and unleashing it upon a world of moviegoers who have since continued to embrace it as one of the greatest musical hits of all time, as well as a celebrated Easter special and a score that will live forever.Film historian Andrew Martin has captured every step of the show's journey, from school play to an indelible part of modern culture, and depicts in glowing detail all the highs¿and lows¿of a production that will always live on in the hearts and minds of all who watch and enjoy. Featuring interviews with composer Stephen Schwartz, producer Edgar Lansbury, and star Victor Garber, besides all of the film's surviving co-stars and key players from the creative team, this impossible-to-put-down story of "the little show that could" is certain to bewitch the reader from the very first sentence. About the AuthorANDREW MARTIN is an award-winning writer and entertainer who, for over thirty years, has been an actor/singer/dancer on stage as well as film and television, an entertainment journalist for news in print, broadcast and Internet sources, a standup comedian and cabaret singer, and film historian. All for the Best is his first published book. He currently resides in his native New York City.

One night, in a private boarding house in Scarborough, a railwayman vanishes, leaving his belongings behind... It is the eve of the Great War, and Jim Stringer, railway detective, is uneasy about his next assignment. And when Jim encounters the seductive and beautiful Amanda Rickerby a whole new personal danger enters Jim's life...

It is the summer of 1911 and as Britain is gripped by paranoia about German spies and secret preparations for war, railway detective Jim Stringer decides to set out for a much-needed holiday.But before he can leave he finds himself escorting a young aristocrat, Hugh Lambert, who is on his way to be executed for the murder of his father. When Hugh warns that a second murder is imminent in his isolated village, Jim sees a chance to kill two birds with one stone. And so, as he visits the village with his wife Lydia on the pretext of holidaying, Jim finds he has one weekend in which to stop another murder and unravel a conspiracy of international dimensions . . .'Enough historical details and rural oddbods for a BBC serial, a baffling plot and - most importantly - good writing.' Scotland on Sunday'Fascinating . . . Altogether an entertaining read.' Crimesquad.com'An eccentric and engaging novel.' Sunday Times'The period detail is wonderful . . . The story builds up a good head of steam early on and rattles along nicely to a satisfying conclusion.' Guardian

The latest in Andrew Martin's much-loved 'Jim Stringer, Steam Detective' series. 'Andrew Martin has recreated an extraordinarily convincing world . . . Terrific.' Daily TelegraphDecember, 1909. A train hits a snowdrift in the frozen Cleveland Hills. In the process of clearing the line a body is discovered, and so begins a dangerous case for struggling railway detective Jim Stringer, a case which will take him from the Highlands to Fleet Street to the mighty blast furnaces of Ironopolis.Jim's faltering career hangs on whether he can solve the murder, but before long Jim finds himself fighting not just for his job, but also for his life . . .'A wonderful evocation of Edwardian Britain . . . Tough, scary and funny, this is a novel for anyone who loves a page-turning detective story.' Independent on Sunday'Stringer is at the heart of a series of historical crime novels that shows no sign of running out of steam.' Sunday Times

This highly original study is concerned with the theory of knowledge. It approaches the subject in a new way by exploring the recurrent paradox which equates pure ignorance with perfect knowledge, twin ideals free from the impurities and imperfections of discourse.

From the author of "Bilton", this is a funny, macabre thriller about jealousy, drugs, media-friendly Yorkshiremen, salmon fishing, modernist chair design and gruesome death (both accidental and premeditated), all set against a backdrop of beautiful Georgian architecture and the English countryside.

'A steamy whodunnit . . . This may well be the best fiction about the railways since Dickens.' Independent on Sunday'Genuinely gripping . . . The sort of thing D. H. Lawrence might have written had he been less verbose or been blessed with a sense of humour.' Peter Parker, Evening Standard (Books of the Year)A superbly atmospheric thriller of sabotage, suspicion and steam, The Blackpool Highflyer brings a new twist to tales of Edwardian England and amateur sleuthing. Assigned to drive holidaymakers to the seaside resort of Blackpool in the hot summer of 1905, Jim Stringer is happy to have left behind the grime and danger of life in London. But his dreams of beer and pretty women are soon shattered - when his high-speed train meets a huge millstone on the line . . .'A clear winner in literary crime writing . . . Dazzling attention to detail and quality writing from one of our best contemporary male novelists.' Daily Express

'A brilliant murder mystery set in Edwardian London about a railway line that runs only to a massive cemetery.' Daily MirrorWhen railwayman Jim Stringer moves to the garish and tawdry London of 1903, he finds his duties are confined to a mysterious graveyard line. The men he works alongside have formed an instant loathing for him - and his predecessor has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Can Jim work out what is going on before he too is travelling on a one-way coffin ticket aboard the Necropolis Railway? 'Guaranteed to make the flesh creep and the skin crawl, a masterful novel about a mad, clanking, fog-bound world.' Simon Winchester'A murderous conspiracy of a plot graced with style, wit and the sharp, true taste of a time gone by ... So beautifully nuanced and so effortlessly pleasurable to read that you almost want to keep it a personal secret.' Independent on Sunday

'Unerringly sharp and pioneeringly original, it locks the reader in from start to finish.' Andrew Barrow, SpectatorWinter, 1906. It's Jim Stringer's first day as an official railway detective, but he's not a happy man.As the rain falls incessantly on the city's ancient streets, the local paper carries a story highly unusual by York standards: two brothers have been shot to death. Soon Jim enters the orbit of a dangerous, disturbed villain - and discovers that the two murders are barely the start of his plans . . .'A cracking good thriller.' Independent on Sunday'Crime narratives dispatched with a Dickensian relish . . . Delectable stuff.' Daily Express'Has the charm of Alexander McCall Smith's simple-is-good philosophising and its addictive quality.' Metro