{"title":"Books by Ian Sansom","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780007360482","title":"The Norfolk Mystery","description":"\u003cp\u003eLove Miss Marple? Adore Holmes and Watson?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eProfessor Morley’s guide to Norfolk is a story of bygone England; quaint villages, eccentric locals – and murder!\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is 1937 and disillusioned Spanish Civil War veteran Stephen Sefton is stony broke. So when he sees a mysterious advertisement for a job where ‘intelligence is essential’, he applies. Thus begins Sefton’s association with Professor Swanton Morley, an omnivorous intellect. Morley’s latest project is a history of traditional England, with a guide to every county. They start in Norfolk, but when the vicar of Blakeney is found hanging from his church’s bellrope, Morley and Sefton find themselves drawn into a rather more fiendish plot. Did the Reverend really take his own life, or was it – murder?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeginning a thrilling new detective series, ‘The Norfolk Mystery’ is the first of The County Guides. A must-read for fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, every county is a crime scene and no-one is above suspicion!\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56220259320181,"sku":"9780007360482","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780007360482_86c2881b-cd71-4d95-b0ec-c2222f5a75f3.jpg?v=1785658608"},{"product_id":"9780007557233","title":"September 1, 1939","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis is a book about a poet, about a poem, about a city, and about a world at a point of change. More than a work of literary criticism or literary biography, it is a record of why and how we create and respond to great poetry.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is a book about a poet – W. H. Auden, a wunderkind, a victim-beneficiary of a literary cult of personality who became a scapegoat and a poet-expatriate largely excluded from British literary history because he left.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAbout a poem – ‘September 1, 1939’, his most famous and celebrated, yet one which he tried to rewrite and disown and which has enjoyed – or been condemned – to a tragic and unexpected afterlife.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAbout a city – New York, an island, an emblem of the Future, magnificent, provisional, seamy, and in 1939 about to emerge as the defining twentieth-century cosmopolis, the capital of the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd about a world at a point of change – about 1939, and about our own Age of Anxiety, about the aftermath of September 11, when many American newspapers reprinted Auden’s poem in its entirety on their editorial pages.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56220463169909,"sku":"9780007557233","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780007557233_719d1b01-4b8b-43d6-ab5f-dad60a2a31f2.jpg?v=1785658727"},{"product_id":"9780712352543","title":"Reading Room","description":"This is a playful and provocative collection of 365 extracts sourced from the British Library's collections. Selected to challenge and inform the reader, each excerpt is accompanied by the unique shelfmark number of the source publication. Encompassing a wide range of great works in literature, poetry, essays and letters, historical and scientific treatises, and including beloved and popular authors as well as controversial writers, each extract will encourage enquiry and stimulate the imagination. Beautifully designed and illustrated with the Library's collections, with one extract for every day of the year, this book can be read as a thought to start the day or can be dipped into for inspiration at random.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56296654471541,"sku":"9780712352543","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780712352543_2bb08c2c-8323-43c7-8d90-f46724a1cd0b.jpg?v=1786014704"},{"product_id":"9781780733289","title":"The Black Dreams","description":"\"My brother said that he needed to dampen down the colours in his flat. There was too much colour in there. There was too much confusion. The colours were clashing. They were humming. First he did the walls, and then he did the skirting boards, and the ceiling. And then the doors. Carefully, methodically, over the course of a couple of weeks, he stripped them, primed them and painted them. He painted them all –  carefully, methodically. He painted them black.\" ?— Ian Sansom, ‘The Black’This anthology of specially commissioned short stories explores the weird, surreal, and dream-like, a world that is off-kilter. Bringing together some of the best of Northern Ireland’s literary talents along with new and exciting voices, this compelling collection is dark, funny, and unsettling.Contributors: Jo Baker, Jan Carson, Reggie Chamberlain-King, Ailsinn Clarke, Emma Devlin, Moyra Donaldson, Michelle Gallen, Carlo Gebler, John Patrick Higgins, Ian McDonald, Gerard McKeown, Bernie McGill, Ian Sansom, and Sam Thompson.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56303226552693,"sku":"9781780733289","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781780733289_228ad62b-1375-4e3c-af73-3498d6d6791c.jpg?v=1786026014"},{"product_id":"9780007533169","title":"Death in Devon","description":"\u003cp\u003eCREAM TEAS! SCHOOL DINNERS! SATANIC SURFERS!\u003c\/p\u003e          \u003cp\u003eJoin our heroes as they follow up a Norfolk Mystery with a bad case of … DEATH IN DEVON.\u003c\/p\u003e          \u003cp\u003eSwanton Morley, the People’s Professor, sets off for Devon to continue his history of England, The County Guides. Morley’s daughter Miriam and his assistant Stephen Sefton pack up the Lagonda for a trip to the English Riviera.\u003c\/p\u003e          \u003cp\u003eMorley has been invited to give the Founder’s Day speech at All Souls School in Rousdon. But when the trio arrive they discover that a boy has died in mysterious circumstances. Was it an accident or was it – murder?\u003c\/p\u003e          \u003cp\u003eJoin Morley, Sefton and Miram on another adventure into the dark heart of 1930s England.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56306810028405,"sku":"9780007533169","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780007533169_ae1d3bb8-473c-4981-a08c-bcdcec476038.jpg?v=1785658603"},{"product_id":"9781912697113","title":"Refugee Tales","description":"\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback \/ softback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309038121333,"sku":"9781912697113","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781912697113_b89357be-56ba-4b76-8e33-b1d5162272e9.jpg?v=1786030192"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-ian-sansom.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}