In an aspirin bottle, nobody can hear you scream. Outside, however, things are somewhat different. And when Kayaguchiya Integrated Circuits III (Kiss, to his friends), a Force Twelve genie with an attitude, is released after fourteen years of living with two dozen white tablets, there’s bound to be trouble…

It’s been 400 years since Dutch sea captain Cornelius Vanderdecker and his crew drank an immortality elixir that they mistook for beer. Now the compounded interest on a life insurance policy he took out in the 1500s makes him worth more money than exists in all the world…and he may be close to the end of his boring immortality

Once upon a time (or last Thursday, as its sometimes known) the wicked queen had a fully functioning, if antiquated, Mirrors system and all was well in the kingdom. Then the humans hacked in and the system failed. Fairytales may never be the same again

From Ancient Rome through thirteenth-century Venice to 1930s' New York, twelve compelling historical crime stories. Our dark past brought to life by leading contemporary crime writers A new generation of crime writers has broadened the genre of crime fiction, creating more human stories of historical realism, with a stronger emphasis on character and the psychology of crime. This superb anthology of 12 novellas encompasses over 4,000 years of our dark, criminal past, from Bronze Age Britain to the eve of the Second World War, with stories set in ancient Greece, Rome, the Byzantine Empire, medieval Venice, seventh-century Ireland and 1930s' New York. A Byzantine icon painter, suddenly out of work when icons are banned, becomes embroiled in a case of deception; Charles Babbage and the young Ada Byron try to crack a coded message and stop a master criminal; and New York detectives are on the lookout for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid