Bøker av Barry Durham

Witch-Haven... a big old Georgian house set deep in the Lancashire countryside that belongs to Doctor Mary Conway - an exceptional young woman who is not only a Doctor of Philosophy, but also an extremely accomplished witch.She has barely got herself settled in before she offers a home to three half-elf girls and their mother, two trainee witches and a werewolf. Not forgetting the two-hundred-year-old witch who lives in the attic because the house once belonged to her but she went away on holiday for so long that she was declared dead and the house was sold to Dr Conway by her estate!Oh, and the grounds are tended by a flower elf who just happens to be the father of the half-elf girls.Then something creeps in through a window in the middle of the night...Just your everyday country residence really...

The pumpkins are all ready for the Hallowe'en Jack-o'-Lantern competition in Grandad Gordon's allotment when someone creeps in at the dead of night and smashes them all to bits! Figaro the Cat Detective, and his trusty sidekick Harrison the toad, have just twenty-four hours to solve the mystery and help save the day.

How come my new computer panics when I type the word 'poltergeist'? What would happen if the spiral of history brought two famous star-crossed lovers back together again in the 21st century? How would you deal with a toddler who started to show magical powers at pre-school? What if your daughter's imaginary friend suddenly started to become all too real? What is the secret of the isolated Inn discovered by a group of hikers on the Lancashire Moors? And how has Private Investigator Kat Hewitt's dead granddad ended up in the local police station on Christmas Day?Six strange stories of magic and the paranormal from the author of the Detective Inspector Stone Supernatural Crime novels.

In a children's playground in a Lancashire village a baby girl is stolen from her pram by an elf who had a brief liaison with her mother. Not understanding that human children grow up very differently to elves, Pinkie Dianthus takes little Tiffany to Fairyland to look after him in his old age.But he soon realises his mistake when she won't stop crying because she wants a feed and her nappy needs changing! He hurriedly returns her to her mother only to be collared by trainee werewolf Thomas Chester and his girlfriend Rosie. They hand him over to the police and a powerful young witch, Mary Conway, who makes him vow to leave Tiffany and her mother alone.But he soon breaks his promise and kidnaps his daughter twice more. She escapes but, because time runs strangely in Fairyland, each time she returns to the human realm she is older than when she left.When Tiffany is taken for a third time, just after the Beltane celebrations at her new home, Mary decides the time has come to sort things out with the elves once and for all.

A walk on the fells above a Lancashire village to escape the boredom of pandemic lockdown, ends with teenager Thomas Chester being followed home by what appears to be a blue-eyed Husky dog.Despite their best efforts the family cannot trace her owner because what they do not know is that the 'dog' has a secret.She is really Rozalia Lupuratu, the sole survivor of a group of immigrant werewolves from Transylvania who has managed to exist for seven years with a spectral pack of wolves on the fells but has now been told by the alpha male that she must leave and find a mate among her own kind.She chooses Thomas, but first she needs to return to human form which is not easy after so many years as a wolf. She finally manages it with the help of his cousin, a powerful young witch called Mary Conway.Then Thomas is struck down by the Coronavirus...

An unexpected legacy enables Valerie McKellern to buy her first house: a newly built semi-detached on an estate that is still being developed in the Lancashire countryside.Unfortunately for Val, it appears to be haunted.That does not deter her best friend Leigh however for when Val asks if she would consider a house share, Leigh jumps at the chance - especially after an encounter with her pervy landlord.After contacting Ratcliffe and Kat, a pair of private detectives who specialize in 'Unusual Investigations', they manage to discover the strange type of entity involved in the haunting.However, as work continues on the rest of the estate, suddenly body parts begin to turn up in one of the newly dug foundations.Detective Chief Inspector Stone finds himself heading up a murder investigation that has its root causes in events on the North Island of New Zealand more than a hundred years ago at the turn of the twentieth century.

On the edge of a playing field in the Lancashire town of Longridge is an abandoned railway tunnel that is reputedly haunted. It used to serve an old stone quarry that has now been given a new lease of life as a holiday park. Six eighteen-year-old friends are staying in a static caravan at the park when one night a violent storm forces them to stay indoors. One of the girls downloads a talking Ouija Board app to her laptop for 'a bit of fun', but the following morning the three boys in the group have gone missing. Detective Sergeant Pauline Pilkington is handed the job of finding out what has happened to them but has little luck until DCI Stone calls in the Unusual Investigations team of former Detective Constable Jerry Ratcliffe and his partner, the corporeal spirit of murdered witch Kat Hewitt. Their enquires lead them to an encounter with a boggart known as The Headless Woman of Longridge. Then Sergeant Pilkington disappears as well.

On one of his nightly patrols Figaro The Cat Detective bumps into a strange black cat. It seems Meow 5 have sent a secret agent to the villagebecause they have heard that robbers plan to raid the local cheese factory and steal the bombs that are made there. Agent D (the strange black cat) asks Figaro for help and he, in turn, calls on the village cats and his best human friends in all the world. But how are they going to stop two very determined robbers?(Illustrated by the pupils of Lea Endowed CE Primary School, Preston, UK)

Someone has been hanging coloured bags of dog pooh on bushes! Figaro the Cat Detective and his partner Harrison the toad set out to discover the culprit and, with the help of his two best human friends in all the world, stop it happening again.

In a tarn in a country park in the heart of the Lancashire countryside floats the murdered body of a young man. His death creates plenty of problems for Detective Chief Inspector Alf Stone because, according to the police pathologist, this is not the first time he has appeared on the autopsy slab. The investigation uncovers the age-old 'were' tradition of the county where witches were able to transform into hares to escape the law. Urged on by three ancient deities, young witch Mary Conway learns the art of the 'were' as part of a plan to bring to an end the resurgence of the illegal 'sport' of hare coursing once and for all. But her intervention uncovers a far more sinister threat: camped not far from the park are a group of renegade Romani led by a wolf-witch. They have been forced to flee from the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania and now plan to set up a colony on Wolf Fell in the hills above the village of Chipping.