Whilst on business in Pakistan, ex-RAF officer and businessman Dale Latham comes close to death when his helicopter is downed by a ground to air missile. Hospitalised, he meets Chanda Govinda, a persecuted Christian Indian and helps her escape across the Pakistan-India border. Although there is no evidence linking Latham's involvement with Chanda, Muslim zealot police chief Aman aims to imprison him. With his top-secret knowledge, HMG fear Latham will end up in the hands of Pakistani intelligence. MI6 agent Ross Hunter is dispatched to appraise the situation, and if necessary, liquidate Latham. When Latham is abducted by terrorists, Hunter rescues him, saying that Aman set him up for the ultimate fall. Without evidence, Aman is forced to allow Latham to leave Pakistan, avoiding a bullet from Hunter.
Whilst on business in Pakistan, ex-RAF officer and businessman Dale Latham comes close to death when his helicopter is downed by a ground to air missile. Hospitalised, he meets Chanda Govinda, a persecuted Christian Indian and helps her escape across the Pakistan-India border. Although there is no evidence linking Latham's involvement with Chanda, Muslim zealot police chief Aman aims to imprison him. With his top-secret knowledge, HMG fear Latham will end up in the hands of Pakistani intelligence. MI6 agent Ross Hunter is dispatched to appraise the situation, and if necessary, liquidate Latham. When Latham is abducted by terrorists, Hunter rescues him, saying that Aman set him up for the ultimate fall. Without evidence, Aman is forced to allow Latham to leave Pakistan, avoiding a bullet from Hunter.
Roger Fraser, the ever optimistic but perpetually put upon investment banking stock analyst-trouble shooter and occasional rugby player has more work and domestic issues to challenge his sensibilities. He skilfully manoeuvres from one demanding situation to the next, barely managing to extinguish the callous flames of fate seeming to constantly blight his endeavours and bite at his flesh. During his excursions into shocking social scandals and battling with egotistical megalomaniacs, he endlessly verges on disaster, but somehow always manages to survive. Roger pokes irreverent fun at the new Establishment, single-handedly takes on female dragons, prevails against rampaging supermarket shoppers and trades wisecracks with a Brummy vicar, but invariably finds himself tethered to the doghouse, singing the blues.
Roger Fraser is convinced he is cursed by unforeseen situations constantly bringing his integrity into disrepute, especially in social situations. His family thinks he is gaff prone, but if they could see him in the business arena, they would find Roger is an unassailable trouble-shooter, trampling on Essex boy traders, and solving delicate problems with aplomb. Join the Fraser family and their assorted band of odd-ball friends and work colleagues, as our hero steers his way through some tricky situations, but nonetheless, always seems to get the rough end of the pineapple and ends up licking his wounds in the doghouse.
Roger Fraser continues to battle the vexing absurdities of modernism, his aim to stay out of the doghouse by adopting meditation as an antidote to combat his hang-ups. When it comes to neutralising uppity officials and slaying implacable harridans masquerading as mewling princesses, Roger has no equal in the world of high-finance and within his wife Charlotte’s social set. He survives a no-nonsense outward bound course instructor, boldly engages status quo doyens including an intractable hanging judge and a very persistent spook, avoids being mugged by lazoonland trailer trash, and subdues an autocratic drama teacher. On a lighter note, Roger dodges the clutches of jailbait schoolgirls, is bedeviled by an overzealous impresario and battles intransigent shrews amongst a plethora of highly contentious and hilarious incidents, but despite his new found remedy, inevitably he winds up in the doghouse, wondering where it all went wrong.
Pipedream meets reality along Route 66. Charged up with expectation, Henry Collins, a man with a subconscious Magnum fixation, and his band of argonauts explore the beat generation trail. Searching for the ghosts of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, they rub shoulders with next generation beats in roadhouses and speakeasies, and survivors from the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. Recognising their romantic visions of beatdom are tainted with fallacy and paradox, after six weeks on Route 66 travelling from Chicago to LA and returning to the Windy City on a northerly route, they exit the world of intellectual and down and out beats, flushed with an appreciation that no counterculture, no matter how seductive, approaches perfection.
Differing themes and voices, some classic, some contemporary, others though mysterious, planted firmly in reality. All used to depict an assortment of psychological suspense thrillers, coming of age sagas and modern satires.
Alpha Centauri - a global reflection allied to a ticking time bomb. Overwhelmed by alien overlords of indeterminate origin, Pamela Cavendish battles against the invaders' genocidal atrocities in a contemporary thriller, or is it an allegorical tale, warning of the shape of things to come? Possibly from Alpha Centauri, an alien infestation descends on the northern Occident, Pamela Cavendish barely registering their presence until she meets journalist Stephen Thornly. He informs her the biggest front page showstopper is the rise of the invaders in England. During a period of nationwide alien opposition, Thornly is sentenced to four years in Stalag 51 for anti-alien activities and Pamela becomes a courier for a resistance cell. Soon after Thornly’s release, Pamela is molested by an alien. Gaining absolute power, the colonists dissolve Parliament and begin women farming for alien pleasures. Englishmen battle with the parasites to protect their women, towering numbers of the colonists forcing them to take refuge in the national parks. Unconvinced the aggressors are space cadets, people concur they are of earthbound origin! Uniting as a liberation army, the English drive the infiltrators out of England. Returning with crushing numbers, the interlopers recapture England slaughtering all before them, remnants of the population making for ports to escape on ships to the Antipodes, Pamela and Stephen landing in Perth. Just after the alien lair is discovered, a ginormous outlander armada appears off Western Australia. Overcoming defending forces, the infringers make land, driving people into the desert outback. Resigned to their fate, the situation begins to look hopeless. Nature comes to the rescue. Originating in China, a highly contagious infection designated ‘crownvirus’ blankets the entire globe. Not affecting Occidental peoples, it obliterates the aliens.
This book portrays the Himalayan-born River Saraswati, a legendary river that was the lifeline of a progressive and vibrant society for more than three thousand years. Written in simple language and richly illustrated, it highlights the events that resulted in the robbing of the Saraswati of its water and the end of a wonderful culture. The author weaves a geological narrative out of a mass of data generated by explorers, archaeologists, sedimentologists, geohydrologist, seismologists and remote-sensing specialists. The story explains how a great Himalayan river disappeared and how the Harappan Civilization vanished from the banks of the river Saraswati more than three and half thousand years ago in the wake of tectonic upheavals in the foothills of the Himalaya at a time when the rainfall had drastically declined. And it reveals that nowadays the Saraswati is an extraordinary wide water-less channel coursing through the vast but dry floodplain in western India.
