Murder comes in all shapes and sizes. It also comes at inconvenient times. Christmas, for example. This anthology has all the classic motives: blackmail, revenge, lust, greed, anger… And there’s more! Humour, intrigue, suspense…

Here are twenty eight short, quirky tales: mystery, murder and ghostly stories, for anyone from eight to eighty. Often they will have a twist in the tale and some may even raise a smile or two. The subject matter is wide and varied and the stories are designed as light reading during a journey: by coach, boat, plane or train.

Murder and mystery: two young men whose paths were doomed to cross even before they were born. Billy Turpin grows up to become a successful businessman, with charismatic charm. James Parker becomes a doctor, often suffering fits of depression and who suspects that his generous benefactor: Billy Turpin, is also a psychopathic killer.

Returning to a Scottish Borders churchyard, on the winding banks of the River Tweed, and suffering from a queasy stomach – the editor's golden boy, young reporter Leonard McFadden, staggers and grasps a tombstone for support, and plunges headlong into a strange and deadly mystery that fate has diabolically thrust across his path.

This wide variety of murder, mystery and imaginative tales has been created by Harry Riley; especially for those brief interludes in our busy lives, when time is too short for a long read, and we would like something entertaining and perhaps unusual, but not too demanding, from which to dip in and out, at a moment’s notice.