Peter Murphy

Already fast becoming a classic among coming-of-age tales, John the Revelator has garnered praise from Nick Laird, Colm Tóibín, Roddy Doyle, and John Boyne, and is a critical darling in the U.K. This is the story of John Devine-stuck in a small town in the otherworldly landscape of southeastern Ireland, worried over by his single, chain-smoking, Bible-quoting mother, Lily, and spied on by the "neighborly" Mrs. Nagle. When Jamey Corboy, a self-styled...

The fifth Ben Schroeder legal thriller Calling Down the Storm is the story of two separate but strangely parallel lives: the life of a defendant on trial for murder, and the life of the judge who presides over his trial. April 1971.When DI Webb and DS Raymond arrive at Harpur's Mews in Bloomsbury in response to a 999 call, a horrific scene awaits them. Susan Lang is lying on the ground, bleeding to death. Her husband Henry is sitting nearby, holding...

The first Judge Walden novel When Charlie Walden took on the job of Resident Judge of the Bermondsey Crown Court, he was hoping for a quiet life. But he soon finds himself struggling to keep the peace between three feisty fellow judges who have very different views about how to do their job, and about how Charlie should do his. And as if that's not enough, there's the endless battle against the 'Grey Smoothies', the humourless grey-suited civil servants...

Charlie Walden is the Resident Judge of the Bermondsey Crown Court, where he had hoped for a quiet life, but has found it to be anything but. With the job of balancing the needs of prosecutors, judges, 'Grey Smoothies', the humourless grey-suited civil servants, and the overall needs of a Crown Court he soon finds himself struggling to keep the peace and his own delightful humour. Charlie is faced with a number of topical issues he hadn't anticipated;...

Thomas Wyatt didn't publish "They Flee from Me." It was written in a notebook, maybe abroad, maybe even in prison. Today it is in every poetry anthology. How did it survive? That is the story Peter Murphy tells-in vivid and compelling detail-of the accidents of fate that kept a great poem alive across 500 turbulent years. Wyatt's poem becomes an occasion to ask and answer numerous questions about literature, culture, and history. Itself about the...

1965. The British Establishment is reeling after a series of defections and acts of treachery by high-ranking intelligence officers. When Francis Hollander, an American academic, accuses Sir James Digby QC, a baronet and leader of the Bar, of being a Soviet spy, Digby retains Ben Schroeder and his head of Chambers to represent him. At first, it seems to be a simple case of libel, but as evidence starts to emerge of Digby's association with the Cambridge...

Owning a castle in the idyllic countryside may seem like a fairytale of old to many, but, for the Earl of Erne and his son Viscount Crichton, it's a very modern story of struggling finances and family responsibility. Their family home of Crom Castle in Northern Ireland has been the ancestral seat of the Crichtons for more than four hundred years. As the only boy in a family of five children, John (Viscount Crichton) will one day inherit the castle...