Collection: Fiction

Told with robust humour and rollicking satire, Rudd's stories are as fresh and entertaining now as they were at the turn of the century.

Sally was living in an idyllic South African farmstead with her teenage daughter Gigi. When Sally is murdered, Gigi is alone in the world. But as Sally watches over Gigi, events take a darker turn when a cousin develops an obsession with black magic.

1859. St Mary's Church, Spondon. A little girl playing hide-and-seek jumps into a freshly-dug grave to find a dead man already occupying it. It is the body of a senior director of the Midland Railway. Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming investigate.

Mrs Moses, the only survivor of a Cossack raid on her village, takes with her a big cast-iron frying pan. From this frying pan Mrs Moses manages to feed the various refugees who are travelling with her across Russia to freedom...

On the eve of the First World War, Fleurette, the only daughter of the wealthy Delacroix perfume dynasty, is being forced to marry a man she loathes, Aimery De Lasset, head of the pre-eminent perfume manufacturer in France.

In 1890s Texas when two very different men enter Jessica's life, will she choose to pursue her dreams of adventure or follow the gentle urgings of her heart?

After Inspector Kurt Wallander moves into a new house, he makes an upsetting discovery: there is an entire corpse buried in a shallow grave in the garden. Wallander is soon drawn into the search for the truth about his new home, and its previous owner.

Cliff Hardy is hired by entrepreneur and one-time pistol-shooting champion Timothy Greenhall to investigate the death of his troubled son. Soon Hardy is pitched into a world of crooked cops, outlaw bikies and honest police trying to clean the stables.

A man and his young son traverse a blasted American landscape, covered with the ashes of 'the late world'. The man can still remember the time before but not the boy. There is nothing for them except survival, and the last vestiges of their own humanity..

Subject: During an anti-clerical purge in Mexico, a priest is hunted like a hare. But compassion and humanity force him along the road to his destiny, reluctant to abandon those who need him, and those he cares for....