The Unnatural Inquirer

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.

In the secret heart of London, under the cover of endless darkness, is the Nightside. But enter at your own risk. The party animals who live here may be as inhuman as their appetites... My name is John Taylor. The Nightside is my home, and I’ve got a brand new full-time job there (in addition to my private eye work) as Walker—the Voice of the Authorities. I’m also marrying the love of my life, Suzie Shooter, the Nightside’s most fearsome bounty-hunter. But nothing comes easy here. Not life. Not death. And for certain, not happily-ever-after. Before I can say “I do,” I have one more case to solve as a private eye—and my first assignment as Walker. Both jobs would be a lot easier to accomplish if I weren’t on the run, from friends and enemies alike. And if my bride-to-be weren’t out to collect the bounty on my head...

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.

The name’s John Taylor. I work the garish streets of the Nightside—the hidden heart of London where it’s always three A.M., where in human creatures and otherworldly gods walk side by side in the endless darkness of the soul. I have a talent for finding things. People…property…no problem. But now I’m after something different. A local diva called the Nightingale has cut herself off from her family and friends, and I’ve been hired to find out the reason. I’m also wondering why her suicide—prone fans think she has a voice to die for. Literally. To get the truth, I’ll have to lend an ear to the most enticingly beautiful and deadly voice in all of the Nightside—and survive.

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…

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.

View our feature on Simon R. Green's Ghost of a Chance. A brand-new series from the New York Times bestselling author of the Nightside novels! The Carnacki Institute exists to "Do Something" about Ghosts-and agents JC Chance, Melody Chambers, and Happy Jack Palmer will either lay them to rest, send them packing, or kick their nasty ectoplasmic arses with extreme prejudice.

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…