GREEN/UNNATURAL INQUIRER

Offered a million pounds by the Unnatural Inquirer to find a DVD reported to contain recordings of the afterlife, John Taylor must contend with someone or something else who wants it as well.

The name’s John Taylor. I’m a PI, though what I really do is find things that are lost. I work the Nightside, the city within the city of London, where the sun never rises and where the human and inhuman go to get their kicks, provided they’re willing to pay the price in whatever currency the seller demands. In the wake of the war that almost brought the Nightside to total ruin, there’s a power vacuum begging to be filled—and some think I should take charge. I don’t agree. Neither does the immortal known as the Griffin. Wealthy beyond reason, he has his own ideas about who should be running things. Still, when his granddaughter—and designated heir—is kidnapped, he calls on me to find her. But someone—or some Thing—is blocking my special gift. So this time, I’m going to have to do my job the hard way. And quickly, or the Griffin will have to choose a new heir…

I’m John Taylor. I was born in the Nightside, that square mile in the hidden center of London where it is always the hour of the wolf, where gods and monsters walk side by side and where every dark question ever asked can be answered—for a price. I left for a while, but I did come back, to make my living doing what I do better than anyone else: finding things—lost or stolen, real or imaginary. Recently, I found the most dangerous thing of all: the true identity of my long-gone mother. Turns out she’s a being who’s been around since before the dawn of history. Then, she created the Nightside—and now, for her own warped reasons, she intends to destroy it. To stop her before she even gets started, I’ve got to do some hard traveling—back in Time, through endless eons, into the very distant—and probably deadly—past…

With a new sheriff, The Walking Man, stalking the streets of the Nightside, preying on evildoers and indulgent party-goers alike, it falls to P.I. John Taylor to stop him before The Walking Man turns all of the Nightside into a wasteland. By the author of The Unnatural Inquirer.

In the Nightside, that nightmarish realm hidden deep beneath London, it is forever 3 a.m. Here inhuman creatures walk beside mythic gods. And John Taylor, private detective with a difference, is back, working this secret supernatural heart of London to find an item of inestimable value. The Unholy Grail is missing . . . and everyone wants its corrosive power. This time he must use his unique gifts to locate the cup from which Judas drank at the Last Supper; before it falls into the wrong hands. Anyone who touches the cup will gain tremendous power - but they will also be corrupted. Angels, demons, sinners and saints are all determined to find the Unholy Grail, no matter what the cost. And it isn't long before they realise exactly who can lead them to it . . . Agents of Light and Darkness is the sequel to Something From the Nightside and the second title in Simon R. Green's New York Times bestselling Nightside series.

Humanity can make short work of the oceans’ creatures. In 1741, hungry explorers discovered herds of Steller’s sea cow in the Bering Strait, and in less than thirty years, the amiable beast had been harpooned into extinction. It’s a classic story, but a key fact is often omitted. Bering Island was the last redoubt of a species that had been decimated by hunting and habitat loss years before the explorers set sail. As Callum M. Roberts reveals in The Unnatural History of the Sea, the oceans’ bounty didn’t disappear overnight. While today’s fishing industry is ruthlessly efficient, intense exploitation began not in the modern era, or even with the dawn of industrialization, but in the eleventh century in medieval Europe. Roberts explores this long and colorful history of commercial fishing, taking readers around the world and through the centuries to witness the transformation of the seas. Drawing on firsthand accounts of early explorers, pirates, merchants, fishers, and travelers, the book recreates the oceans of the past: waters teeming with whales, sea lions, sea otters, turtles, and giant fish. The abundance of marine life described by fifteenth century seafarers is almost unimaginable today, but Roberts both brings it alive and artfully traces its depletion. Collapsing fisheries, he shows, are simply the latest chapter in a long history of unfettered commercialization of the seas. The story does not end with an empty ocean. Instead, Roberts describes how we might restore the splendor and prosperity of the seas through smarter management of our resources and some simple restraint. From the coasts of Florida to New Zealand, marine reserves have fostered spectacular recovery of plants and animals to levels not seen in a century. They prove that history need not repeat itself: we can leave the oceans richer than we found them.