If I ever saw my muse she would be an old woman with a tight bun and spectacles poking me in the middle of the back and growling, “Wake up and write the book!

First, a bath. I’m feeling soiled. Too much contact with cold reality, I think.

The Albion was a spacious pub, built in the days when a public house with any pretensions to gentility had to have fourteen foot ceilings, brass taps and a polished wooden bar you skate down....

This was cheering. The real world was still there, it still contained puppies being puppies and cats being cats.

He could pass off the inferior bottles on tables seven and four. Table seven knew nothing of wine, sending back a bottle of Riesling as “corked” because it had bits of cork in it, the...

Even the reeking dark in the lion’s cage seemed precious and infinitely preferable to whatever lay beyond. She would go out like the flame of a candle. Where does the candle flame go when the...

Oh wondrous,’ murmured Lin Chung. ‘Oh, water, mistress of earth, valley spirit, eternal feminine!”Taoism again?’ Phryne leaned close to hear what he was whispering.’From the “Tao Te Ching.” The old Master should have seen this....