Talia is a Hero of Pregeor. Or is she? Why are they trying to kill her? Who are her friends? Who are her enemies? Sunset in Silvana is the first book in a Science Fiction saga of intrigue, horror and adventure. Ruine is a devastated planet. Millennia ago, during the war between the Forerunners and the Ancients, its moons were pulverised to form rings, and most of its atmosphere was burnt off. With a thin sulfurous atmosphere, it was not an attractive prospect for colonisation, but eventually a hardy group of pioneers managed to make its single remaining fertile continent habitable. Now, tensions between the two major territories on this continent, Zelyna and Telphania, are high. War seems inevitable. Talia Milanova and her friends had, they had been told, helped to evacuate refugees from Pregeor - not that they recalled it, the trauma of the disaster having wiped their memories. Now, people were trying to kill them, and strange memories were beginning to surface. Who were they really?

Twelve tales of Victorian crime from the casebook of Inspector Richard Thompson, a Scotland Yard detective, as recounted by his Springer spaniel. The cases range from murder to a dognapping, and are solved in some unconventional ways The cases are interspaced by extracts from the journal of Isobel Fraser, a young American heiress who is banished to Britain to prevent an unsuitable marriage. Initially scathing about her relatives she gradually becomes enamoured with the Thompsons, especially when she becomes involved in one of Inspector Thompson's more dangerous cases, and a romance blossoms.

The true story of Derek Bentley (Christopher Eccleston), hanged, aged 19, in the 1950s after a controversial decision holding him responsible for the murder of a police officer. Despite a history of mental illness, and with the court accepting that he did not actually pull the trigger, Bentley was still sentenced to death - on the basis that his ambiguous cry of 'let him have it!' caused his young accomplice to fire the fatal shot. The release of this film focused attention on the case once more, and Bentley eventually received a posthumous pardon.