Hana Nasir Online

Neverwhere [gallery columns="4" orderby="rand"] You will never look at London with the same eyes again. Neil Gaiman's 'Underside' is a delight from start to finish. Richard Mayhew, a young Scot living and working in London, finds himself helping a young girl lying in a street who is being pursued by two sinister looking men. Reluctantly, he finds himself being drawn into a tangled web of a plot that leads him to an London Below, a London that exists both beneath London and as a parallel alternative universe London, a London where people live who 'fall through the cracks.' This London is highly inventive, richly detailed, and, despite the unrealness of it, convincing. I, for one, will never be able to take the London Underground again and wonder about the trains with darkened windows that go though the stations without stopping ' Do they carry the court of the Earl on it? And how did Earl's Court get its name? Or Baron's Court, for th...

A Study in Scarlet (Sherlock Offers

A Study in Scarlet (Sherlock Holmes) [gallery columns="4" orderby="rand"] Wonderfully entertaining It is 1878 and Doctor John Watson, his health damaged by his experiences with the British Army in Afghanistan during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, is looking for lodgings in the great city of London. It seems fortuitous, when a mutual friend introduces him to another who needs someone to share costs on a suite on Baker Street, but this other man is quite an eccentric. Sherlock Holmes has bent his life and education towards turning himself into the premier detective. Watson can hardly credit Holmes's claims of what a first-class detective can do. But, when a note arrives from a Scotland Yard detective, inviting Holmes to consult on a particularly mysterious murder, Watson soon finds himself carried along by Holmes, watching his new friend's powers unravel a seemingly inscrutable knot. The game is afoot, and Holmes needs to solve a murder, and bring a murderer to...

Fragile Things Great Price

Fragile Things [gallery columns="4" orderby="rand"] Dreams and unusual realities Gaiman is a writer of rich and vivid imagination. This collection of short stories, short fiction and poems demonstrate his talent on every page. Hovering between reality and fantasy he has created a distinctive world peopled with ordinary people, young and old, who meet up with ghosts, zombies and other creatures. With great skill and ease Gaiman creates credible characters and compelling scenarios. Some "fragile things" describe dreams, others move effortlessly from actuality to visions of otherworldliness often taking the reader by surprise. Most of the stories in this collection have a serious, some a macabre, side to them. At the same time, humour and irony are natural companions. There is the young boy, ignored by his family and peers, who finally meets a friend and companion as he runs away to start a new life. A Harlequin character reinvents himself with every real...