Showing results by narrator "Ian Stuart" in All Categories

Poet Ian McMillan is our host in this gleeful game of literary tomfoolery, outrageous parody and biting wit. Joining him for some lighthearted competitive wordplay are a quartet of writers and comedians, all ready and eager to run riot through the halls of great literature.

Elizabeth has a plan for how she and her boyfriend Cameron can spend the summer together in Scotland. While Cameron researches the migratory patterns of seals, Elizabeth will join an archaeological dig on the nearby island of Banrigh. But Elizabeth's plans don't include a devastating plague which starts killing off her fellow crew members.

In Quantum Theory for Cats, York-based poet and ghost-trail guide Ian Stuart ably chaperones us through the winding snickelways between bitter beauty and sweet ugliness. After hearing from both of Schrödinger's pets, we witness spontaneous tears in a bookshop, watch an ambulance arrive through a crack in the curtains, then spend time with saints, artists, doppelgangers, and the unborn.

The death of a beloved children's writer, Hoke Berglund, draws Jon Sieber into a world he cannot hope to understand - a world filled with Hoke's creations, including the vile Mr. Self Affliction who is the cruel master of this place. In a world where angels are beautiful women and the by-blows of nightmares people the mythical Forgetting Wood, Jon, heir apparent to all that Hoke created, falls for Kristen, the writer's daughter, but cannot let her secret remain secret.

Adam Strickland must write a scholarly monograph about the famous Docci garden in Tuscany. Dedicated to the memory of a 15th century nobleman's young wife, the garden is a mysterious world of statues, grottoes, meandering rills, and classical inscriptions. Adam comes to suspect that something sinister lies buried in the garden's strange iconography. What if Lord Docci's wife was murdered, and her memorial garden is filled with pointers to both the method and the motive of the crime?