Showing results by narrator "Peter Serafinowicz" in All Categories

'Look after the dead,' said the priests, 'and the dead will look after you.' Wise words in all probability, but a tall order when, like Teppic, you have just become the pharaoh of a small and penniless country rather earlier than expected, and your treasury is unlikely to stretch to the building of a monumental pyramid to honour your dead father. He'd had the best education money could buy of course, but unfortunately the syllabus at the Assassin's Guild in Ankh-Morpork did not cover running a kingdom and basic financial acumen....

Being 16 is always difficult, even more so when there's a Death in the family. After all, it's hard to grow up normally when Grandfather rides a white horse and wields a scythe. Especially if he decides to take a well-earned moment to uncover the meaning of life and discover himself in the process, so that you have to take over the family business, and everyone mistakes you for the Tooth Fairy.

When Elsie, an orphan on the streets of Victorian London, hears about the mysterious Ice Monster - a woolly mammoth found at the North Pole - she’s determined to discover more.... A chance encounter brings Elsie face to face with the creature and sparks the adventure of a lifetime - from London to the heart of the Arctic! Heroes come in all different shapes and sizes in David Walliams’ biggest and most epic adventure yet!

The Royal Bank is facing a crisis, and it's time for a change of management. There are a few problems that may arise with the job.... The Chief Cashier is almost certainly a vampire - there's something nameless in the cellar and it turns out that the Royal Mint runs at a loss. Meanwhile, people actually want to know where the money's gone. It's a job for life. But, as former con-man Moist von Lipwig is learning, that life is not necessarily a long one. He's about to be exposed as a fraud, but if he's lucky the Assassins' Guild might get him first.

They say that diplomacy is a gentle art. That mastering it is a lifetime's work. But you do need a certain inclination in that direction. It's not something you can just pick up on the job. A few days ago Sam Vimes was a copper - an important copper, true - chief of police - but still, at his core, a policeman. But today he is an ambassador - to the mysterious, fat-rich country of Uberwald. Today, Sam Vimes is also a man on the run. At some point during his ambassadorship, things went very wrong. It's snowing. It's freezing.

The City Watch needs men! But what it's got includes Corporal Carrot (technically a dwarf), Lance-Constable Cuddy (really a dwarf), Lance-Constable Detritus (a troll), Lance-Constable Angua (a woman...most of the time) and Corporal Nobbs (disqualified from the human race for shoving). And they need all the help they can get, because someone in Ankh-Morpork has been getting dangerous ideas - about crowns and legendary swords and destiny.

Time is a resource. Everyone knows it has to be managed. You mess with it at your peril. You can let it move fast or slowly, but what you mustn't do is allow it to stop. The Monks of History have the glamorous job of time management in the Discworld. They store it and pump it from the places where it's wasted (like underwater—how much time does a codfish need?) to places like cities, where there's never enough time. But the construction of the world's first truly accurate clock starts a race against, well, time for Lu Tze and his apprentice Lobsang Ludd.

The witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick are travelling to far-distant Genua to stop a wedding and save a kingdom. But how do you fight a happy-ever-after, especially when it comes with glass slippers and a power-hungry Fairy Godmother who has made Destiny an offer it can't refuse? It's hard to resist a good story, even when the fate of the kingdom depends on it....

The stockings are hanging ready, the sherry and pies are waiting by the fireplace - but where is the jolly fat man with his sack? It's not right to find Death creeping down chimneys and trying to say 'Ho ho ho'—but someone's got to bring the little kiddies their presents. Or else they might stop believing. Belief is important in Discworld, particularly on the last night of the year when the time is turning. If the real man in the red suit isn't found by morning, there won't be a morning. Ever again....

William de Worde is the accidental editor of the Discworld's first newspaper. Now he must cope with the traditional perils of a journalist's life - people who want him dead, a recovering vampire with a suicidal fascination for flash photography, some more people who want him dead in a different way and, worst of all, the man who keeps begging him to publish pictures of his humorously shaped potatoes.

Insurrection is in the air in the city of Ankh-Morpork. The Haves and Have-Nots are about to fall out all over again. Captain Sam Vimes of the city's ramshackle Night Watch is used to this. It's enough to drive a man to drink. Well, to drink more. But this time, something is different - the Have-Nots have found the key to a dormant, lethal weapon that even they don't fully understand and they're about to unleash a campaign of terror on the city. Time for Captain Vimes to sober up.

Deep in the Chalk, something is stirring. The owls and the foxes can sense it, and Tiffany Aching feels it in her boots. An old enemy is gathering strength. This is a time of endings and beginnings, old friends and new, a blurring of edges and a shifting of power. Now Tiffany stands between the light and the dark, the good and the bad. As the fairy horde prepares for invasion, Tiffany must summon all the witches to stand with her. To protect the land. Her land. There will be a reckoning.

This is the worst thing you can wish on a citizen of Discworld. Especially for the magically challenged Rincewind, who has already had far too much excitement in his life. Unfortunately, the unlucky wizard always seems to end up in the middle of, well, absolutely everything. So when a request for a 'Great Wizzard' arrives from the faraway Counterweight Continent, it's obviously Rincewind who's sent. For one thing, he's the only one who spells wizard that way.

As the witch of the Chalk, Tiffany Aching performs the distinctly unglamorous work of caring for the needy. But someone - or something - is inciting fear, generating dark thoughts and angry murmurs against witches. Tiffany must find the source of unrest and defeat the evil at its root. Aided by the tiny-but-tough Wee Free Men, Tiffany faces a dire challenge, for if she falls, the whole Chalk falls with her.

Three witches gathered on a lonely heath. A king cruelly murdered, his throne usurped by his ambitious cousin. A child heir and the royal crown, both missing.

Vampires have come to Lancre, but they're not what you'd expect. Sure, they drink blood and view humans as dinner, but they're modern and sophisticated. They've got style and fancy waistcoats. And they're not a bit afraid of garlic. The Magpyr family are out of the casket and want a bite of the future. But they haven't met the neighbours yet. Between them and Lancre stand a coven of four - Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, Magrat and young Agnes - and they don't take kindly to murderous intruders....

Death has been fired by the Auditors of Reality for the heinous crime of developing…a personality. Sent to live like everyone else, Death takes a new name and begins working as a farmhand. He's got the scythe already, after all. And for humanity, Death is just…gone. Which leads to the kind of chaos you always get when an important public service is withdrawn. If Death doesn't come for you, then what are you supposed to do in the meantime? You can't have the undead wandering about like lost souls—there's no telling what might happen.

For Commander Vimes, Head of Ankh-Morpork City Watch, life consists of troubling times, linked together by...well, more troubling times. Right now, it's the latter. There's a werewolf with pre-lunar tension in the city and a dwarf with attitude and a golem who's begun to think for itself, but that's just ordinary trouble. The real problem is more puzzling - people are being murdered, but there's no trace of anything alive having been at the crime scene.

An eighth son of an eighth son is born, a wizard squared, a source of magic. A sourcerer. Unseen University, the Discworld's most magical establishment, has finally got its wish: the emergence of a wizard more powerful than ever before. You'd think they would have been a little more careful what they wished for.... As the sourcerer takes over the University and sets his sights on the rest of the world, only one wizard manages to escape his influence. Unfortunately for everyone, it's Rincewind.

Rincewind, inept wizard and reluctant hero, has found himself magically stranded on the Discworld's last continent. It's hot. It's dry. There was this thing once called The Wet, which no one believes in any more. Practically everything that's not poisonous is venomous. But it's the best bloody place in the world, all right? And in a few days, it will die. The only thing standing between the last continent and wind-blown doom is Rincewind, and he can't even spell wizard. Still...no worries, eh?