Pictures of Perfection

Reginald Hill - Pictures of Perfection
High in the Mid-Yorkshire dales stand the pretty village of Enscombe, proud survivor of all that history has thrown at it. But now market forces mass at the gates and the old way of life seems to be changing fast. The Law can do little to stop the ever-growing crimes against tradition, but when a policeman goes missing DCI Pascoe gets worried.

Under World

Reginald Hill - Under World
When young Tracey Pedley vanished in the woods around Burrthorpe, the close-knit community had their own ideas about what had happened, but Deputy Chief Constable Watmough has it down as the work of a child-killer who has since committed suicide -- though others wondered about the last man to see her alive and his fatal plunge into the disused mine shaft. Returning to a town he left in anger,

Child's Play

Reginald Hill - Child's Play
When a battered Ford Escort containing one very dead Italian turns up in the police car park, Peter Pascoe and his bloated superior Dalziel, are plunged into an investigation that makes internal police politics look like child's play.

Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling

Almost 500 years after Michelangelo Buonarroti frescoed the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, the site still attracts throngs of visitors and is considered one of the artistic masterpieces of the world. Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling unveils the story behind the art's making, a story rife with all the drama of a modern-day soap opera.
The temperament of the day was dictated by the politics of the papal court, a corrupt and powerful office steeped in controversy; Pope Julius II even had a nickname, "Il Papa Terrible," to prove it. Along with his violent outbursts and warmongering

Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History

At the end of 1618, a blazing green star soared across the night sky over the northern hemisphere. From the Philippines to the Arctic, the comet became a sensation and a symbol, a warning of doom or a promise of salvation. Two years later, as the Pilgrims prepared to sail across the Atlantic on board the Mayflower, the atmosphere remained charged with fear and expectation. Men and women readied themselves for war,
pestilence, or divine retribution. Against this background, and amid deep economic depression, the Pilgrims conceived their enterprise of exile.